Are ICEbreakers appropriate for EML students this year?

The school year has gotten off to a quiet start, against the most horrifying backdrop imaginable for immigrant students in the English Language  Development (ELD) program (formerly called ESOL). Images on the news show ICE agents throwing black and brown men to the ground and leading them away in handcuffs, disappearing them to unknown destinations, where due process is almost nonexistent. Law-abiding residents just going to work. The families and neighbors of my students targeted by armed men in masks.

I teach at one of the largest high schools in the state of Maryland, with a student population that’s 60% Hispanic, and about 25% actively enrolled in our ELD program. After sitting through a week of Pre-Service teacher meetings where not a single mention of immigration was made, I sent an email message to my supervisor pointing out my concerns that students might face unusually high levels of anxiety and fear as they come back to school this year. And maybe we could send an email to the entire staff. And share the robust MCPS web page for Immigrant Supports. 

I even mentioned that the typical classroom ICEbreakers might be triggering for some students.

Instead of support, I got called in to my supervisor’s office and reprimanded for sending out a “political” message using school email. Apparently now it’s “political” to express concern for EML students.

Is it that my supervisors are low-key MAGA enthusiasts? Are they afraid? Do they just not want to be inconvenienced? Why would someone in charge of a program comprising 100% immigrant students not be on the side of our students? Of their teachers and staff? (as an aside, one of my colleagues, whose spouse was born overseas, says he takes his U.S. passport with him to take out the trash so that he won’t be arrested). We are living in an era where our government is turning against us.

I am deeply distressed that school leaders have ignored my concerns and are trying to pretend that everything is normal. Even worse, they told me, “You need to be careful. I don’t want you to get in trouble” WTF?! I was pointing out that we need to be aware of pressures our students were facing outside of school that could affect attendance, participation in school events, grades, and social-emotional well-being. Isn’t that important any more?

If this what the school year will look like for 2025-2026, then I’m not sure how I’ll make it through. I will follow school rules and be compliant at work, but outside of the duty day, I will use my teacher voice to exercise my First Amendment rights while I still have them, to speak out in support of immigrants, the people who actually keep our country running.

Even though the Department of Education has quietly rescinded the federal guidelines for students learning English, I will support my students, whatever their immigration status, for as long as I am able. Which may not be very long, at this rate.

Through a confidential source, I learned that the MCPS International Office usually admits close to 1,000 newcomer students every year. Last year, they admitted 850. This year, only 12.

I hope I’ll make it another year. Or at least until a time when choosing the right ICEbreaker activity is my biggest back-to-school concern.

Making my bed

You’ve made your bed; now lie in it. ~ Anonymous

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. ~Benjamin Franklin

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. ~ Admiral McRaven

*~*~*~*

Most people my age have plenty of experience buying new furniture, but for me it’s a remarkable feat. For years – make that decades – most of my household furnishing were either my husband’s property (from his bachelor days) or hand-me-downs. He owned some nice pieces and cared more about making our home beautiful than I did.

That’s why when we separated a few years ago, he took most of the furniture with him.

I’ve slowly been filling in the empty spaces of my house. Curb-alerts from the neighborhood list serve are a favorite. My couch, coffee table, side tables, living room rug, side chairs, lamps, and kitchen table were all offered at a very low price or free. I’ve cleaned, re-upholstered, or covered many items; now they’re all mine.

Some people think it’s weird to buy used furniture, but it gives me great pleasure that every single piece has a little story.

That’s why, when I bought a new bed recently, I felt like a kid going off to college for the first time. It felt momentous. It felt like a real transition. A new bed represents something. An indulgence. A necessity. A new beginning.

I’d been sleeping on my son’s old bunk bed mattress since before my separation. It was past time for a change.

My horoscope this month says that I’m entering a two-year period where I’ll turn inward in a rare introspective phase and lay the foundations for what’s to come. What does it mean? I’m not sure. But I’m getting a good night’s sleep night after night after night. And it feels really good.

