As public educators and agents of positive change, English teachers and educators recognize that a significant number of inclusive schools perpetrate racial and socioeconomic inequalities in schools and society. In most instances, they are often not aware of how they could incorporate the special English needs of the linguistic and ethnically diverse children into a normal classroom environment. Educators are always looking for ways to improve classroom learning with little attention being given to English needs. As a result, some students will have difficulties fitting in not only the educational concept but in the society as well. Despite the numerous ways of supporting ELLs to acquire good mastery of English, small things are what make a larger difference. Significant changes have to be made in inclusive schools such as public school districts in order to fully and equally meet the needs of every student. The proposed action plan seeks to attend to the needs of the ELLs in public school districts in San Francisco as a means of embracing diversity and improving the educational well-being of a largely underserved population.
Design
Each student profile should include information about their gender, language capabilities, age, and individual motivational factors. Information from previous teachers should also be included in order to identify possible modifications in a student’s learning. Further observations should then be made to carefully relate the special English needs to their ethnical backgrounds (U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education, 2015). They would then be assigned to trained ELL teachers and other teachers informed of their English language inadequacy. Teachers should then go beyond cultural groups and holidays and understand the similarities and differences of different ethnicities in a global environment. Every child would then share cultural and personal histories through stories in a classroom setting to further develop and understanding of different cultures. Students would be encouraged to talk about the associated privileges and marginalization with respect to their ethnic background. The activity is to make them feel comfortable and relate to others openly without any fear. Provide language assistance to EL students and services by adding extra English lessons that improve their proficiency and understanding. Instructional programs should be given within a reasonable period of time. School districts would be allowed to choose a suitable program that is educationally sound and effective to practice in their environment (U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Sufficient resources and staffing would be provided to every classroom with ELL students to ensure that instructional learning is effectively implemented. Highly-qualified teachers would be hired and trained to deal with ELL students. Constant training based on upgraded standards would be done to all teachers and with a special interest of ELL tutors. Supplementary training is also necessary to boost the capabilities of the tutors in handling students with special English needs. Meaningful and educative extracurricular activities provided to enable them to meet their promotion and graduation requirements. They would be placed and participate in equal program activities such as arts and technical training. Participation in extra activities boost their interaction levels and helps build additionally talents and skills of students (U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education, 2015). However, the activities should be minimally segregated in order to not create a sense of discrimination among students with special English needs. EL students would then be evaluated by analyzing the milestones they have made in learning English. In order to avoid inappropriately identifying students with limited English proficiency, an evaluation would be done based on the language needs and skills of the students. The decision to choose and implement a particular program should be made by a team that includes experts who are knowledgeable about the language needs and skills of the students (Short, 2017). Monitoring would be done on an annual basis or after every six months to ensure that students achieve high proficiency in the English language. School districts would be required to administer a reliable English Language Proficiency tests in reading, writing, and speaking that is aligned to the ELP standards of the state. Students would not be exited from the program unless they master proficiency in the language. At the same time, academic deficiencies resulting from the EL program should be remedied before a student is allowed to exit the program.
