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Working with ELLs: Winooski High School

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One thing I absolutely love about the Burlington, Vermont area is the cultural diversity among its citizens. Local restaurants, clothing stores, and small knick knack shops often reflect the cultures of their small business owners; and Saint Michael's frequently hosts poetry slam groups, musicians, and speakers that have immigrated to the United States. There are several opportunities, through both the college and local organizations, to work with local refugee communities and American newcomers. Fortunately for Secondary Education majors, St. Mike's connects students with ELLs in surrounding middle and high schools as a field placement and partnership opportunity.

If you missed the post about my first meeting with S., my amazing ELL student, check it out here!

Since my first meeting with S., I have only worked with him on one other occasion. S. and I continued to work on his Government project, and did not have much time to talk about anything other than his assignment topic. However, I did notice that S. remembered a majority of the explanations I had given him on certain phrases in his research material, and corrected himself before making grammatical mistakes I had corrected before. I was extremely excited to see how much S. had retained from our first meeting; he is a fast and eager learning, and I'm happy that I could in some way enhance that.

Unfortunately, I will not be meeting with S. for another few weeks since we will both be on school break. In the meantime, I thought I would create a post about the ELL program at Winooski High School to continue my blog series on ELLs.

With approximately 33% of the high school students enrolled in one of several ELL programs, the Winooski School District (WSD) aims to support ELL students and their families by providing a wide variety of services to fit each family's needs. WSD is staffed with ELL teachers, translators, interpreters, and home liaisons-- most living within the refugee or immigrant communities as immigrants themselves. Extending beyond the classroom, the home liaisons provide continued support for the families of ELL students, reinforcing the community-based ideas of Winooski schools.

The WSD employs the WiDA ELL standards and instruction for student evaluation, taking a progressive approach to language learning. WiDA emphasizes several of the values promoted by the WSD mission: innovation, service, collaboration, and high quality standards.

While I have reviewed the WiDA rubrics used to evaluate S., I am excited to learn more about WiDA and how it is applied to curriculum. As I continue to work with S., I look forward to the first-hand experiences I will have with ELL programs, both as a student and as a future teacher.

To learn more about WiDA, click here.
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