Scenario:

Leilani is an ELL-certified educator in an elementary school that has begun integrating the
State’s new teacher evaluation policy. She is aware of persistent low achievement of ELLs
across the state and in her home district in fact, ELL students and their academic standings
were a central argument for why the state claimed it needed to hold teachers to greater
accountability. As her school begins implementing this policy, she realizes more of her
colleagues are anxious about flawed evaluation policies that will have practical implications for
the success of ELL students and their teachers. What can Leilani do to help address this
situation at her school?

Action Steps
1. Isolate the issues

Persistent low achievement of ELL’s across the state in her home district
Leilani’s Ell students’ low achievement and academic standings were the central
argument for why the state claimed it needed to hold teachers to greater accountability.
Leilani’s colleagues are anxious about flawed evaluation policies that will have practical
implications for the success of ELL students
2. Identify Allies

Leilani’s allies are the Elementary school administration, as well as her teaching team
and her colleagues.
3. Be clear on the rights of ELL students

For Leilani, the best option for her is to cross reference the requirements of the new
evaluation policy with the ELL services and make sure that there are no conflicts in the
services that the ELL’s are required to receive and the evaluation policies. Also, it would
be smart for Leilani to look in to the reasons why the teachers are feeling that the new
evaluation policy is flawed; is it due to actual problems with the policies, is it because
now the ELL’s services aren’t prioritized, or is it because the teachers re worried that
they aren’t meeting requirements and aren’t doing their job the way they should be. It
would also be important for Leilani to look into the reasons why these teachers within
the district are consistently under-educating their ELL students because it can’t just be a
coincidence that all ELL’s are performing extremely low.
4. Organize and educate others on the issue

The first step that Leilani should do is to take all of the results of the ELL’s in her school
first, and see where the trends are as far as testing results. If there is a common
category that all across the board the students are under preforming on, then she can
have a better idea about the curriculum gaps and the content gaps that are present. If
that is the case, then Leilani can look at her curriculum that she is teaching the ELL
students when she is pulling them out or pushing in, and make sure to supplement or
re-teach those specific areas to the students who need it. Something else Leilani can do
 if she notices a trend in the scores is that she can come up with a sort of bundle or
information or a packet that she send out to all of the teachers that gives little
supplemental tips and tricks as well as games or activities to include in center time or
other instructional time for the ELL students to help them make connections within
those low scoring areas. If there is just low scores across all of the areas of testing, then
Leilani could assume that the teachers just aren’t supplementing any of their teaching or
scaffolding any of their instruction for ELL students. What Leilani could do is provide the
teachers with 3-4 basic instructional tips and scaffolding tips for the ELL students in their
classroom in hopes that the teachers will adopt them in their daily instruction. Then
Leilani can look more closely at the instructional content that she is teaching during her
individual time with the students and in her group time with the students as well.
5. Identify outlets(s) to address the issue.

A great place for Leilani to address the issues would be during Professional
Development time with her team, at staff meetings, at team meetings, as well as
sending an e-mail with the information that the teachers may need. She could give a
presentation and then e-mail the presentation along with the information needed to the
teachers.