Hi All,
I have two questions, one for Robin and one for list members. 

Robin, in your article you concluded that staff training is one of the ways to ensure that learners' needs are understood and, one hopes, appropriately addressed. Given the limited pre-service training time most ESOL programs have, what one or two things would you suggest programs focus on with NEW teachers, vis-a-vis "the variety of noneducational issues that can impede learning"? Can you direct us to any particular resources that are helpful? 

List colleagues, what training or orientation, if any, does your program give or did you get as a new teacher (or a teacher new to that institution?) to prepare you to address these issues? Can you share any particular resources that were helpful?

Regards,
Barb Garner
(Focus on Basics editor)
 
From: Julie  McKinney <julie_mcKinney at worlded.org>
Date: Wed Feb 15 07:02:12 CST 2006
To: focusonbasics at nifl.gov
Subject: [FocusOnBasics] Welcome to our discussion with Robin Schwarz!

Hi All,
Our discussion on Struggling ESOL Learners starts today, and here is an
introduction from our guest author, Robin Schwarz:

Hello to all those on the Focus on Basics discussion list.   
 
It is my great pleasure to be guest author this week in a discussion of
my article, "Taking a Closer Look at Struggling ESOL Learners", which
appeared in the most recent issue of FOB.   As you can probably tell, I
am deeply devoted to these learners. Many remain my close friends. 
Their experiences constantly remind me that I must continue to urge
teachers and others who work with them to consider the broad range of
issues that these learners deal with in their lives and learning
efforts. 
 
My interest in sorting out the learning difficulties of English language
learners really took root when I was an ESL teacher in an Intensive
English Program ( IEP) in Washington, DC over 20 years ago.   I had
begun teaching English as a foreign language in West Africa with the
Peace Corps in the late 60's and early 70's ( yes, I am THAT old....) 
and continued as an ESL teacher in Washington after my return from
Africa. Besides teaching ESL in DC, I also pursued intensive training in
learning disabilities at a well-known diagnostic center  there and then
began teaching at the Lab School of Washington--first with younger
children and later in the Night School of the Lab School, which was one
of the first programs for adults with LD.   ( And where I hired Neil
Sturomski as a tutor--and later he hired me as a teacher!!) 
 
I had just completed a master's in LD when I started working with the
adults with LD and soon began noticing that many of the struggling
students in the ESL program where I worked in the daytime had problems
that closely resembled those of the adults with LD.  Wondering whether I
had missed that piece in my degree or in my ESL training, I soon
realized that the intersection of LD and second or foreign language
learning in adult learners was a much neglected topic.  Though there was
beginning to be a lot of focus on how to determime whether ELLs in K-12
had LD or not, virtually no work was being focused on post-secondary
ELLs. So I started learning what I could about all related topics. 
 
Throughout the  90's I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work
with classes of ESL learners in our IEP who were at risk for failure and
was able to try out many methods and ideas that were being studied in
relation to American college students struggling in foreign language
classes.  I realized that the principles of foreign/other language
learning and the collision with apparent LD would be the same--and in
fact, that direction has led me to a great deal of research that has
been done about LD across languages and cultures.  Europe particularly
has focused on this topic and provided rich research for me from which
to learn.  
 
In 2000, I left Washington for Boston to pursue a doctorate in
education, focused on LD/ESOL, at Lesley University ( actually in
Cambridge).   Though I arrived convinced I could devise a test that was
more culturally and linguistically appropriate for identifying LD than
existing tools were, my doctoral studies soon led me to  realize that
the issues were indeed as complex as I had thought when I first began my
interest in this topic.  Encounters with learners such as the ones
described in my article convinced me that no single test could reveal
these issues.  I learned that many ELLs in adult ESOL or adult education
were being perceived as having learning difficulties or even learning
disabilities, when in fact other issues were the cause of their
problems.   Since I turned in that direction, I have deepened my
knowledge of how culture impacts adult learners-- both their culture and
ours-- how first language issues make learning English more complicated
than we expect, how the learner's level of literacy impacts acquiring
literacy in a new language, and how dyslexia, when in fact it IS
present, appears across languages.    
 
Wherever I go to do workshops and presentations about the factors that
impact ELLs, people confirm that the wide range of obstacles for their
learners:   
 
An LD specialist in the midwest, attempting what I had wanted to do
earlier--test ELLS for LD-- has found that low literacy renders even
"non-verbal" tests useless and that despite having been deemed to have
adequate oral skills for testing, those who were very culturally
different were extremely reticent in a testing situation.  
 
A teacher in California realized that her students kept doing poorly in
her writing class because they had never heard of the notion of a main
idea and another, herself from South America, enthusiastically agreed
that time notions were very different in her country.  
 
A high-level official in adult education in a southwestern state,
himself a Navajo,  confirmed that the Navajo do not even have words for
"learning disabilities,"   and another worried that the school board
governing the schools on a reservation would not be excited about a new
way to identify learning challenges among the adult learners in their
community. 
 
Two Colombian doctors who were my students in Massachusetts were able to
explain that the teacher expectations they had encountered in their
conversation classes in a proprietary ESL school  in Boston were very
different from what they had known and were confusing to them. 
 
And on and on.   Every week I learn more about these challenges and
renew my efforts to understand them and communicate them to teachers and
programs.  

I look forward to discussing YOUR experiences with and questions about
adult ESOL learners who struggle to learn.  
 
Robin Schwarz 
 
  


Julie McKinney
Discussion List Moderator
World Education/NCSALL
jmckinney at worlded.org

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