Creating Intentional Communities ( blog post 6)

Hi and welcome back to another week! Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope you are enjoying these fall days as much as I have been. This week was a fun week because I got to read some very thought-provoking articles from some authors who are passionate about creating ways to help ESL learners in the classroom.

Rance-Roney, Judith. “Creating Intentional Communities to Support English Language Learners in the Classroom.” The English Journal, vol. 97, no. 5, 2008, pp. 17–22.

This article begins with the author giving us a background of her experience with ESL students. She was an English high school teacher in a suburban district in New Jersey. She describes the experience of two students she specifically remembers who influenced her to write this article. The students Tu and Phan are two Vietnamese brothers who struggled in the classroom as she was teaching the complicated book, Beowulf. In the article, she wrote that she “felt like crying” (pg.17) because “how can [she] teach the new language of early English to her regular students” (pg. 17) while these two students did not know any English words besides hello and how are you. The biggest problem behind her worries is one she shares with a large percentage of other teachers. In the article, she states that “Statewide mandates moving the English language learner out of bilingual and ESL classrooms into the mainstream English curriculum” ( pg. 17). This practice she argues will not benefit immigrant students and goes against the No Child Left Behind Act (which she also goes in greater depth about).

In order to fight against this idea, Roney urges teachers to form intentional learning communities within their classrooms. These learning communities are targeted specifically for ESL students to help them pass statewide testing that is conducted in English. ESL students should have programs that are geared specifically to help them succeed and have the same materials prepared to help them learn and pass tests. After making this argument she presents a group that she created called The Cultural Share Club. This group she created is an example of what other schools and communities should begin to incorporate in their classrooms. This was also one of my favorite articles because although she discusses the ESL problems at the high school level I believe this problem can be seen in other grade levels as well. I want to use her idea of creating intentional learning communities as a way teachers can support ESL learners.

“Statewide mandates moving the English language learner out of bilingual and ESL classrooms into the mainstream English curriculum” ( pg. 17).

An ESL Experience

This week I also completed my presentation slides which I got a chance to show you some previews of last week. It is now complete and I am excited to share my research with you all and how I have been coming along with this research. Please click the image below to access the presentation.