Thursday, July 19, 2018

Who Needs English?

Not newcomers to the United States, evidently. Here are a couple of ads for teachers in NYC:

Benjamin Franklin High School for Finance Information Technology is seeking teachers in the following license areas:
- ESL (dual certified with any other subject)
- Special Education (to co-teach in a Social Studies class)
Please send resumes to Dr. Carla Theodorou,

Midwood High School is seeking teachers in the following license areas:

- ESL (dual certified with any other subject)

- Special Education (

dual certified with any other subject)

Please send resumes to Michael MDonnell at

ESL teachers need not apply unless they have some other niche they can fill. This is the inevitable result of the latest iteration of CR Part 154. NY State has determined that direct English instruction only exists to prepare students for core subjects. Evidently, it's not their problem if newcomers can't communicate.

The Regents in NY State have so decreed, and that's the way it goes. It used to be important that we gave English language learners (ELLs) a whole lot of help so they could, you know, live. Now, living takes second place to testing. It used to be that ELLs who arrived with no English background would get three full periods of English instruction. Now, they can get as little as one.

Imagine going to China and getting 40 minutes a day to learn Chinese. The rest of the day you'll attend classes with native Chinese speakers. But don't worry. In two of those classes, you'll have a Chinese as a second language teacher to help you out. Or maybe you'll have a dual certified CSL/ science teacher. That should make all the difference, right?

If you're an administrator, especially in a small school, you have limited funds. Why would you bother to hire an ESL teacher simply because your ELLs are in desperate need of one? Instead, you could hire some 12-credit wonder who took a few courses and therefore places you in compliance. You could pretend that, during science class, the ELLs were magically learning English. Never mind that you gave native English speakers exactly the same time to learn. The state says ELLs can learn English and science in that same time, and since you're following the rules, that's good enough for the New York State Regents.

Now here's the thing. Both UFT and NYSUT say that newcomers need more instruction, not less. I've studied language acquisition and of course I agree. But you don't need to study language acquisition to know that it takes more time to learn a new language than to not learn one, do you?

If you went to China tomorrow, wouldn't you want a little extra help and guidance with the language? I know I would. I know, your grandfather came here and got no special treatment, no extra help, and he went on to do this and that. So did mine. My grandfather came over on a boat from Russia when he was 13. He became an electrician, opened a shop, bought a house in Brooklyn and raised a family.

Times are just a little tougher now. That house my grandfather bought will cost you a million dollars today. Pay is not what it once was, and most households now need two breadwinners. It's not impossible, of course, to come here, receive little or no help with English, and make it. Language learning is kind of an individual thing. Extroverts will acquire verbal language, for example, more quickly than introverts.

Language acquisition is also very much about affect. If you're happy here, you'll acquire language more rapidly. If your parents dragged you here kicking and screaming, you'll actively resist learning English. It's my job to help students get what they need no matter how they feel. For those who acquire verbal language quickly, I can help with their writing and reading. For those who resist, I can try to trick them into having fun somehow. Last year I taught a very small class and managed to reach kids who would not have done well in a standard ESL class, let alone an academic class pretending to offer English support.

In school, there is nothing more important for newcomers than learning English. My class provides the building blocks for absolutely everything else my students do. I tell them my class is the most important one they're taking. The things I teach are things they will use every day of their lives, things I use every day of my life, and things.

It's nothing short of a disgrace that the Regents continue to push this unproductive and short-sighted nonsense. They know little or nothing about language acquisition, they care little or nothing about the children I serve, and how they sleep at night is a complete mystery to me.
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