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Brittney and Jenn credit that during hybrid instruction, “Student engagement was great because the students did not have live classes to attend when they were at home.” As the EL teachers posted and shared the resource room information through one-on-one conferences and class Google Meets, they spread the word, however, there were some issues once we were completely virtual. “Our attendance at the resource room dropped significantly because the students had live online classes to attend during the school day and therefore could only join the Virtual EL Resource Room during a study hall or (scheduled) resource period.”
Prior to this school year, “Language and content were our main barriers (for helping students). Now, we have to work around language, content, and technology barriers. It takes us much longer to effectively reinforce content than in a traditional school year." With utilizing EL teachers and paraprofessionals in breakout rooms, they are able to manage multiple students logging in for help at the same. Another barrier is that with each teacher having some discretion to their online course structure, many times the EL staff are finding first what the teacher’s way of doing things may be, and then assisting the student. One benefit is that the EL students “are learning to focus on the specifics of what they need and verbalize those questions. Before, in the Resource Room, they would just say ‘I need help’. Now they have to specifically identify what they need help with.”
Jenn and Brittney credit Loom assisting with “language learners, but truly all students benefit from having both the visual and auditory instructions”. Their best piece of advice to other staff members with their own EL student population is to be consistent. Consistency in “how you post and what you post” whether it’s a similar template for assignments, consistent language, or an order to the content shared, consistency reduces the time spent for students to translate (ELL or not) the intention of the teacher to the student.
Written by Madison Jacob, Jessica Breedlove, and Mike Vetter, Ben Davis iTEC Teachers