RUNNING HEADER: SHOULD THERE BE SPECIFIC SUPPORTS FOR TEACHERS THAT HAVE LARGER ENGLISH

LANGUAGE LEARNER POPULATIONS.

Should there be specific supports for

teachers that have larger English
Language Learner populations

Todd Zimmerman

4th year Education Student, B.Ed. program (2017-2019)

University of Alberta

December 10, 2018

Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to learn more about English Language Learners
and how to further support their needs in our changing society. Through this we can
become better for teaching them more effectively and help them learn English so they
may succeed through higher education. For research gathering I had used surveys and
interviews of teachers that have worked with English Language learners. The interviews
were with administrators and language arts specialists. Surveys had been given to
teachers that have taught for several years from diverse educational backgrounds and
subject backgrounds. Through my research I have learned what ways can we become
better teachers by developing skills in personal development days, gaining new
teaching strategies, and pushing for increased funding for supports for English
Language Learners. Through this research new teachers can learn to develop skills,
effectively manage classroom sizes and learning who to talk to when they are struggling
to teach English Language Learners.

Key words: Funding, Personal Development, Language Barriers, Classroom sizes,

Skills, Government, Teachers, English Language Learners,

My research focuses on learners in education, specifically English Language

Learners, and my research question is if there should be more supports for English

language learners? This topic is important because our Canadian society is becoming

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

increasingly diverse and multicultural with lots of non-English speaking immigrants and

their dependents and also large amount of refugees coming to Canada. In addition, I

have direct personal experience as my fiance is an English Language Learner and I

have interacted with her family who are also recent immigrants to Canada. In a 2017

report by Statistics Canada mentions that over 21.9% of Canada's population is

comprised of landed immigrants or permanent residents. In our current society, one in

five Canadians are now foreign-born and thereby contributing to increasing our

population in the prairies and raising it from 6.9% to 17.1% during 2001 to 2017

(Statistics Canada, 2017). It is possible that sometimes the parents of English

Language Learners may not themselves be fluent in English and therefore are unable to

support their children in their learning and education. So should there be specific

supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations?

I reviewed five research studies to identify if there should be additional supports

or if teachers could be further trained to effectively help English Language Learners.

The three major research themes I explored were around educational leadership,

teacher leadership to support English Language Learners, and teacher skills to support

English Language Learners. I found limited research that could be considered as a

conclusive answer to my question as most research focused on the supports but not on

the supports for large populations of students that new teachers often encounter.

Through teaching, a teacher can develop learning skills that could help students in any

background. By giving adequate time to an educator to work on these skills and

research, they can improve themselves and help the students by showing leadership

and also taking support from their colleagues and other school staff. Research shows

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

that often it takes years of practice to individually develop these skills (Russel & Esch,

2018). Other research suggests that on similar subject content within the research

through school co-operation, involvement by administration, and skill progression

through tactics support teachers when teaching English Language Learners. However,

they do not focus much on the supports that the government can provide. All three

articles were published in the United States and therefore lacking a Canadian

perspective. In my survey, I targeted teachers with several years of teaching experience

and who specifically worked with English Language Learners. My research hypothesis

was that they would be the ones to know the answers and adequately help me. I also

contacted principals and other administrators in schools in Red Deer (AB) due to their

higher level of knowledge of leadership and experience in the education field.

There were not many peer-reviewed articles and very few websites that could be

considered as reliable and conclusive sources of evidence or information. Two

references were from the same website but they have a .org address making them

viable for research. The two articles by Reading Rockers comment on what

the classroom environment will be and how a teacher might quickly improve their

classroom to help the student. Eric and Kathleen Mohr (2014) suggest on the classroom

layout and how it is a social construct to assist the students learners. They also found

that lot of the students do not come from countries were asking questions and

responding is common due to gender differences. Countries like the middle east would

be included in this list. However, the younger the student is the more open they are to

speaking even with gender differences. By creating a safe and encouraging classroom,

the student can adapt to new teachings. Robertson (2018) points to tips a teacher could

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

do. The second research done by Robertson would be more beneficial to a teacher that

might not have any supports or is new to the practice, however it is not a full solution to

assist teachers or the students but may be useful until the optimal solution can be

implemented.

