Hello everyone!
My name is Hannah Gooch, and I chose to interview the ESL specialist, Mrs. Gonzalez, at my school (Decker Prairie Elementary) for this blog post. Mrs. Gonzalez had a lot of great advice to share with me. She started off by sharing why she became an ESL teacher, and how she moved from out of state to Texas for this job. She had to immediately get her ESL certification because it was required in all the districts she wanted to work in. She said something that she loved the most about being an ESL teacher was that she can see such clear growth in her students. Mrs. Gonzalez does this by getting to know each one of her students really well to avoid stereotypes and generalizations (Wright, 2019, p. 19). This also helps her to make sure each students needs are met and that she can help them succeed.
She also explained that an important tool used in Tomball’s district is
Summit k-12 which focuses on mastering skills required for ESL students. This program
helps ELL students with proficiency in English by targeting the skills of listening,
speaking, reading, and writing for mastery (Wright, 2019, p. 94). Ms. Gonzalez
also explained how she had a language kit that she also uses with her students
along with Summit k-12. She then went on to give me advice as a future teacher
of ESL students that sentence stems were a helpful tool to have in the
classroom to act. Overall, this was a very successful interview, and I learned a lot
of helpful skills and tools from her.
References:
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for
Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (3rd
ed.). Caslon Publishing.
