Connecting Rural Leaders' Priorities to ELL Progress

The N.Y.S. education committee was sent a document in January of 2014 called, “The Blueprint for ELLs Success” (The University of the State of New York, 2014). It serves to provide a framework that sends a clear message that “NYSED believes that all teachers are teachers of ELLs” (The University of the State of New York, 2014, p.1). This document lays out eight resolutions aimed to present those teachers of ESOL and Bilingual education in a more comprehensive and acknowledgeable light and to clarify what is required of the education leaders and their policy makers and practitioners in building academic success for ELLs within the range of the Common Core Learning Standards.  ELL Support Docs (padlet.com) 

This document provides a timely opportunity for rural and suburban administrators to attend to these specified resolutions by utilizing the expertise of ENL professionals in their areas. The Blueprint calls this leveraging, where the teaching skills and specialized academic knowledge of the ENL and Bilingual teachers are extended into the content classes to expand the range of their qualifications (University of the State of New York, 2014, p.2).  Newcomer/SLIFE Resources (padlet.com) 

By working with those in their communities that are ELL advocates, these administrators will begin to develop the means for meeting their AYP and student achievement priorities that drive their decisions, this time for their small ELL populations and ENL programs purposely included. This is not to say that districts should place the responsibility of teaching, advocating, and enforcing ELL policy and achievement all in the laps of the ENL educators in their districts. This is actually to assist in reversing that trend and several others that the ENL professional community has collectively found particularly problematic among their rural and suburban districts.

It is no surprise to these ENL professionals then that the Blueprint for ELL Success was constructed with hands-on contributions by New York State’s leading ENL groups such as RBERN. These are the professionals who have a more direct ear to those unique considerations delivered from within the fields themselves. ELL Resources (padlet.com) 

The Common Core and Next Generation Learning Standards have added language standards and include the “Increase Academic Vocabulary Shift”, one of the six instructional variations needed to apply all standards in both Math and English Language Arts in an optimally competent manner (EngageNY, 2012). These are the target areas that ENL teachers are well-educated in and trained to specifically instruct. An investment in professional development in ENL best practices and policies first for education leaders, then for content teachers in a district will enhance the abilities of an entire staff to raise academic achievement in these subjects. ELL2.0 - Types of Scaffolds & Examples (google.com) 

Therefore, it is important for education leaders to hear the issues that are challenging in the education of rural and suburban ELL students from the standpoint of their ENL teachers themselves in order to make insightful decisions and implement relevant solutions. The good news is that these are small ENL programs, so their leaders can effectively build collaborative relationships, another top priority for rural education leaders.  5 Ways Teachers Can Collaborate to Support English Learners (edweek.org) 

by Laura Stevens