Preparing General Education Teachers to Support English Language Learners

Abstract

With ELL students being the fastest growing population in K-12 schools (Breiseth, 2023), the extensive need for preparing general education teachers to teach English Language Learners (ELLs) is trending across the nation. The problem is not the increase in ELLs, rather teaching ELLs is something that should be celebrated and valued. The problem lies within the unpreparedness of classroom teachers to teach ELLs. Research has revealed that many Teacher educators are unprepared to teach pre-service teachers about ELLs (de Jong & Naranjo, 2019; de Jong et al., 2018). This leads to pre-service and in-service teachers being unprepared to teach ELLs in their classrooms (de Jong & Naranjo, 2019; de Jong et al., 2018; Master et al,. 2016; Polat & Mahalingappa, 2013) which has a significant impact on ELL academic outcomes (Fredricks & S. Warriner, 2016; Master, et al. 2016; Murphy, et al., 2019; Ortogero & Ray, 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2020) Literature shows that through on-going, individualized, and collaborative professional development we can improve the readiness of general education teachers to serve their ELL students. (Master et al., 2016; Murphy et al., 2019; Ramirez et al., 2018) To address this problem and to meet the needs of ELL students, I will be hosting an on-going, 3 part training for any interested staff member, but specifically geared toward the general education teachers with ELLs in their classroom, on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in my school district. The ultimate goal of this professional development is that through preparing classroom teachers to feel excited and feel more confident in their abilities to teach and work with ELLs, we will help our ELL students reach their full potential. Recommendations for further improvement are to offer more training sessions throughout the school year, offer book studies, and embed the teachings of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) components into other content area training offered in our district.