How does the student enrollment process at your school, or at a school with which you are familiar, support key mandates of current ELL laws? What accommodations in accordance with the current law and best practices are made during this initial and often stressful encounter for families who do not speak English? In your response, identify where your school falls on a continuum of small to large, and describe implications of your schools size on meeting ELL laws.
1. How does the student enrollment process at your school, or at a school with which you are familiar, support key mandates of current ELL laws? What accommodations in accordance with the current law and best practices are made during this initial and often stressful encounter for families who do not speak English? In your response, identify where your school falls on a continuum of small to large, and describe implications of your schools size on meeting ELL laws.
2. What are specific examples of positive sociocultural influences that can impact classroom instruction? What are some negative influences? What accommodations could teachers make to embrace the positive sociocultural influences of their student population?
3. As a teacher, I have had students whose cultural norms are not well supported in the American education system. It is easy to say, “well they need to change their beliefs because now they are in America.”I do not think that is realistic nor appropriate. If I were to move to another country to work, should I be expected to change my beliefs and values? Many teachers go oversees to teach – should those American teachers oversees be expected to give up their values and beliefs because they live in a different culture?
4. I believe that our school district is definitely in compliance with current ELL laws and mandates. When registering for classes, our school provides the registration packets and all paperwork in both Chuukese and Spanish. We have a small percentage of Chuukese/Micronesian students and a small portion of Hispanic students. The numbers of both populations is continuing to grow from year to year as new students are coming in and new families are moving in to town. During the initial process and paperwork, the parents or guardians will fit out registration papers that will include health information and all the generic stuff but it will also include a home language survey which gives the school a great indication as to whether the student should qualify for ELL services. After the initial process, we have several liaisons that we use to contact the families in order to help them ease in to the new school. This has been a great help as far as attendance purposes and helping to get those students to school in a timely fashion.