ELD Teachers: Still the illegitimate step-children of the district

Twenty five years ago I started my MCPS career teaching in a stairwell. As the newbie, I was content to pull kids into a quiet, sunny space, even though I felt a little unwanted, like Harry Potter. The specialized small-group instruction allowed them to feel more comfortable practicing English and taking academic risks than gathered than in a large room with 24 others.

Then the fire marshal came along and shut me down.

Since 2000, I have taught elementary, middle and high school classes – all levels of ESOL (before they were called ELD), Developmental Reading, Basic Reading, READ 180, Academic Acceleration, and SLIFE. I’ve co-taught Physics, Basic Math, and English 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12. I’ve taught alone in my own classroom or in a shared space. I’ve pulled kids out of the classroom and I’ve plugged into the classroom.

As I changed schools, grade levels, and instructional models, one thing has become clear: ELD teachers are expected to teach just about any subject at every grade level, and to remain completely flexible and fluid. Most teachers grumble when they have to learn a new curriculum or when the district launches a new state test. But ESOL teachers have had to endure an onslaught of changes to their profession year after year after year.

The changing acronyms and language around our field may be the best example of dramatic shifts. The field of ESOL became ELD, while the students are EMLs (Emergent Multilingual Learners), and the classes they take are ELP courses. I have no idea what that stands for. Our district office is called DELME. Whatever.

Just to keep us on our toes, the district DELME Office keeps purchasing new curriculum resources, each requiring many hours of extra teacher prep time to use effectively. We’ve gone from an internally-written (and in my opinion, excellent) curriculum guide to boxed sets: Rigor, System 44, READ 180, Study Sync, CKLA and more. Let’s not forget the grossly inappropriate frog reader books purchased for our high school METS/ SLIFE students in 2018 that were mostly warehoused before they even saw a classroom.

Around the county, our ELD book rooms are full of discarded materials that probably cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars and cost the teachers hundreds of hours of prep time.

Recently, MCPS moved to a co-teaching model of instruction for secondary students (see my September 2024 blog https://wp.me/p6YtYW-BR). It’s also a new instructional model that takes time for teachers to learn. Instead of ELD classes at different proficiency levels focusing on specific language objectives, now all but the newcomers are mainstreamed into math, science, and social studies classes — often with no curriculum to support language learning. This can be good for some students, especially those who are fully literate in their own languages. But students at lower levels of proficiency risk being left behind.

It is the burden of the co-teacher to develop lessons that support these ELD students in addition to negotiating for time and space to deliver those lessons.

I would like to work with our struggling students in small groups, but I have only the noisy hallway for pull-out instruction. I have no classroom, except the space I share with my co-teachers during our 50 minutes together.

During my contractual planning periods, I sit at a shared desk in a cramped office where there’s no place to hang my coat. Staff come and go to use the refrigerator, the microwave, or just to chat. Sometimes I’m happy for the camaraderie, but mostly it’s hard to get any work done. There’s no place to make a personal phone call during the school day or to have a private meeting with a colleague. There’s no quiet space to decompress after a morning dancing diplomatically around another teacher.

My working conditions have come full circle in 25 years.

We’ve just hired three new ELD teachers for next school year, and I’m already anxious about where they’ll sit. Our department is suddenly bigger than the English Department and yet we have half the working space they do.

That stairwell from 25 years ago is looking like a really attractive option.






Getting HS Seniors Across the Finish Line

Since 2009 I’ve been shepherding high school seniors out the front door in time to walk across the stage in a cap and gown at graduation. Sometimes they barely make it. The students who glide through 12th grade aren’t the ones whose stories linger. It’s the ones who barely make it, the immigrants who will make their families proud, who worked hard for a Maryland State Diploma. 

On Monday, Cee sat in my ELD Seminar class, uncharacteristically glum. 

“Miss!” (that’s how they address me) “I don’t think I can pass Modern World History. I don’t think I can graduate this year.” 

