So every year the highlight has to be scheduling...and I'm joking. As a team of ELL teachers (there are four of us this year), we sit down with the data and information for about 170 ELL students in our one building. We spend hours figuring out the classroom teacher's schedules and then we try to fit ourselves in their schedules in order to give them the best service we can.
Sounds fun...sounds easy...you're wrong. What is the most difficult for me...is it the classroom teacher's schedule, is it the number of students, is the spreadsheets....NO. What I find to be the most difficult is grouping students based on a state assessment they took last February. Our students take the OTELA during an open testing window from the middle of January to the beginning of March. We get their scores back right before school ends for the year then we use this data to organize them for service.
I do not like classifying students based on a moment in time, a high stakes assessment, and especially old data. I would never want my future to be determined based on an assessment taken months prior. Of course we look at more recent data but sometimes this data trumps the other data.
Students CANNOT become a number, a piece of data, just another kid in a group. Students need to have personal relationships with their teachers...not a number or previous teacher's opinions...It is our challenge as their teacher to build those relationships and nurture them all year long. Are you up for the challenge?
Sounds fun...sounds easy...you're wrong. What is the most difficult for me...is it the classroom teacher's schedule, is it the number of students, is the spreadsheets....NO. What I find to be the most difficult is grouping students based on a state assessment they took last February. Our students take the OTELA during an open testing window from the middle of January to the beginning of March. We get their scores back right before school ends for the year then we use this data to organize them for service.
I do not like classifying students based on a moment in time, a high stakes assessment, and especially old data. I would never want my future to be determined based on an assessment taken months prior. Of course we look at more recent data but sometimes this data trumps the other data.
Students CANNOT become a number, a piece of data, just another kid in a group. Students need to have personal relationships with their teachers...not a number or previous teacher's opinions...It is our challenge as their teacher to build those relationships and nurture them all year long. Are you up for the challenge?