Busting ELL Myths

BY NICHOLE BERGFrom Teaching Tolerance

"Why am I in this class? Iknow how to speak English!"

"ESOL is for kids who don'tknow English! I don't want tobe in here!"

I was shocked to hear thesecomments the first year I took aposition as an ESOL "unified arts/exploratory" teacher at my mid-dle school. For three years, I hadbeen a social studies/languagearts teacher; I adapted my in-struction to build language pro-ficiency for the English languagelearners (ELLs) in my classes. Itook for granted that these stu-dents would be excited to takea stand-alone class with me.

Once I became aware of thenegative perceptions surround-ing the ESOL/bilingual skillsclass, I knew I had to prioritizeclassroom safety and create anenvironment where studentsfelt supported and respected

enough to learn. This meant ad-dressing stereotypes associatedwith ELLs, explicitly teachingstudents about language profi-ciency cind academic language,and empowering students to em-brace their bi/multilingualism.

Two of the most commonstereotypes associated withELLs are: (1) English languageproficiency is an indicator ofintellect, and (2) ELLs cannotlearn material taught in Eng-lish until they have masteredEnglish (which research showstakes seven to 10 years!). Con-sequently, the first thing stu-dents learn in my class is thatlanguage is one of many waysto show what they know. I alsoteach that, because of theirunique ELL identities (mostof my students have lived inother countries), they are notonly intelligent but have manyinteresting things to teach us.We talk about school culture inother places around the world.

Nichole Berg is a middle school bilingual resource teacher inMadison, WI. Condensed, with permission, from a Teaching Toler-ance blogpost, November 18, 2013. Teaching Tolerance is a projectof the Southern Poverty Law Center. To read the entire blog and forreproductions, visit www.tolerance.org.

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Busting ELL Myths

and I look for opportunitiesto highlight students' uniqueknowledge and to thank themfor teaching me new things.

In addition to helping mystudents look beyond stereo-types about their ELL identity,I explain that my class is de-signed to teach the academiclanguage they need to com-municate their knowledge ac-curately and creatively. Manyof my students are well versedin social language, and thiscauses teachers to assume theyunderstand everything that ishappening in class. Withoutstructured academic languagesupport, however, ELLs canmiss critical concepts in coreinstruction and—as a result—do not progress in their lan-guage comprehension. I am veryclear that our class is a placefor students to practice usingand understanding academiclanguage, or the "language ofschool." I challenge them touse this language in their corecourses so they are preparedfor high school, where academiclanguage becomes even morecomplicated. And I point outthat knowing a language otherthan English can actually helpthem develop academic Eng-lish. For example, I encouragespeakers of Romance languagesto find cognates with the same

meanings between languages.When students see their bi/

multilingualism as an asset,they feel a sense of pride inthemselves as learners andbecome more willing to take onacademic challenges. My stu-dents routinely learn about therange of job, travel, friendship,and educational opportunitiesavailable to them because theyare bi/multilingual. This changein perspective—seeing bi/mul-tilingualism as an asset ratherthan a deficit—recently resultedin a significant number of stu-dents registering for high schoolcourses like English 9 Honors,Hmong for Hmong Speakers,and Spanish for Spanish Speak-ers next year. In previous years,Spanish speakers mostly choseto take French—if they took anylanguage at all. I am overjoyedto see them opting to studytheir home language as well aschallenging themselves with thehonors English course.

Over the past three years,I have worked hard to build aprogram that supports ELL stu-dents to see themselves as bothlearners and contributors. Theyare empowered, believe in theirmultiple intelligences, see bi/multilingualism as an asset, andstrive for the language compre-hension they need to accesshigher-level instruction.

April 2014 67

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