“Have you talked to the teacher? What assignments are missing? Who is your teacher? I will email them to find out.”

In a mixed class, where only a handful of seniors sit among sophomores and juniors, the teachers aren’t always aware of the urgency of grading an assignment that can make or break a senior’s chance to walk across the stage with the rest of their class. The teacher got back to me. Cee was passing the class with 64% D — enough to earn credit and be on track to graduate. Now all that remained was Credit Recovery for English 12A and English 12B, an online self-paced class. I emailed the teacher to ask about what he else needed to do. She unlocked the last Edmentum Unit Test so he could work on it during Seminar class. 

Eff skipped Seminar the last week of school. He works full time as a cook in a fancy local restaurant — he showed me pictures of his plating technique. Since he’d already passed every class, he was focused more on accruing extra hours at work to pay rent and utilities — a reality for many older immigrant students. Except he didn’t realize that he still needed 25 more Student Service Learning hours, a Maryland State graduation requirement. Another teacher and I scrambled to work with his counselor and administrator to get him the hours necessary.

Getting seniors across the finish line seems harder this year. Maybe because I’m at a new school with a different demographic than my previous school. It seems hard to believe they didn’t know about SSL hours, or how much work they needed to complete for a class, but when students are the first in their family to graduate from high school, you can’t assume they’re getting any help navigating the school system from Mom or Dad.


Other factors define the hardships faced by the class of 2025 — the English Multilingual Learners in my school, in my district, right now. And some of what I’ve seen is disturbing. 

In August 2024, the district changed how it evaluates international student transcripts. In a move that sounds equitable, but is deeply flawed, they began awarding credits to students from other countries who took English in their home country — without first determining a student’s level of language proficiency. In the past, international students were given a placement test to determine what classes to take. It sometimes meant that older students were put back a grade level so that they could acquire better English. Now those students are placed in mainstream content courses, like Math, Science, and Social Studies, without adequate language support. They struggle to keep up because their academic English skills are still developing.

As a result, this year, for the first time, we have newcomer students graduate with a high school diploma who can not read, write or speak English. And I’m worried that it’s only going to get worse. Dee is such a student. I got to know him second semester, when he’d already stopped coming to class. I called home, talked to his guardian, met to his counselor, emailed his administrator. He was completely discouraged because he could not understand what we were doing in class. So we made him a deal. If he finished the final Common Writing Task, we would give him a passing grade (60%) so he could earn credit and graduate.

English Multilingual Learners (we used to call them ESOL students, but that was deemed “deficit language” so we switched the acronym to EML) need explicit language instruction by a qualified teacher. They also benefit from smaller classes, where the teacher can guide them through an often-incomprehensible landscape of grades, credits, and SSL hours. They also need enough time to learn.

I wish we had more hours of instruction for these students. But for Cee, Eff, and Dee, a Maryland State Diploma is a meaningful achievement. For me, helping seniors cross the stage in their caps and gowns is one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever had.

The Power of Singing Together

100 days of the Mad King and we’re all trying to cope with the chaos, fear, and profound sense of loss. How many times can we shake our heads at the absurdity of this moment in US history?

The democratic system of checks and balances may not survive this administration. Like many Americans, I sat in stunned silence for a couple of weeks after Inauguration Day, as executive orders started to tear down the institutions that make our country great.

Then people organized. Rallies, protests, Tesla take-downs. Letter-writing campaigns. Phone banking. Grass roots movements that start with like-minded neighbors, groups, and communities.

I found my people in a choir. It’s not a church choir, even though we sometimes meet in a church. It’s less than three months old, but we’ve already made it to 11 rallies, marches, and protests — some of them organized super last minute. We sing songs of inspiration and protest. We take old, familiar tunes and change the lyrics to suit the times. Or we sing old protest music from the 1960s. We bring tambourines, drums, shakers. We bring our voices and our shared passion.