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Implementation
Similar to others, ELL students bring a lot of knowledge that is often unrecognized or undervalued. Motivation, efficacy, and student motivation is encouraged once educators encourage students to freely express themselves. Teachers would have to incorporate the funds of knowledge into practice. Therefore, units and classroom activities that develop a student’s interest and cultural background should be established. Students would be encouraged to document their lives at home and in the community. Texts chosen by the teacher should reflect the cultural ethnicity of the entire nation (Short, 2017). Students should be enabled to read and critique multiethnic and multicultural literature to enable them to appreciate their diversity and encouraging them to learn more about other languages such as English. Course readings should promote learning dialect and language. Popular cultures such as music and film would be added to make it interesting and not boring for the students. In order to empower students who have been traditionally disenfranchised from public education, teachers and educators should be able to learn about their students in many ways. Apart from instructional teaching, students should provide direction on how learning would take place. Understanding their diversity and differences would enable teachers to design suitable teaching methods that integrate the students into the normal educative curriculum. This means that teachers would inquire about the students from their families while reflecting on the appropriateness of the practice in bringing effectiveness to the program (Council of Teachers of English, 2005). Responses from both the students and their families would enable educators to create and appraise their own curriculum that meets the individual needs of the student. However, meaningful communication with ELP parents should be emphasized through the use of translated materials or interpreters to ensure that the right message is passed across the mutual communication (Short, 2017). Therefore, students, families, and teachers should attend community meetings, join group discussions to boost interactions, invite parents to share in their area of expertise, and document the efforts of the students. Teachers and educators would be also required to provide a wide range of out-of-class experiences that affirm the student’s languages. Extracurricular activities such as plays and drama should be incorporated to enable students to understand the rich diversities of cultures that exist in the world (Short, 2017). This is to eliminate any perception of marginalizing a certain group of people based on their linguistic and cultural background. The experiences would be done several times a week to develop identities, voice, and encouragement of improving their life opportunities (Council of Teachers of English, 2005). Activities would include asking children to examine newspaper articles about their cultural groups and present them in front of others, discuss what they have learned about others, and examining popular culture in expressing their feelings. School districts should, therefore, have preservice and in-service teachers with the expertise of creating and incorporating cross-cultural texts into the normal educational curriculum. They should also document interesting activities and how students responded to the program. Effective teaching should be done on models that are culturally responsive and carefully planned and demonstrated. As part of the process, students would be encouraged to collectively examine their experiences in light of their own knowledge and goals. Problematic texts or those that cannot be read and understood should then be focused on to eliminate any ineffectiveness of the program (Council of Teachers of English, 2005). The importance of multilingual and multicultural texts is to create relevance to students in the importance of learning English. For instance, a teacher would initiate a classroom conversation where participants only use syllabic words. The discussion is to enable students to express how they feel about having a lot of ideas and limited methods of articulating them. Students need to be taught how to understand mainstream language codes while having home codes honored. It is not enough for teachers to teach students about the mainstream language. Students need to understand and know where some English codes came from National (Council of Teachers of English, 2005). This is to establish a link between their native language and English to make learning easier. Linking languages to one another also improve on dialect and create a practice of appreciation that embraces the existence of different cultures. Assignments and class activities would include dialectical translations, the creation of dialects from slang-based lexicons, and analysis of how the dialects play out in their lives.
Analysis
Having an effective comprehensive inclusive learning environment is critical for ELL students struggling to fit into a normal school environment. In this regard, effectiveness would be based on the available standards of practice and the learning outcomes of the students. At the same time, the effectiveness of the program would be gauged on whether the action has ways of helping students with other language needs. According to the U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education (2015), programs should allow students to participate meaningfully and equally as other normal students. A program should ensure that it identifies and assesses potential ELL students, provide assistance, have enough resources, prevent possible discrimination, and meets their needs. Shortcomings on any of the criteria and regulations would deem a program ineffective to deliver on the intended goal of helping ELL students. The program should also have room for helping ELL students with special needs such as ADHD and autism. Learning outcomes demonstrate how well a program has been designed and implemented. If more students are exited from the learning program, the design and implementation of the initiative would be then recognized as effective. However, if a few students fail to improve on their ELP abilities as it was originally intended, the program would be ineffective to deliver on positive outcomes. Higher ELP levels from school district assessments should demonstrate the effectiveness of the initiative. However, the assessments should incorporate comparisons of trends and external factors such as the psychological needs of students as well as in order to accurately give their evaluation of a program. This is because an ELL student exposed to stressful factors may fail to adequately complete their ELP tests as required despite showing high proficiency in classroom activities. Evaluation of ELP should be individually designed for each student since they have unique needs that need to be met appropriately.
References
National Council of Teachers of English. (2005). Supporting linguistically and culturally diverse learners in English education. Retrieved from http://www2.ncte.org/statement/diverselearnersinee/ Short, D. J. (2017). How to integrate content and language learning effectively for English language learners. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 13(7b), 4237-4260. U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Ensuring English Learner Students can participate meaningfully and equally in educational programs. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-factsheet-el-students-201501.pdf
