Chesney 1 Amber Chesney EDSE 460 Dr.

Sheryl Muir 5 December 2013

General Education Teacher Interview Bernadette Krumreich 7th Grade Math

1. Have you received any training in ESL? Bernadette has not received any formal training in ESL. The schools ELL specialist, Anita Hoekstra, works very closely with all of the teams and provides the guidance needed to support the students.

2. Describe your current teaching scenario. How frequently do you work with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds? She teaches 185 students overall. Her largest class has 33 students in it. She teaches six classes and the frequency in which she is teaching ELL students varies depending upon the weekly class schedule. She has 4 levels of math: math 7, math 7+, accelerated math 7 and algebra 1. The school includes students with Hispanic, South African, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Polish, and Russian backgrounds. (That she knows of).

3. How many ELL students do you currently work with? Are they fluent? She currently has 2 ELL students who are both fluent in conversational English, but not academic English.

4. How do you prepare for these students to be a part of your classroom? She becomes aware of identifying the vocabulary that they may struggle with and checking in with them when giving instructions (oral and written), and giving assignments.

Chesney 2 5. How do you typically begin to work with the students, family, and the team upon receiving an ELL student? The ELL specialist meets with the student and family and then the teachers are given the data on the students so that they can support them in the best way that will work for the student.

6. How do you facilitate communication with other team members and family? All of the teams have their own newsletters and individual websites. We regularly communicate through email with the students parents. Communication is in English. 7. What strategies do you use with families to help them understand the students needs? She most frequently uses email. They also have student led conferences in the fall. In addition, she meets with individual families as needed.

8. Describe some adaptations you make to your techniques or strategies you use when a student is from a culturally and linguistically diverse background or a student with disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds when a child has additional disabilities. The adaptations really depend on the students needs. She has had autistic students who have cue cards for behavior. She has had ELL students who had Spanish/English word cards for math vocabulary. She has also used online translators. She has some resources available in Spanish. She said that she mostly relies upon the experts in her building for guidance.

9. How do you decide what to teach and how to teach it? What she teaches is based upon the Colorado Academic Standards and Douglas County Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. How she teaches is based on research based best practices and her experience in the classroom.

Chesney 3 Summary of My learning from the interview This teacher has two ELL students that she works with who are both fluent in conversational English but not Academic English. She has not received any training in the area of students with diverse backgrounds. Based upon my interview with her, she appears to be very willing to use many different types of adaptations in her classroom. Due to her lack of training, she relies heavily upon the expertise of the ELL specialist, and is willing to do what is necessary for the good of her students. She does prepare for her ELL students by determining what vocabulary words they may be unfamiliar with and explaining the words to them. Frequently, she uses the opportunity for those explanations to benefit the entire class. The ELL students do not feel singled out in this way and the rest of the class gets to hear the information again, which is beneficial to them particularly if they were not clear on it themselves. The seventh grade team does have good communication methods as a team and as individuals, but the communication does not include other native languages for non-English speaking students and families.