Bystanders have approached us after every event and said how much they appreciate the power of singing together. Our choir does not perform in the traditional sense, but we help the crowd focus and unify. Rallies with group singing reinforce the emotional connection among strangers. We desperately need to feel connected right now.

The health benefits of group singing have long been studied. According to an Oxford University article, singing together in a group improves breathing, posture, and muscle tension. Choral singing enhances our sense of belonging and happiness through the release of neurochemicals.

Others pour their creativity into making amazing protest signs and banners, or grabbing a megaphone and shouting slogans. Singing in a group is how I plan to save my sanity. The thing is: you don’t even have to be a good singer to join this kind of singing group. All voices are valued. Together we fight the daily assaults inflicted by our own federal government.

If it’s Thursday, it must be community singalong time. I highly recommend it!

Complex Trauma in High School English Class

While all around me the federal government is being dismembered, it seems apt to bring up the novel we’re reading.

In English 12 we’re halfway through Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s hard not to draw parallels to what is happening in the U.S.A. today. I feel like Offred seeing the bodies from the “salvaging” hanging on the wall for the crimes they committed — men killed for gender treachery, doctors for performing abortions.

U.S. AID was butchered yesterday. The Department of Education last week. NIH before that. Canada is now an enemy. Undocumented immigrants are all criminalized. In Gilead, they know that nobody can be trusted. They know how dangerous scientists and intellectuals can be. “Eyes” are everywhere.

My EML students worry that family members will be deported while they’re at school, parents afraid to go to the supermarket or church. They bring these fears into the classroom, and either act out or remain unusually quiet. Some students just stop coming to school. Their anxiety seeps into our shared space. Whispered conversations, a heartfelt journal entry.

A teacher friend from another school told me that a student asked if she was legal. She is from South America and speaks with a slight accent. She replied, “I am now, but I wasn’t when I first arrived in this country.” The student responded, “Then I would have reported you to ICE.”

It could be worse. I could be a 53-year-old NOAA scientist with kids about to go to college — decades into public service, too young to retire, years of exceptional performance reviews — fired through a social media posting from DOGE.

I could be an undocumented LGBTQ+ immigrant about to graduate.

Seniors had to write an essay about the value and relevance of The Handmaid’s Tale for today’s teens. One student wrote that reading this text shows the consequences of not standing up against injustices in the world today. Another student wrote, “our government is meant to protect us, but if they ever turn against us, marginalized communities will be in the most danger.”

The fascist flexing taking place right now in the White House is meant to provoke fear and panic. Our president is inflicting continuous trauma on this country, with marginalized populations suffering the most. And they are sitting in my English 12 class.

Teachers have little training in how to deal with anxiety, emotional dysregulation, or persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships (symptoms of complex stress disorder), but we see them becoming normalized.

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

I have hope that my students will stand up against injustices, that they will fight for the future they want to live in. I will do everything in my power to give them the tools they need to think critically about our world. One of the best tools at my disposal is excellent speculative fiction, like The Handmaid’s Tale.

Because I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, I can (still) teach a novel that has been banned in Florida, Oregon, and Texas. This is exactly what we need to be reading right now. This is exactly what we need to be discussing. This is exactly how we can overcome the psychological stress of living through the next four years.

The Upside Down

In just a week, the new presidential administration has sent a wave of fear and shock into every DC area school. I teach at a school that’s 60% Hispanic, with many undocumented students hidden in plain sight. When I quietly handed out MCPS fliers on immigrant rights, printed in Spanish and English, nearly every student grabbed one. 

My students don’t talk about it with me. It’s my first year at a new school, and all my classes are co-taught. So we haven’t developed the kind of mutual trust that I am used to by this time of year. But my colleague who works with newcomer students said they were panicking. 

Violent January 6 criminals are granted blanket pardons while innocent children, many of whom are refugees from political violence, are at risk of deportation. I keep coming back to my mantra from the previous Trump administration: “This is not who we are.” But clearly, I do not understand my fellow Americans. Apparently we are a bigoted, anti-authority, xenophobic country.

