Central Oregon – Bend-La Pine Schools and Jefferson County School District have been identified by the state as needing intervention to better help their English language learner students, and each district will receive $180,000 this school year.
English language learner students, commonly referred to as ELL students, may be multilingual as opposed to just bilingual.
Across Bend-La Pine, according to school officals, 20 to 30 languages are represented, but by far the greatest number of ELL students are Spanish speakers.In the district’s dual immersion programs, for example, in which native English speakers and native Spanish speakers are taught in both Spanish and English, some of those strategies are used daily.
The district said it’s experimenting with different models of educating ELL students, but that generally at the elementary level, students are pulled out for a portion of the day, and at the middle and high school levels, they’ll have a class.
Regular classrooms in Bend-La Pine don’t do well with ELL students. Bend-La Pine doesn’t currently advertise that it prefers that teachers speak Spanish, but that may happen in the future.
Jefferson County School District is using the kind of teaching that focuses on being physically expressive, and is using a good portion of the state money toward training for ELL teaching techniques, according to Melinda Boyle, director of curriculum and instruction.
Jefferson County School District laid out four main areas in its plan to use the state money: preparing ELL students for college and career to get them to graduation with a series of support programs; training teachers in the technique that uses body language and key vocabulary; building relationships with families of ELL students through several after-school programs and training teachers to use “culturally responsive instruction,” which pushes them to reference students’ culture in the classroom.
In Jefferson County, many ELL students are native Spanish speakers, but about two-thirds are Native American students. To help decide on improvements to the district’s ELL practices, the district took input from teachers, parents and community members. One practice that parents made clear they like: after-school programs that allow families to come to the schools with their kids. The district’s Family University, for example, offers computer classes, English classes and even activities such as volleyball for families to come take part in the evening a couple nights a week.
In Jefferson County, the $180,000 will go toward: training for those ELL co-teachers; training for classroom teachers and a new, yet-to-be-hired ELL support specialist to train classroom teachers. A Latino liaison who will work with families was also hired with the state money. The school district already had one Latino liaison and two Native American liaisons.
The Jefferson County school district acknowledged that while teachers work hard on a weekly basis, training and trying to implement effective teaching techniques, there’s still a long way to go for the district to better support its ELL students, which is why the state chose Jefferson County as one of the school districts needing help.
