1: Best Practices for Teaching English Learners

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Jennifer Gonzalez

Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2013

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kim, a passionate ESL teacher and our very first guest, talks candidly about the complexities of teaching English learners: the power imbalance that arises when the kids speak English but the parents don't, why ELL students won't look their teachers in the eye, and the well-intended mistake so many content area teachers make when working with a diverse population.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to
0:06.7	Episode 1, where we interview Kim, who is a middle school ESL teacher. Cult of Pedagogy
0:13.2	is a website devoted to building a community of people who are unnaturally obsessed with
0:18.1	all things education. Please visit www.cultivpedagogy.com to find great articles, teacher forums,
0:27.4	book and product reviews, and other podcasts. If you're a teacher nerd, you'll find a
0:32.4	home at Cult of Pedagogy. And now, without further ado, here's Episode 1.
0:37.8	So, I am here with Kim and Kim is an ESL teacher at a sort of medium-sized suburban school
1:05.4	in the Midwest and what you just described the population that you work with. Sure, the
1:11.5	one in my classroom or the one at the school, we have about 600 students, 80% free and reduced
1:18.8	lunch, lower income population, heavy needs, high needs, socioeconomically and academically.
1:28.5	And then within our school, our area is actually a resettlement spot for refugees that we
1:34.6	have what they call a refugee intake center, an international center that services refugees
1:39.0	who get funneled through the system into our city. So, my school has a population of refugees
1:45.7	from, oh, I don't even know which country, I ended up with eight countries and 11 languages
1:52.5	in a group of 15 students this year. So, it was the most diverse group I've had. But
1:57.9	Somalia, Iraq, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Burmese students, and then some non-refugee kids
2:10.4	who were just in because their parents were going to a local university here. So, kids
2:14.5	from Saudi Arabia, a student from Japan, and then I had a Cuban student, a Honduran student,
2:21.7	I had a crazy collection of kids this year. Wow, it was awesome. Yeah, it was awesome.
2:27.3	And is it, I have the sun here, is it ESL? Is it ELL? Has the terminally changed?
2:33.8	It depends on who you're talking to. I use ELL because it's English language learning.
2:39.9	I had a student in my class who spoke four languages. So, to consider English, his second
	...

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