We’re living in an upside-down reality, like an episode of Stranger Things.

I will do everything in my power to help my students. But I wish I could change the channel.

What we miss makes us stronger

During the holiday season, I miss my mother. I miss talking to her, sending a greeting card, or buying her a little gift. I miss her energy. As much as I complained about driving the 400 miles from the DC suburbs to Huntington, WV, it was our family ritual – the car loaded up with gifts, stopping near Cumberland, MD at the same McDonald’s. One year we saw Santa on a motorcycle drive past. My mother loved that.

Until she passed away in 2021, we gathered at my mother’s large Victorian home on the Ohio River, 21 of us staying up late every night, enjoying board games or singing around the piano. She was never the first one to bed because she didn’t want to miss a thing. Mum put so much effort into hosting us every December — a beautiful, live Christmas tree, delicious meals, carefully-set tables, opening presents one-at-a-time so we could ooh and aah with every reveal. She thrived on having the house full of children and grand-children well into her 90s.

Robin Winn, a sort-of relative (my sister’s sister-in-law), human-design guru and author of three books, talks about “the deep, velvety essence” of Joy surrounding the holidays, a kind of collective energy that begs to be shared with all of humanity. My mother had that joy during the holidays, and I think it’s rubbed off.

After a couple of years of painful transition, I’ve internalized the decades of Mere-Mere’s Christmas joy. A new type of holiday, a quieter one, where I can experience “luminous joy” simply by being with other people in celebration, has taken hold. I decorated my house, I cooked good food, and accepted every holiday invitation that came my way. I am eager to learn more about the “awakened possibilities” that lie ahead.

I still miss my mother, but know she’ll always be with me every Christmas.

Steering Through the Muck – A Rowing Story

Two days after the presidential election, I went rowing on the Anacostia River in Washington DC. Our season usually ends after the first weekend in November, so it was a last-hurrah kind of moment before the weather grew too cold. A poignancy more pronounced by my extreme dismay over the election outcome. 

Trees along the river glowed red, gold, and various shades of green. A perfect blue sky reflected like a postcard image in the water. I rowed downriver backwards, two ten-foot oars sticking out on either side of the narrow racing shell, and considered how lucky I was to have this sport, this river, this scenic beauty, especially on a day when, like so many others, I desperately needed solace and release. 

Near the docks, a dredging barge lay in wait, ready to suck the sludge from the bottom of the river so the Bladensburg Waterfront Park harbor could still host the large Anacostia Watershed Society pontoon boats, their fleet of canoes and kayaks, and the seven different private rowing clubs that launch from the park. 

Muckraking. They were literally muckraking. 

The dredging crews have to wait until the end of the season, when high school rowing teams are finished for the year. And before river creatures begin their winter hibernation.

A transitional time in nature and a transitional time in our country.

I turned to starboard and steered clear of the enormous underwater boom marked by large orange buoys. Further downriver, I navigated through a series of Surface Water Passive Samplers that suddenly appeared (I only learned later that they were placed in the river by the Department of Energy and Environment for a multi-year being undertaken by the District to mitigate toxic sediments (https://restoretheanacostiariver.com/). Great work, but a huge hazard for boaters if improperly marked.

At the river bend just upstream from the National Arboretum, I gasped in awe. Such spectacular beauty could not be captured; I pulled my phone from its ziplock pouch to snap a photo anyway. The wall of colorful trees against a bright blue sky soothed my eyes. The rhythm of rowing calmed my nerves. They may have won the election, but they can’t take this away from me, I thought.

“How far are you rowing?” I asked Bob, who often rows a single at the same time as me. We’re the Odd Timers, a rag-tag group that goes out whenever we can get a few people together. 

“Until I forget the worries of today and prepare for the worries of tomorrow.” 

I probably need to keep rowing for four more years, I thought.

