ESOL endorsement courses never mentioned how to deal with this!
The Educator Training and Preparation section from the NEA Advocacy Report “All In!” exposed a number of challenges I have experienced as an ELL educator. One of the options in becoming certified to work as an ESOL teacher in Georgia is by passing a test. Really? That’s it? Yes, it is that simple. The problem is, and we as educators are very aware of it, that there is a huge difference between theory and practice. A number of educators are being certified in ESOL through this channel or by taking required courses provided by the school districts; however, they are not fully prepared to properly work with ELs. In order to better serve ELs, teachers should be up to date in …show more content…
The title of the article is Do-It-Yourself ELT Professional Development by Tomiko Breland. Yeah, I know that your thoughts are “Do it yourself? That doesn’t sound very convincing!”, but trust me, for our population of students, it makes sense. In today’s classrooms, the teachers that are ESOL certified are, in general, just ESOL endorsed. Once they get the endorsement, not a lot of education, if any, is done in regards to best practices in teaching ELs. To get professional development (PD) that will enhance their teaching craft, ESOL teachers need to try to find a PD that they could, maybe, use it in their classrooms. The reality is that there are not as many PD out there as ESOL teachers want. Sometimes, the one-size-fits-all PD provided by schools or organizations just doesn’t cut it, and, sometimes, the PD is too brief, too superficial, or just irrelevant to your needs (Breland, 2015). Therefore, the author of the article explains that one of the best ways to be up to date with best teaching practices when working with ELs is to have a do it yourself (DIY) approach to professional development. The article mentions 10 resources to get educators started in this distinctive approach to PD. I consider that the author’s recommendation of the first step to DIY PD, which is to develop a PD plan, to be the mainframe of the professional learning methodology. I think that the PD plan should start with a self-assessment to have an expanded idea of what each teacher considers they need more learning about. I completed a self-assessments a couple of years ago in relation to the students that I was working with. In my experience, the professional learning I was looking for was not presented in any PD from the school district I work in. Since I work with a very diverse population of SLIFEs, I decided to search for information in
The Educator Training and Preparation section from the NEA Advocacy Report “All In!” exposed a number of challenges I have experienced as an ELL educator. One of the options in becoming certified to work as an ESOL teacher in Georgia is by passing a test. Really? That’s it? Yes, it is that simple. The problem is, and we as educators are very aware of it, that there is a huge difference between theory and practice. A number of educators are being certified in ESOL through this channel or by taking required courses provided by the school districts; however, they are not fully prepared to properly work with ELs. In order to better serve ELs, teachers should be up to date in …show more content…
The title of the article is Do-It-Yourself ELT Professional Development by Tomiko Breland. Yeah, I know that your thoughts are “Do it yourself? That doesn’t sound very convincing!”, but trust me, for our population of students, it makes sense. In today’s classrooms, the teachers that are ESOL certified are, in general, just ESOL endorsed. Once they get the endorsement, not a lot of education, if any, is done in regards to best practices in teaching ELs. To get professional development (PD) that will enhance their teaching craft, ESOL teachers need to try to find a PD that they could, maybe, use it in their classrooms. The reality is that there are not as many PD out there as ESOL teachers want. Sometimes, the one-size-fits-all PD provided by schools or organizations just doesn’t cut it, and, sometimes, the PD is too brief, too superficial, or just irrelevant to your needs (Breland, 2015). Therefore, the author of the article explains that one of the best ways to be up to date with best teaching practices when working with ELs is to have a do it yourself (DIY) approach to professional development. The article mentions 10 resources to get educators started in this distinctive approach to PD. I consider that the author’s recommendation of the first step to DIY PD, which is to develop a PD plan, to be the mainframe of the professional learning methodology. I think that the PD plan should start with a self-assessment to have an expanded idea of what each teacher considers they need more learning about. I completed a self-assessments a couple of years ago in relation to the students that I was working with. In my experience, the professional learning I was looking for was not presented in any PD from the school district I work in. Since I work with a very diverse population of SLIFEs, I decided to search for information in