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.
Eva K. Sullivan 