ENL and Inclusion

While I have not actually observed ENL classes being taught yet, I have subbed for ENL teachers on a fair number of occasions, and I'm able to glean a little bit from these experiences, as well as from seeing these ELL students and their teachers around the school environment. My school district is ethnically diverse and has a fairly high population of ELLs, primarily with Spanish as their first language, and uses a Dual Language program (which, I believe, is much better for these kids than English immersion or other ENL programs which are subtractive rather than additive). Instruction is often done in their home language, and they have a class period especially dedicated to "home language arts," where they study texts and learn literacy skills in Spanish so they can better apply those skills to English when they are ready. This is something I'm really glad to see, and often times the work I give out to students when subbing involves answering questions and/or filling out charts on their class readings, in their home language. (Today, however, they were left some drills from a vocabulary workbook. That was a little less exciting to see.) They generally seem engaged in the work, and almost always work together on it. The classroom environment is often a positive one, and I often see these kids chatting and joking in their home language with their ENL teachers. The students also seem comfortable in the overall school environment--however, I rarely, if ever, see them interacting with non-ELL students, even when they are in the same lunch periods, gym periods, or electives. Today, I also had one student in one period who was not a native Spanish speaker but was of eastern Asian descent, and he had completely isolated himself from the rest of the class: desk removed, headphones in, speaking to no one. (Nor was he doing the assigned work.) I have to wonder how the ENL teacher tends to this student's needs, and worry about how difficult it must be for him to be not only learning English but also, to some extent, needing to pick up Spanish in order to get by with the rest of the class.

As for CWC/Inclusion classes, again most of my experience thus far has come from subbing for one of the two classroom teachers, so I have only seen one or two instances where there were two teachers in the room participating in the lesson. This, I think, has an impact on how the lesson goes as compared to normal, and makes it harder to judge what they're doing for the students with needs in their classes. I don't often notice much that makes these classes stand out from a single-teacher regents level class, which could mean they're not doing enough. However, I think it is good that it's often difficult to tell which students are the ones with needs/accommodations--that means their classmates (hopefully) can't tell either, so they don't feel othered or called out. In the case of a class I've covered a few times now, though, there is one student who tends to stand out, and the teacher does not neglect his need to be heard: he has consistently read the role of Macbeth, something he seems to enjoy and take pride in. Another inclusion teacher I worked with was during a sort of off-day, dedicated to finishing up work; rather than just leaving the students to their own devices, however, she laid out the three structured options of what they should/could be working on, then made herself available and walked around the whole period to provide assistance where needed.