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This is high school..the students are ages 15-18; they are there
based on English level. I meant they KNOW no English in my first
post...sorry :).

Answers to questions:
Breaks.. They get them when the bells ring..they are 4th-5th
period. Plus lunch falls after 4th.

Spanish:
We are in a border area, and the vast majority of our ELD
teachers know at least some Spanish. And you need to get that
these students are TOTAL beginners.. as in they can't understand
"open the book..page 45.." unless the teacher does it. Teachers
allow questions in Spanish and (yes..) use Spanish at times
because they simply have no other option. I get it's not fair to
the non Hispanics, but then again..if you can get 3 students to
understand the directions it helps everyone.

This teacher is NOT in any way "teaching in Spanish", and most
teachers that stay in ELD in our district do know a bit of
Arabic and Somali (the main languages we have here). They
can/will say basic phrases to the students (like "book..27.." to
get them on page 27)in Arabic and Somali. (Rwandans just started
coming this year..so no one yet knows the language at all.)

An aide helping the teacher of record claims past subs "taught 3
out of 14 kids mostly in Spanish and told the others to shut
up"..but I don't buy that and (more to the point anyway) the
current teacher isn't doing that.

Is this sub to blame?
Bleep no! No teacher is perfect of course, but the problems I
see are simply NOT caused by this sub unfairly speaking Spanish
in class or her other (minor) faults.

Other languages/cultures:
There is simply no way to have Iraqis taught by Arabic speakers
and/or Rwandans taught by a Rwandan. We don't even have a
Rwandan translator..there is no one who can speak both languages
available, nor is there a budget to pay him/her. My sub friend
says our feeder K-8 school has one, but that he's not fully
fluent in English. Getting non Spanish translators in for parent
teacher conferences is a huge problem.. even though they are
scheduled days and thus can be booked well ahead of time.
Another issue is that if you split this class by language you'd
have classes of 3, 4 and 6..plus one more with a 4th language.

Problems we have here..
1) A teacher is being paid to teach for 5 periods but only
teaches 2.

2) The school hires subs daily..and if they teach 3 out of 6
periods, they legally must get paid for a 100% sub day.

3) Meanwhile, we have no English (for native speakers) teacher
for 10th because the teacher quit, but the district "can't" pay
a certified teacher a teacher's salary..so any new teacher would
have to be a long term sub and thus get 100/day. This is because
of a tight district budget.

4) The teacher of record puts insane demands on subs:
Try to avoid using full sentences (in a 3 hour class).

Never deviate from the 2 books assigned to the class, even
though these students can't read or write in any language.

"Don't allow" student behavior such as screaming f--k you every
minute, running out of the room or dancing provocatively on the
table.

BUT she has also screamed at subs "Why would you call in
administrator?? What do you think they will do??"

5) A teacher berating subs for not teaching these classes
"correctly" and claiming the subs are the problem..and even
asking that subs she feels aren't doing an acceptable job--
teaching classes that she was assigned to!-- get removed.

6) A 3 hour ELD class of multi-lingual total beginners will
always face challenges, but this class is out of control and
dangerous..the administration has done nothing about it, even
though 6 subs have either left or been "removed" for "inadequate
classroom management" by a teacher..and #7 will probably go
after this week.

7) I believe the teacher of record might have cognitive issues
that are causing her to act the way she does..is is 74.

On 2/23/15, eldteacher, part 2 wrote:
> 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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