Supporting all students is important, however it is critical to first help students

that do not know the English language. Governments and universities have also been

involved in this topic through providing support as mentioned by Anth (2017). When

there is a lack of funding, they can help by providing tips to support their teachers when

they are educating students that may not understand English. By determining the

student level, the teacher can focus the lesson on building skills, for example, as in the

case of the Samantha Anths diagram. Another example could be by addressing the

student’s level by asking them to draw pictures before having them fully try to model

their English writing. This has been shown to be effective for all English learners that do

not have any skill in English. It helps teachers much like the other articles on English

Language Learners. It demonstrates that the skill levels of English Language Learners

and at what stage they should be working on. By knowing the stage to focus, a teacher

can help them build their knowledge and decrease their language barriers for the

student as well as for the parent. In the final article published by the Philadelphia

Education Consortium, the focus is more on getting the community involved in

educating the English Language Learners. Hughes et al. (2018) from the Philadelphia

Education Consortium mentions that there should be more focus on community

involvement with educating English Language :earners. By getting the community

involved, it creates further support for the teachers and also for the students and the

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

parents that may not understand English fluently. Supporting education is a community

challenge, however often parents may not have the time to be involved due to work or

other commitments and therefore it falls to the teachers and the school administration.

I felt that research was lacking for my main research question, therefore I

explored further about the possible supports for English Language Learners. Improving

English fluency should not be the sole responsibility of the teacher, however it should

also be a community challenge to ensure that all citizens, refugees, and immigrants can

adequately speak English or French, depending on which province or territory they

choose to settle in as it is beneficial for the individual and the society because they will

be able to adapt to the Canadian cultural systems. Through my future research, I aim to

identify information on what a Canadian teacher can do for techniques or strategies as

well as whether the community or the government should get involved in helping these

students so that they can benefit and become active participants of our society once

they wish to become full Canadian citizens. The evidence was unclear and they do not

fully answer my question but rather offer solutions for new teachers to help these

students. I intend to look deeper into my question to find better responses to my main

research question.

Through my research and survey, I have learned significantly about what

teachers go through in their efforts to teach English Language Learners. The survey

responses vary across the spectrum from positive to negative things due to funding, skill

building, or processes that teachers can do. According to one of my interviews,

“teachers are going to have to be trained when they are new” (Anonymous, 2018).

There are several students in a classroom and they might get neglected if the teacher is

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

unable to effectively help all the students. By having supports for both the new and old

teachers, every child can get the best help. For example, through the Learning Assistant

Teachers (LATS) and the literacy coaches, students can get support to improve their

English. For some of these students, it is really hard for them in school because they do

not speak English fluently. For some of them coming to middle school “how do you

catch them up?” (Anonymous, 2018). From 7 years of school loss and putting them into

a new system that is unfamiliar with the English Language Learner students. From my

interview I found that concepts are one of the hardest things they deal with as

educators. For example, violence and mannerisms of the student ”throat cutting”

(Anonymous, 2018). It can scare the other students and would be highly inappropriate.

It can be hard for some English language learners that don't understand the culture.

Effective strategies that might help new teachers are LATS and through literacy

coaches helping them build their skills in English. Success is found through increased

student confidence in a learner but also through benchmarking to learn about students

success. Through my survey interview, I found that month benchmarking can increase

student success levels by not only benchmarking English Language Learners but also

by building on their reading and writing skills. Through the leveled literacy intervention,

both teachers and students undergo very intensive training. Teachers learn about the

programming and how to cater to each child's individual needs as the students are

tiered. The student starts at a base level from a letter grade and as they work up their

grade level through this training and study. They are required to read at home, even if it

is to a family pet and need to continuing practicing while in school until they get thirty

minute lessons through phonetics and to read and write. In some of the surveys, though

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

depending on the school, there was very little support for immigrant students. Through

most responses, benchmarking was found to be the best strategy to improve students

success. If the training is done at a younger grade, the student has a far more chance of

moving successfully through high schools and college.

What further supports could teachers use to support English Language

Learners? I had this question because supports can significantly affect English

Language Learners. Of all the responses dealing with English Language Learners was

for learners to be longer in English classes than other subjects. Before being put into a

regular class, it was recommended that they learn grammar, have better resources,

translations provided, or have a translator assist the child. Dedicated programs would

help lessen the burden on teachers and also better prepare the student for a successful

higher education. Higher training is critical for teachers and it is one of their biggest

success factors for teachers with English Language Learners in their classroom.

Though the language literacy intervention program has been successful with smaller

groups, the amount of students in each class or school can cause major challenges due

to lack of teacher support for smaller groups.

