part 2 (had to break this into 2 parts as it kept getting
rejected by the spam filter???)
I've taught ELD too, to students who speak more than a dozen
different languages. It's not necessary for the teacher to
speak the students' language; many of our ELD teachers speak
only English and I myself speak only one of the dozen languages
my students knew (plus English) and a few basic words of a
third language. It DOES, however, help immensely to have
training in language acquisition, sensitivity to cultural
differences, awareness of cultures in the community, etc.
This teacher who refuses to speak in complete sentences may not
have some of that training; students should be exposed to
correct English as a model of what good English should sound
like. If they never hear complete sentences, they will not
learn to speak in complete sentences! In my district it is more
often the other way around; as soon as students are able they
are required to answer in complete sentences, even if this
means an ELD teacher gives students a sentence frame in which
to insert their answer.
In my district we have office staff who are bilingual in each
of the three most-common languages spoken by our students. They
are not teachers, but they are able to facilitate parent
contacts, provide cultural info to teachers, translate as
needed, etc. For the other nine languages, or any languages
spoken by your students which your staff members don't speak,
there are services through which you can call for
interpretation via telephone to facilitate parent
communication, or for emergency communication, etc.
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