Sumeyra Gok, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA

With the growing number of ESL students all over the country, there is a need for the constant assessment of teacher preparation programs. What are we doing to prepare preservice teachers for multilingual learners? Do we need to make sure all preservice teachers are trained for these learners, even if they are planning to teach non-ESL subjects in mostly homogenous school districts?

Before considering those questions, it is important to understand what the alternative is. Although regulations and systems vary from state to state, most English language learners (ELLs) take content-area classes with their native-English-speaking peers and face the challenges of language acquisition in addition to the comprehension of the content. Teachers have their own ways of dealing with these situations, and though some teachers know how to help these students, others do not fully understand the process these kids go through.

As a result, certain unhelpful strategies, such as English-only rules, arise, and these actions often cause language learners to be placed in special education sections or remedial courses even when they do not really need to be there. They also cause them to shy away from their first languages and their cultural identities with the false hopes of assimilating and achieving native-like fluency as soon as possible. Therefore, “many emergent bilingual students who have gone to school in the United States have had their home-language academic-literacy development interrupted by the U.S. school system's monolingual approach” (Menken & Kleyn, 2010, as cited in Flores, 2014). In order to avoid these issues, then, teachers need to have a grasp of the language learning process their students go through so that they can implement more helpful strategies in their classrooms.

Courses and Training

The first important step would be to have required coursework on multilingual learners. These courses should help preservice teachers to create lesson plans and/or activities that tap into the linguistic repertoires of students. This could mean designing writing assignments that are open endedin terms of language use (Musanti & Rodríguez, 2017), intentionally modelling how to create a more culturally competent classroom environment, learning about certain aspects of education in other cultures (including domestic minorities), and having preservice teachers do the same tasks as their future students (Sclafani, 2017). Having such courses would be a step in helping preservice teachers create safe, culturally sensitive, and welcoming spaces in their future classrooms. Furthermore, they would also allow teachers to gain the skills to help non-ELLs who need more support for learning.

Another strategy is to have preservice teachers take a language course. The goal is not necessarily to make them fluent in another language, although that would be a great addition, but instead it is to help them understand the processes language learners go through, especially in the early stages of language acquisition. Ellis (2013) talks about a study in which in-service teachers took language classes and then reflected on their experiences. It was noted that the plurilinguals in the group had successful experiencesto mitigate their sense of failure or inadequacy as learners, but “the monolinguals’ talk was peppered with self-deprecating references and jokes which suggest pessimistic beliefs about these individuals’ ability to learn and use additional languages” (p. 461). This experience helped these teachers see the language learning process through the eyes of their students. Preservice teachers who take a similar course would surely also better understand and make sense of the language learning experience and would be better able to relate to their future students. They would be able to reflect on their own acquisition process and have a better sense of the challenges their students face.

Fieldwork

Internship is an integral part of teacher preparation programs. It gives preservice teachers an opportunity to see what it is like to work with students in day-to-day life and to interact with veteran teachers and learn from them directly. This could also be a good time to provide opportunities for interns to interact with ELLs directly. They could be asked to work with language learners one-on-one, even if it is just for a short period of time; visit ESL classrooms or ESL pull-out sessions; talk to parents or community members about students’ learning environments and habits; and talk to guidance counselors and administrators about the existing resources for language learners in their schools.

Having this type of fieldwork is important because even though preservice teachers shadow a teacher and teach a portion of the teacher’s class, the chances are they will not really interact with language learners or even know how to work with them if there are not many ELLs in the classrooms they enter. Fieldwork will help them become more active in the internship process and better prepare them for teaching in their own classrooms.

Conclusion

Overall, there are many other strategies that can help better prepare preservice teachers for multilingual learners. Teacher preparation programs can make use of conferences, workshops, books, talks, and so on to support the training of preservice teachers. It is also important, however, to go beyond one-day talks and workshops and make these strategies an integral part of the curriculum. Having preservice teachers experience the language learning process first hand, taking courses to learn practical skills for creating culturally sensitive and welcoming classrooms, and doing the fieldwork of talking to ELLs and researching the available resources for them give preservice teachers an active role in preparing for their future students.

Returning to the question of preparing content-area teachers for multilingual learners even if they are planning to teach in homogenous school districts, I would like to add that learning to create culturally competent lesson plans and learning about language learning processes help teachers reflect on their own skills and capabilities, and also help them create safer and more welcoming classroom environments, even if there are no ELLs in their classrooms.

References

Ellis, E. (2013). The ESL teacher as plurilingual: An Australian perspective. TESOL Quarterly,47, 446–471. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.120

Flores, N., & Schissel, J. L. (2014). Dynamic bilingualism as the norm: Envisioning heteroglossic approach to standards-based reform. TESOL Quarterly,48, 454–479. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.182

Musanti, S. I., & Rodríguez, A. D. (2017). Translanguaging in bilingual teacher preparation: Exploring pre-service bilingual teachers’ academic writing. Bilingual Research Journal,40(1), 38–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2016.1276028

Sclafani, C. (2017). Strategies for educators of bilingual students: A critical review of literature. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies,5(2), 1. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.5n.2p.1