I turned around just above the Langston Golf Course and headed back to the dock. The dredging barge was still there, clearing the channel to make it navigable for the rest of the year. Then my oar hit a rebar post sticking up with no buoy or flag to indicate a hazard. It could have easily pierced my rowing shell.

I’ve been thinking about all the obstacles and chaos coming our way starting January 20. The president-elect promised to “drain the swamp.” But when you actually remove the mud, it clears the way, opens new channels, and allows water to flow smoothly downstream.

I predict a lot of metaphoric dredging booms and unmarked hazards in our future. We will all have to navigate through the muck of this new administration. When their time is over, the muckrakers will clear the path and natural beauty will prevail. Both on the river and in our country.

Co-teaching: A Dance of Diplomacy

I first met Teacher S over Zoom the year my district went 95% virtual and leadership rolled out a new instructional model for ESOL students (back then, they were still called ESOL students, instead of the alphabet soup of acronyms we use today). Under the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, it was a pleasure to interact professionally with another teacher regularly. Mostly I followed along and did pull-out groups in the Breakout room, where I could provide additional language support. I enjoyed the camaraderie of having someone to help me figure out this totally new way of teaching.

Once back in the building, co-teaching took on a different tone. Instead of equal-size Zoom boxes, one of us now had a classroom and one of us didn’t. Teacher S filled the shelves with their books and knick-knacks, the walls with their colorful posters, and rugs and furniture brought in from their house. I had a shared desk in a shared office in the ESOL Department (now called the ELD office = English Language Development). 

Only one teacher’s name appeared on the electronic gradebook and the Canvas classroom tile. That teacher received all communication from parents, counselors, and the Main Office. I was lucky if they remembered to share pertinent information about students, new policies or schedule changes. I’d been erased.

All the ELD teachers were plugging in to the content teachers’ classes, no matter their level of experience, expertise, or comfort level. That first year, I had five different co-teachers. I had to lug my cart through the hallways, moving from room to room to room, struggling to get past clusters of students before the next bell rang. 

With each teacher, I had to negotiate the space – who would stand where, who would deliver the lessons, where would I put my things? With each teacher, I had to negotiate who would prepare which lessons, who would deliver the lessons, and who would grade the student work.  I had to tread carefully with each teacher, giving advance warning that I was an interrupter, and would that be okay? Sometimes I would need to paraphrase, repeat, or clarify information for ELD students. Sometimes I would need to modify handouts so the students learning English could understand what they were reading. Each interaction was a careful conversation. 

Today, that’s pretty much how co-teaching runs for secondary ELD teachers in MCPS. We’re thrown together with other teachers and it’s on us, the ELD teachers, to adapt to the content teacher’s style, their preferences, their classrooms. If we’re lucky, our ideas and teaching style mesh perfectly, and all the little decisions we make every day will help students thrive. If not, it’s a constant negotiation of every single interaction that takes place.

Diplomacy involves give and take – that I understand. But why does it always seem like the ELD specialist has to give something up? 

According to Collaborating for English Learners, by Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria G. Dove, teachers should “be on an equal footing” and all members of collaborative teams need “equal time to contribute to team efforts.” 

In their updated book, Co-Planning to Integrate Instruction for English Learners (2022), the same authors write “Co-planning requires teachers to change not only what they do but also how they think.” This is a critically important comment. “For co-planning to work, teachers must endeavor to share their beliefs, understandings, opinions, and convictions with fellow teachers and be open to incorporating unfamiliar ideas into their class instruction.”

It takes a certain type of professional to be flexible enough to incorporate unfamiliar ideas into their instruction. Most teachers are control freaks. Most teachers are used to being the lone voice of authority in front of children. Most are not willing to cede any territory without a fight. Or at least an exhausting series of conversations.

It’s only the third week of school, and I’ve been doing the dance of diplomacy since Pre-Service Week. I’m tired. I’ve lost my temper with my co-teachers; I’ve gotten on their nerves. I’ve succeeded in some important ways, and I’ve caved on others. 

Once the students enter the room, we smile and carry on.