Hello everyone!
My name is Cristina. This is not the first blog I have kept. I actually have two other blogs which I no longer add to but may still prove useful to others. I will make sure to include links to both those blogs and my Wiki very soon. My Wiki is still something I add to occasionally and plan to add to in the future. My other two blogs are from a Teaching Practicum I participated in and another class I took for my ESL Master's. I hope you all decide to check them out. I know the Wiki will be helpful and interesting to everyone. Anyway, I wanted to give an initial introduction and explain what this blog is for. I am currently a Master's student at MTSU and am working towards my Master's in Education with a concentration in Teaching ESL. I am living in Mississippi at the moment and did teach for my first full year last year. I am not teaching this year because I have decided to devote ALL my time to this degree. I plan to finish it by next August or the December after. I have by Bachelor's in English and Secondary Education, so I taught 11th and 12th grade English last year. What a year!! Hectic and full of learning for both my students and myself. As a new teacher I am still learning a lot and finding my 'groove.' (By the way, I will be updating my profile here in the next couple of days.)
The next thing I would like to tell you about is the purpose of this blog. I am using this blog as my field journal. I am currently taking my Fieldwork and Applied Research class for my ESL Master's, so I will be working writing about my observations and experiences in this blog.
Finally, I would like to tell you about my initial meeting with my Mentor for this program. I feel like I have gotten extremely lucky... On Monday I called the school district I am living in and they put me right through to their ELL coordinator. She just happened to be meeting with all her ELL teachers on Tuesday and immediately invited me to meet with her at the middle school and join the meeting. I WAS SO EXCITED!! Of course I arrived early and she met me in the front office. We spoke for nearly an hour about the requirements for me and for the mentor in the program. She told me about their ELL program and that they are implementing a new program for testing and evaluating ELL students. The test is from WIDA and is called ACCESS. The test covers listening, speaking, reading and writing. Along with that comes the WIDA ELL Can Dos. This is a chart that places the students on a scale from 1-6: 1-Entering, 2-Beginning, 3-Developing, 4-Expanding, 5-Bridging and 6-Reaching. For each tested skill, listening, reading, writing and speaking, there is a list of skills that the student should be efficient at to be categorized at the specific level. So, if a student is at level 2 (Beginning) in their speaking they must be capable of certain things and the teacher can look at the skills listed in the next level (3-Developing) and use those at objectives or goals for the student. The Can Dos are broken up by grade level: PreK-Kindergarten, 1st-2nd, 3rd-5th, 6th-8th and 9th-12th. The ELL coordinator discussed a lot of this with me and let me know that she did not want to overwhelm her teachers any more so she would be my mentor and facilitate for me. When I need to observe a teacher or student; implement my reading circle; or interact with a group of ELL students, she will set me up with the teacher. They currently have 4 ELL teachers at the elementary level and one new ELL teacher at the Middle School level. They are hoping to hire an ELL teacher for the High School in the next week or so. There are also a few others that are part of the team but are not at a specific school. I have not decided which teacher I will specifically work with yet, but I will know very soon. I would like to work with the middle school ELL teacher since I have had more experience in the middle and high school, and my certification is for Secondary Ed, but he has a lot on his plate right now teaching both ELL and Spanish as well as being in a new school and school district. So, I still have some stuff to talk to my mentor about. Oh... I forgot to tell you that once we were done talking she took me into the meeting with her teachers. She let me introduce myself and explain what I was doing as well had them introduce themselves. Then, she let me observe the meeting. In this meeting they were looking at the scores their students got on the ACCESS test and they were using the WIDA Can Dos to assess the skills of the students. Once they do this they will look at the skills in the next level and use those as the specific objectives for the 9 weeks in the individual students' Language Service Plan (This is the IEP for the ELL student). The teachers discussed this with the coordinator and also suggested using the K-12 rubric to help them decide on the overall yearly goals for the students. So, the goals will be set and the Objectives will be chosen based off the WIDA Can Do skills. It was all very interesting. Before I wrap it up, there was one other very interesting thing I found out. All of the ELL teachers (elementary and middle) are bi-lingual. They can all speak Spanish. In fact, 3 of them are native Spanish speakers. I think this is wonderful.. However, it is important to note that not all of the ELL students are Spanish speakers. There are actually at least 11 different languages represented in the school district.
Well, that is going to be it for today. I'm very excited to begin my fieldwork and share my experience with you all.
Cristina
