Unlocking Potential Strategies for Empowering English Language Learners in New Jersey

As an educator, I must embrace the inclusion of English Language Learners (ELLs), as almost 25% of my school’s population are ELLs. Including ELLs begins with cultivating good relationships and being culturally responsive. 

An Edutopia article states, “Emily Francis, an ESL teacher in Concord, North Carolina, makes clear that she wants her students to ‘embrace their culture and their language as a foundation of who they are’ and to consider their acquisition of a new culture and language ‘not as subtractive, but as additive.’” 

The language of wanting her students to embrace their culture and language as a foundation of who they are is foundational to including ELLs in the classroom. The first step to feeling that you fit in the classroom is being proud of yourself and embracing who you are. If you feel that you are in an environment that is constantly threatening your identity, then it is challenging to feel included in that environment. In the end, allowing ELLs to embrace their own culture is a foundation for including ELLs in the classroom.

Content-Specific Instruction for ELLs
 

Equipping ELLs for success goes beyond cultural acceptance. Educators can integrate subject-specific vocabulary instruction to ensure ELLs can fully participate and grasp content alongside their peers.
                        
For instance, the Edutopia article that I read addresses the concept of teaching language skills across the curriculum. Teaching language skills across the curriculum is important for all teachers of every subject to do. “‘It is key that in mainstream classrooms, teachers understand their role as language teachers,’ says Valentina Gonzalez, a district leader in Katy, Texas, suggesting that all teachers should be aware of the specialized idiom they work within. 

"If we teach math, then we teach the language of mathematics. If we teach science, then we teach the language of science.’ Math teachers, in other words, should take the time to teach the unfamiliar vocabulary of mathematics—add, subtract, calculator, solve—concurrently with the teaching of math skills” (Edutopia).
                        
As content area teachers, we all have vocabulary that makes sense in the context of teaching our subject. As stated in the quote, the use of the words “add,” “subtract,” “calculate,” and “solve” all have math implications behind them. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that educators teach those words individually to ELLs in order to help include them in the classroom. Examples of words that I would have to teach to ELLs in my social studies classroom would be “map,” “compass,” “analyze,” “explain,” and so on.

Home Language as a Bridge to Success

Inclusion goes beyond simply creating a welcoming environment. Students' home languages can be recognized as a resource rather than a barrier.
                        
Ofelia Garcia and Ricardo Otheguy (2017) add that the translanguaging perspective holds that bilingual/bidialectical students have a unitary system of communication informed by various semiotic language practices they have learned in their homes or communities (58). Language is fluid, and creating constrictions in what these students can and cannot use to communicate is “an exercise in suppression” (61). In other words, by not allowing ELL students to engage in their home language, you are effectively trying to erase their culture and are not affording these students their full autonomy and humanity.
                                            
The Colorin Colorado article states you can help an ELL draw upon their home language by “using bilingual glossaries, providing background information in students' home languages, peer work in students' home languages, and explicit instruction in how to use cognates or build on their own skills in their home language.” 

By drawing on a student’s home language, you are tapping into the student's strengths and tailoring their education to their needs. Failure to allow students to draw on their home language will lead to ELLs feeling that their home language has no use in the classroom. By incorporating an ELL's home language into the classroom, you empower them in their learning and help them feel more included. 

Unfortunately, according to Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa (2017), policymakers and teachers often make policy and classroom decisions from a deficit perspective. Therefore, positioning a student’s home language as a source of knowledge from which they can draw in the classroom, rather than a deficit in their understanding of content in English, is a way to resist this deficit perspective and include, rather than exclude, ELLs in the classroom.

             
Building a Foundation for ELL Success
 

Effective inclusion requires educators to understand the process of language acquisition.

According to an article written by Colorin Colorado, A good place to start is a basic overview of the process and stages of language acquisition. It's also important to learn about the four key domains, or skill areas, of language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. 

Students need instruction and practice in all four of these domains. Drs. Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove include "interaction" in that list for the helpful acronym SWIRL: Speak, Write, Interact, Read, Listen.” By learning basic information on language acquisition, teachers can begin to understand how students are able to learn a new language that is being used as the dominant language in the classroom. Understanding how language acquisition works can help teachers implement strategies to teach ELLs the important vocabulary students need to succeed in the classroom.

                        
Investing in Expertise for Successful Instruction of ELLs

Equipping yourself with the right tools is crucial for fostering a truly inclusive classroom.

Finally, teachers can better support ELLs by getting sheltered instruction training. Sheltered instruction training is required by the NJDOE in order to be a content area teacher of ELLs. 

“All content teachers who work with ELLs have been trained with at least 15 hours of sheltered instruction strategies, and bilingual instructional assistants work in grades with high concentrations of ELLs.” 

Sheltered instruction training is as simple as a 15-hour interactive video course that can be provided by a university to teachers who need to be certified in order to teach ELL students. By becoming sheltered instruction certified, you are pursuing the knowledge of how to better support ELL students in the classroom by learning how to teach the language of your specific content area. By learning how to teach the language of your content area, you are setting up your ELL students to be included in your classroom.

JP Donatelli teaches Special Education and coaches baseball at North Plainfield Middle School in New Jersey. A Political Science major in college, JP Donatelli used their analytical thinking and research knowledge to pursue a teaching career through the Rutgers Alternate Route. The Rutgers University graduate is driven by a passion for sharing their love for policy, communication, connecting with students, and imparting life-enhancing lessons.