ELL/immigration response

Teaching ELL students is an increasingly important skill, as the demographics in the country change.
One of the barriers to accommodating for ELL/immigrant children is a bias against them culturally and politically from teachers and community members. Bias against immigrants and a movement toward “English-only” makes school an unwelcoming environment for many learners.

One problem teachers as a group face when dealing with culturally and linguistically diverse students is that teachers tend to be majority white, middle-class women. And unfortunately a lot of teachers don’t feel comfortable with students that have different backgrounds, or, at least, they feel most comfortable with students that are similar to them. As we talked about with gender, this can put boys at a disadvantage in school. For ELL students the implication then is kind of obvious.

Studies have shown that ELL students can do really well in a bilingual setting, but you’ll find in many states that there are actually laws saying that all instruction must be in English (looking at you, Arizona). I feel like the idea of English-only is so antiquated and jingoistic; I’m so concerned that these attitudes seem to be growing. The wave of immigration is increasing. Already in five states the majority of K-12 students are from “minority” backgrounds. If we continue to politicize the education of those students, it’s not just going to have a negative impact on their individual education; it’s going to be negative for the country as a whole. I feel like in a K-12 setting it’s necessary for teachers to be advocates of social justice. There are a lot of reasonable barriers teachers might have in providing the best education to all students, but their politics or biases shouldn’t be among those.