Interview with an ESL Teacher

“Excited to Learn English” by Luke Mackin is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

“Teachers are so overwhelmed, they see an ELL kid as one more thing, rather than as someone who has something really powerful to contribute to the class.”

Listen now or read the transcript:

In Episode 1 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, we meet Kim, a middle school ESL teacher. She talks about the complexities of teaching English-language learners, like the power imbalance that arises when the kids speak English but the parents don’t, why ELL students won’t look their teachers in the eye, and the well-intended mistake so many content area teachers make when working with a diverse population. She describes technology tools that improve language learning, instructional strategies that make a huge difference, and what she would do if she could design standardized testing for ELL students.

Language teachers, policymakers and anyone who serves an ELL population will learn a lot from this one. ♦