New direction, new blog

I'm starting an all new direction in my life: I have accepted a full-time position here in Florida, and my goal is going to be to remain here as long as possible. I certainly still intend to take international vacations whenever possible, but I'm planning to work in the US from here on out. This has been my plan for some time, but it wasn't until today - when I was actually offered a job - that this plan became reality. Since I'll be [mostly] in the US from here on out, International Cat Lady isn't exactly appropriate. As such, I've decided to continue blogging at American Cat Lady. I hope you'll follow me over there.

Florida and the lack of opportunities for ESOL teachers and students

I recently wrote my last ever paper as a Master’s student on a topic that is very important to me professionally: the state of Florida’s policies towards English language learners in the public K-12 system. I could copy and paste my paper here, but I suspect that most of the people who bother to read my blog don’t come here for academic writing and education jargon. However, since this is a topic that I think is pretty important, I’ve decided to convert my academic paper into a more accessible blog post.

Something like 220 languages are spoken in the state of Florida. There are roughly 270,000 students in Florida’s public K-12 system that are considered English Language Learners (ELLs). That’s roughly 10% of the K-12 population. You would think that this would translate into a lot of available jobs for people like me: experienced, qualified ESL teachers. Sadly, that’s not the case. What is typically seen are ads for content-area teachers holding ‘appropriate ESOL certification.’ There’s little to no demand for ESL teachers in the K-12 system at all, just regular teachers with this ‘appropriate ESOL certification.’ Why is that? What does having ‘appropriate ESOL certification’ actually entail? And is this what is best for Florida’s students?

Prior to 1990, the way ELLs were treated in the public K-12 system varied substantially by district, as there was no state level legislation pertaining to how they should be treated. Some districts had really great programs, including bilingual education, sheltered content instruction (in which subject matter such as Math or Social Studies was taught to ELLs specifically by an ESOL professional), and pull-out programs (in which students were pulled out of mainstream classes during the day for one-on-one tutoring or tutoring among a group of their ELL peers). Other districts had nothing; students were simply tossed into mainstream classes with teachers who had no training in dealing with ELLs. A group of advocates filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida in the late 1980s, arguing that as legal residents of the state, ELLs were entitled to equal access to education, understandable instruction, and intensive English language instruction. They won their suit, and in 1990, the Florida Consent Decree was enacted. The Consent Decree mandated equal access, comprehensible instruction, and language instruction for ELLs, and required that the state’s K-12 teachers actually have some sort of training for working with ELLs. Elementary school teachers, as well as middle school and high school language arts teachers were required to have 300 hours of training for working with ELLs. Middle and high school math, science, and social studies teachers were required to have 60 hours of training, and all other instructors were required to have 18 hours. Sounds great, right? In theory, perhaps, but not so much in actual fact.

One of results of the Consent Decree was that the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) began pushing for mainstreaming of ELLs across the state. While it was left up to each district as to the specifics of how they would comply with the Consent Decree, there was a lot of pressure for districts to work towards mainstreaming of ELLs. (Mainstreaming – sometimes referred to as inclusion – is the practice of putting ELLs in regular classes with native speakers.) The pressure to increase mainstreaming actually led to many quality bilingual, sheltered, and pull-out programs being dismantled and replaced with mainstreaming. After all, if all teachers are now “qualified” to teach ELLs, this should be fine, right?

Well, just how “qualified” are they? Is receiving 300/60/18 hours of instruction in working with ELLs enough? And what kind of instruction is that, anyway? Since 1999, all university teacher training and certification programs in the state of Florida are required to provide their pre-service teachers with their needed hours of ESOL training. However, pretty much all of the universities did this not by adding 300 hours’ worth of required coursework for their students, but instead by creating an ‘ESOL Infused’ program. This means that topics pertaining to education of ELLs would be included in general Education courses; very few of those 300/60/18 hours would be earned in a class that actually focused in its entirety on teaching ELLs.

The university where I’ve just earned my MA in TESOL requires its undergraduate Education majors to take only two courses that are ESOL-specific. I just spent the past two semesters teaching one of those two courses, and let me tell you, my students – junior and senior Education majors – had no clue about teaching ELLs when the semester began. Even at the end of the semester, there are very few of my students whom I would recommend to work with ELLs, and yet most of them are now “qualified” to do so according to state regulations.

While writing my paper, I read a lot of articles, including a lot of published research on the views that teachers and program administrators had of both mainstreaming and of the required ESOL training. The majority of teachers and administrators did not approve of mainstreaming – with the biggest complaint being that mainstream teachers lacked the time and/or the skill to properly modify their lessons for their ELLs. The majority of teachers themselves also complained that they did not feel adequately prepared to work with their ELLs. One article I read referred to the results of the Consent Decree as the “the deprofessionalization of ESL teachers, rather than the specialization of mainstream teachers” – and sadly, that seems to be the case.

Oh, and the FCAT? That standardized test that one must pass in order to graduate from high school in the state of Florida? ELLs are given one year – ONE YEAR – to get their language skills up to par to pass the FCAT. Research in the field of second language acquisition shows that it typically takes 5-7 years to master a second language, yet ELLs are given just one to take a test that is often challenging to native speakers. Seriously?

As a professional teacher of English as a second or foreign language, I found my research into this subject disturbing to say the least. Certainly, at the moment, finding a job is a pressing issue for me. My goal is to teach ESL to adults, although there aren’t that many jobs available. I had (rather naïvely) assumed that if I could not find work with adults, the public school system would remain an option. As it is, while I have applied for several K-12 ESOL positions, none were in Florida. Straight-up ESOL teachers are pretty rare down here. Then I think about the fact that so many people sacrifice so much to come to the United States in order to give their children better opportunities. But are they really getting better opportunities? If they come to Florida, it doesn’t seem that they do.

Almost done!

Last Friday I took my comprehensive examination for my Master's degree, which was (as you might expect) a Big Freakin' Deal. Essentially, if you don't pass, you don't graduate. While I never thought that failing was a possibility, I was still pretty stressed out over it. Not to worry; I passed :-) I have not yet received my official score (one can fail, or one can receive a low pass, a pass, or a pass with distinction), but I have been unofficially told that everyone who took the exam last Friday received a passing score. Official scores should be out by the end of the week. Now that comps are over, my to do list has shrunk to an amazingly small size: finish writing a paper (it's almost done; all I have to write is my conclusion and then proofread the thing), teach one class, attend one class as a student, and administer a final exam to my students. And find a job. 

I thought job hunting was stressful back in February. Now that it's April, the stress level has increased exponentially. There still aren't many jobs in TESOL in the US, the positions are very competitive, and I am developing an ever increasing urge to punch the people who design some of these job application websites. (The last job I applied for required me to submit a US state, zip code, and telephone number for each of my former jobs... a bit of a challenge for those positions in South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. In order to get the website to accept my application, I had to enter false information... and then click a checkbox certifying that all of the information I had entered was accurate. Grrrr.) 

I'll be moving out of Orlando and back 'home' to Georgia at the beginning of May, where I will remain until I find a job. Moving is an expensive and annoying process, and I would have loved to move straight from Orlando to the location of my next job, but unless something appears in the next two and a half weeks, it seems that wherever I end up, I'll be getting there by way of Georgia. Whatever happens, though, the graduate school phase of my life is nearly over; time for a new chapter to begin!

The Adventures of Charlie and Mochi

Don't forget! Charlie and Mochi now have their own Facebook page! If you haven't already 'liked' it, click here for all the mustachioed cat and underbite-faced dog action you could possibly desire!