As teachers we need to continue to learn throughout our lifetime and continue to

learn as the new population grows. Teaching any subject to English Language Learners

can be a concern due to them not clearly understanding or the teacher not knowing how

to deal with a specific situation. The specific subject does not matter and all teachers

need to be involved in educating English Language Learners and supporting the

students to become more successful. For example, a math or science teacher must also

support because if a student is unable to understand the science or math lessons they

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

will not understand the content. Teachers may use personal development time through

benchmarking classes with all teachers and all subjects by learning about cultural

diversity within the school as afterall most Canadians are immigrants of some form. All

teachers should be taking general courses on teaching English Language Learners so

that it they can help them better. It not only helps the students in need but every

student, from the high end to the middle to those in inclusion. The Central Alberta

Regional Consortium (CARC) is very helpful in this regard for providing training. One of

the interviewee from the Red Deer Public School District agreed to this. Phonetics

training is also highly important as it is the basic foundations for learning a language.

Teachers always have to continue their development and therefore funding

should be key to helping them continuously learn and improve. So should teachers have

to pay for their own development to learn to teach more effectively when it comes to

English Language Learners? Out of all the interviews and surveys, not a single teacher

commented that a teacher should have to pay. Their training should come through

personal development days and from the school district, but should that be going

towards English Language Learner training? As English Language Learners in

mainstream classes are expected, a survey respondent said that there might become

massive gap between a English Language Learner and the rest of the class

(Anonymous, 2018). When non-English speaking students are put into a general

classroom, all students may suffer in their education. Because of the large influx of new

English learners, it might be causing a significant problem to teachers, and therefore all

teachers should have training on how to better teach English Language Learners. This

not only helps the English Language Learners but also those with a learning disability or

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

just about anyone in the class. On one hand, personal development funds could be

spent on teachers to improve their teaching, On the other hand, as a respondent

commented, the government and school districts should cover the training costs as a

teacher’s personal development funds should rather go to something that the teacher is

passionate and helps them relieve their job demands or stress. Personal development

funds should ideally be going to building new effective strategies for the areas that

interest them. It was interesting that of all the survey respondents, no teacher agreed

that personal development money should go towards English Language Learning.

Canada should not stop the flow of English Language Learners because our economy

and population growth is being improved by them. Study by Immigration Canada report

that the Bank of Canada Governor, Stephen Poloz, mentioned the evidence is

overwhelming that Canada should continue to pursue immigration as a policy for

continued population growth and that the children of immigrants could be over half of

Canada's future population (Singer, 2017). Immigration leads to prosperity and income

that could be further used for education. Immigration brings in workers, government

funding, and a strong working class to help pay for pensions, healthcare, and other

government subsidised funding including education. To halt or slow it down would only

hurt the country as a whole because “immigration has been the lifeblood of population

growth since 1999 and two-thirds of current expansion is driven by the arrival of new

Canadians” (Press, 2017). Without immigration, a lot of towns and cities across Canada

would become stagnant and experience decreasing populations and jobs for educators.

So what should we do if we cannot get the funding? If personal development funding

doesn't go to this, where should the money come from? Teachers cannot expect

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

parents to pay, and with the budget already limited I wonder if there should be more

support from the government funding to schools with larger populations. The issue is

that the government funding gets spread out through a middle man which is further split

out to various areas and the schools never get the full funding they require. In my

research, I did a poll and collected a verbal response from the interviewees. Of all

survey respondents, 91.7% agreed that governments should provide the funding;

including individuals that agreed that the provincial and federal government should be in

charge of funding for teachers to become better educators when teaching English

Language Learners. Afterall, by targeting the learner that needs the most help can also

help everyone in the middle.

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

I made a survey for the people I was getting responses from and why they had

chosen yes for the various methods. I feel that the critical one is that the students over a

certain age will struggle through school due to their lack of literacy skills and might not

graduate from high school and not be able to catch up. There is hope for the younger

students because through education they can build their knowledge and “catch-up to

the rest of the students when they reach late middle school or high school”(Anonymous,

2018). In the end, teachers do not have all the resources they require but they must still

work with what they have. Every school is different on what kind of funding they get due

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

to region they operate in and the wealth of the parents often contribute to a students

success. One of the respondents said that the English Language Learners are

wonderful but a lot more work to teach. With increasing class sizes the number

becomes higher and the work gets harder for the teacher. Schools definitely cannot help

much as they are already stretched thin with the economy dependant on the funding

given by the government. In my research, several responded that as the classroom

sizes increases, teachers cannot be expected to do a great job of helping all students

that require the help they need. When they are unable to get too all students the gap in

education will keep widening and students will struggle with literacy and numeracy skills

in the future. The government could provide more funding but are unable to keep up

with the financial losses and might make things worse and cause class sizes to be even

larger.

What do I recommend for this major issue in education? If this was a perfect

world, more funding would be ideal. Schools could get the money they need to better

train teachers through programs such as Central Alberta Regional Consortium(CARC).

