I'm a bilingual teacher and in my district they are doing
push-in. Technically,the ESL teacher and the bilingual
teacher should be co-teaching for two periods per day. In
theory it sounds great but in practice it's a nightmare.
There's absolutely no common planning time but they expect
both teachers to be on the same page at all times. We have to
teach the exact same skill each day and our lesson plans must
match in terms of the skills taught. How are we supposed to
achieve this? The ESL and bilingual teacher would have to
call or email each other frequently during non working hours
and prepare lesson plans way ahead of time in order to
fulfill this. I think this is an unfair expectation. On top
of that there are no clear guidelines of who does what. I
keep receiving different information all the time. Also, they
want for us to teach English language arts to the ELL
students who are on a level one of proficiency. The kids
don't understand anything I'm talking about during those
English language arts lessons. They're not getting much out
of it. They also want for us to teach the vowels in English
and Spanish at the same time. This is very confusing for the
kids. Is this how it's done everywhere else? I'm kind of new
to the field but still, I'm not sure if this is the right
thing to do. The school doesn't provide the teachers with
materials (only a few very basic things) either so I have to
buy most of the materials such as books, chart paper, writing
journals etc. Then the ESL teacher comes and uses everything
I buy. I think they just assume that the school buys this. I
feel bad and don't want to say anything and appear petty or
selfish but I can't afford to buy materials for me AND the
other teachers too!!! I have only been teaching bilingual for
one year and a few months and I'm very frustrated and
confused. The only good thing about this is that the two ESL
teachers I have worked with have been very nice people and
are very professional. It's just the model that just doesn't
work. I think I will look for a job in a district that has a
different model next year. I love teaching ELL, it can be so
rewarding but this situation is driving me nuts.

On 10/01/09, t wrote:
> This year my school has adopted readers workshop (two hours
> of literacy in a block). They have also made multiple
> grade levels have literacy, math, lunch, specials and
> recess at the exact same times. Therefore, pulling kids
> out has become a nightmare, because we just can't take them
> from class.
>
> They are killing ESL, so to speak.
>
> The literacy specialists have decided that we should do
> only push in. However, when we do, the teachers are doing
> whole class lessons, or they have the kids doing
> independent reading or some other activity. So we, the ESL
> teachers, wind up acting like overpaid assistants. We have
> no input on lessons, no input on books to be used (the
> literacy people have decided what works...)
>
> I got chided yesterday by the literacy specialist because
> she decided I was going too fast in a book SHE had chosen
> (it was a 30 page book with one or two sentences per page.
> The kids thought it was dumb) she chided me for not
> previewing vocab, not stretching it out, not finding all
> sorts of meaning. When I pointed out that I had JUST
> walked into the class when the classroom teacher handed me
> a new-to-me book to "teach" that day, I am only in the
> class 1/2 hour two times a week, I don't even work at that
> school 1/2 the week, when was I supposed to preview the
> book? The specialist didn't even realize the kids were
> ESL, she gave them a book filled with idioms, yet no plot
> to speak of...
>
> This is how it is going for us...no input to lessons, no
> consideration that we have things to teach these kids,
> too. It's assumed that ESL is English "lite" or that there
> is something wrong with these kids. Our schools scored
> keep dropping, we get more ESL kids every year, and yet
> they won't let us teach them in the way that is most
> effective for them!

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