DailyProgress.com
By Barney Breen-Portnoy
Monday, April 21, 2008
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The number of limited English proficiency students enrolled in the Charlottesville school division has risen 16.8 percent over the past year to 411. The school greatest affected by that jump has been Greenbrier Elementary, which received 17 new LEP students this year to bump that population to 58.
“That influx put a lot of pressure on classroom teachers,” said Tom Connaughton, the English as a Second Language teacher at Greenbrier.
The fact that around two-thirds of Greenbrier’s LEP students are refugees — some of whom had never been in a formal school environment before — made the task for teachers even tougher.
Greenbrier Principal Malcolm Jarrell realized that the ESL program would have to be altered to meet the needs of Greenbrier’s burgeoning LEP population. “We were not expecting nearly that many students so we had to retool after the school year started,” Jarrell said.
During the planning process for a new program, Greenbrier staff visited the Harrisonburg school division, where roughly 40 percent of the student population is LEP. Over the course of the fall, Jarrell, Connaughton and other Greenbrier staff developed a high-intensity, literacy-based pullout program that was implemented before winter break.
For two and a half hours each morning, groups of five LEP students rotate through five different literacy stations — Read Aloud; Word Study; Oral Language; Writing; and Reading Comprehension and Decoding Skills with Technology Integration included. Additional support on social expectations in a school setting is also available. Connaughton, instructional coordinator Ann Parks and a few hourly and part-time specialists staff the program.
The extra staffing has been a godsend for Connaughton.
“Previously, I was one teacher spread pretty thin,” he said. “Now we have a group of people working together to help these kids.”
According to information presented recently by Jarrell, Connaughton and Parks to the city School Board, the ESL program’s impact on student achievement includes student empowerment to take risks during class without the fear of failure; small group instruction that allows significant gains to occur; the ability of teachers to quickly recognize and address areas of confusion; and teachers working collaboratively to address areas of weakness.
Students in the ESL program at Greenbrier come from 22 different countries — ranging alphabetically from Afghanistan to Zambia — and can speak 28 different languages.
This year, Greenbrier got a group of refugees from Burma, Connaughton said. A few years ago, the school received a significant number of refugees from Somalia.
“Initially, there is not much difference between refugee kids and non-refugee kids, but as you go on there usually is a bigger learning curve for refugee kids,” Connaughton said.
Connaughton added that refugee children tend to have more emotional issues to work through that can make learning more challenging.
Assessment results show marked improvement since the program was implemented, Connaughton said.
Susan Donovan, the director of the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville, said she is impressed with what she has heard of the new ESL program at Greenbrier.
“It sounds like what they are doing at Greenbrier is great,” Donovan said. “There are several great models for providing ESL instruction throughout the country and it’s nice to see that starting to happen in Charlottesville.”
Given the success of the Greenbrier program, the city school division is looking to expand the program to Johnson Elementary next year, said Beverly Caitlin, the division’s coordinator of instruction. Johnson has the second-most LEP students among Charlottesville’s six elementary schools.
Source: Daily Progress, April 21, 2008