Schools could purchase books as they are mostly overpriced and literacy is very

important. With the increasing cost of textbooks schools often have trouble finding

resources to educate the students (Anonymous, 2018). More teachers could be hired to

help teach English Language Learners through all classrooms but also by creating

effective class sizes where the teachers can spend more time with each student that

needs help. Afterall if there are to many students in one classroom the students may

struggle if they are not able to get the help they need. If schools are unable to hire

more teachers, educational assistants could help by enabling the teacher more time to

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

work on the students that need the most help. Educational assistants could help by

helping the students that are in the middle allowing the teacher to help with direct help

to the students that have the most need such as students through inclusion and English

Language Learners As funding is limited, what would be successful for new teachers to

do to learn about English Language Learners? May be going to personal development

in their first year or two on stress management so that they can get through the first few

years and become better teacher. Teachers should not have to sacrifice something they

truly enjoy that will make them a better teacher such as personal development days.But

not only that by trying to pressure the administration for proper training and support for

teaching students that are English Language Learners once a teacher is established

and with a contract. Teachers should also help build confidence and leadership in their

students by teaching through modeling proper behavior with the students and staff.

Showing a positive role model to the student not only helps the English Language

Learners but also everyone else. All teachers should also use phonetics systems and

working closely with any support you might have. This doesn't just include English

teachers but all domains of education because literacy is critical to future success for

everyone.

Teaching the English Language Learners can be a great challenge, but do not

give up and have faith that you can succeed. Modifying your teaching to more peer-to-

peer based style. Allow students to work in pre-approved groups where English

speaking students can also aid in teaching the English Language Learners. This not

only teaches but also helps students understand different cultures and customs of

people from around the world. When teaching English Language Learners always start

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

with the basics especially if they are new to the country as they may not know grammar

or spelling so help them by tiering their work, much like in the leveled literacy

intervention program. If the school doesn't have it, I would highly suggest it due to its

success from the various schools I have interviewed. As new teachers talking to the

LAT can sometimes be enough to get you in the right path to know where you need to

go and what you should learn to help these students. After all these are wonderful

students that just the need the same chances as everyone else to succeed. They only

need a little more support to learn the language that most Canadians are born into. It

not only helps the student but helps their parents learn the language through time so

that they may be able to become Canadians and active members of society.

References
Anth, S. Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners: Quick and Easy
Supports. (2017, November 30). Retrieved from
https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/meeting-needs-english-language-learners-
quick-and-easy-supports

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

Beninghof, A., & Leensvaart, M. (2016). Co-teaching to support ELLs.(English language

learners). Educational Leadership, (5), 70. Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.ardc.talonline.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx
?direct=true&db=edscpi&AN=edscpi.A443547338&site=eds-live

Hughes, R., Reumann-Moore, R., Rowland, J., & Lin, J. (n.d.). WORKING TOGETHER
TO SUPPORT ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: School-Family-Community
Engagement. Retrieved June, 2016, from
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED571777.pdf

Mohr, S. & Mohr K. Extending English Language Learners' Classroom

Interactions Using the Response Protocol. (2014, January 06). Retrieved from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/extending-english-language-learners-
classroom-interactions-using-response-protocol

Press, T. C. (2017, February 09). Without immigration, Canada's growth could be

close to zero in 20 years if low fertility rates persist: StatsCan. Retrieved from
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/without-immigration-canadas-growth-
could-be-close-to-zero-in-20-years-if-low-fertility-rates-persist-statscan

Robertson, K. Five Things Teachers Can Do to Improve Learning for ELLs in the
New Year. (2018, August 15). Retrieved from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/five-things-teachers-can-do-improve-
learning-ells-new-year

Russell, F. A., & Von Esch, K. S. (2018). Teacher Leadership to Support English
Language Learners. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(7), 52–56. Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.ardc.talonline.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx
?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1174192&site=eds-live

Short, D., & Echevarria, J. (2004). Teacher skills to support English language learners.
Educational Leadership, (4), 8. Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.ardc.talonline.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx
?direct=true&db=edscpi&AN=edscpi.A158552226&site=eds-live

Singer, C. R. (2017, April 07). Canada Immigration Means Canadians Prosper, Top
Banker Says. Retrieved from https://www.immigration.ca/canada-immigration-
means-canadians-prosper-top-banker-says

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Should there be specific supports for teachers that have larger English Language Learner populations

Statistics Canada. (2017, November 01). Immigration and ethnocultural diversity: Key
results from the 2016 Census. Retrieved from
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171025/dq171025b-eng.htm

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