Teaching English as a Second Language: What One Teacher Wants You to Know
Delilah Baines-Washington has been at Francis Scott Key School for eight years now, during which time she has taught English to Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, from the Kindergarten level up to the eighth grade. Key has an exceptionally multilingual and multicultural student population—out of around 500 students, over 50% are classified as English Language Learners (ELLs). In this year’s Kindergarten class alone, Ms. Baines-Washington estimates that well over half of the students are ELLs.
Key’s students represent a wide range of nationalities: they have Nepali, Burmese, Cambodian, Ugandan, Mexican, and Central American students, just to name a few. Not all of these students are first-generation immigrants, however. Key has a mix of new immigrants and students whose families immigrated to Philadelphia decades ago.
“That’s always very interesting,” Ms. Baines-Washington says, “when you have a student who’s a newcomer and then a student who’s second- or third-generation.”
Altogether, there are 16 different languages spoken at the school.
“Students are identified as being language learners in their intake information,” Ms. Baines-Washington explains. “If they speak a language other than English, then they’re screened for the ESOL program, and that program occurs down at 440 [North Broad].” The central office intake screening determines whether students should be placed in an ESOL class, and if so, which level of ESOL would be most appropriate for them.
Throughout her eight years at the school, Ms. Baines-Washington has experienced changes in the trends of ESOL students’ languages. In her first year at Key, the school received its first Nepali, Burmese, and Karen speaking students. By the second year, the number of these students grew dramatically.
“It was interesting,” she says. “For me, I said, ‘Okay, I need to learn a little bit more.” Ms. Baines-Washington decided to dedicate her professional development plan to researching and networking with the area’s Nepali, Burmese, and Karen population. She connected with SEAMAAC (Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition) and worked with their elder program to build a community garden at Key.
“It was seeing that there was definitely a need in our school,” she says about the garden project, “and a little bit of understanding about the population, and then also knowing what our expectations are.”
Through this project, Ms. Baines-Washington learned more from the elders in the Nepali, Burmese, and Karen communities about what to expect from students from these cultures.
“They said many of them are coming with limited formal education,” Ms. Baines-Washington explains, “and this is their first time in any sort of school setting. So, if other than the language, if they’re having any problems socially adjusting, or not following directions or things like that, we also have to be cognizant of what they’ve been through.”
Ms. Baines-Washington has taken what she learned from her research to other staff at the school and non-ESOL staff in particular. Sometimes, she explains, it’s easy to forget the particularly traumatic experiences that immigrant and refugee students bring into the classroom, so she takes the time to remind her colleagues, “You know what, that student, he’s from a refugee camp. There was no school. We can’t expect that child to always follow directions or take the time to ask for what they want or need.”
In order to learn about the potentially painful experiences that her students have gone through, Ms. Baines-Washington focuses on building relationships and talking one-on-one with her students. The school’s Bilingual Counseling Assistants (BCAs) are also a valuable resource for bridging cultural divides and helping Ms. Baines-Washington understand how to handle sensitive situations. “I always lean on our BCAs,” she says. “They help tremendously.”
Besides helping to communicate with parents and helping out with interpreting in the classroom now and then, BCAs provide essential emotional support for both families and students. “I know that it must mean the world to those students to have someone who is at least familiar to their culture, to their family,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to do what I do [without the BCAs]. There’s many things that I don’t know, and I’m learning.”
“Although I’m a familiar face to the students and I offer some comfort,” she continues, “there’s nothing like having someone who knows the culture, the language; knows the different gestures, the nuances…things I might learn, but I’ll never know the way [BCAs] know.”
Ms. Baines-Washington herself speaks a bit of conversational Portuguese (she studied abroad in Brazil), but she otherwise does not speak a language in addition to English. Through many years as an ESOL teacher, though, she’s learned some words and phrases in various languages.
“I’ve kind of picked up on a few things the kids are saying,” she explains. At one of her report card conferences, she listened in as her student spoke to his mother. “And I said, ‘Well that didn’t happen!’” Ms. Baines-Washington laughs. “And the mother looked at me like, ‘How does she know what he…?’”
What made Ms. Baines-Washington want to pursue a career in teaching ESOL as someone who grew up speaking just one language?
“Study abroad,” she says simply.
In college at Temple University, she took a Latin American history class and was surprised to learn that Brazil has the largest number of people of African descent in the world.
“And I said, ‘Are you serious?” she jokes, deciding that she needed to see for herself what Brazil was like. She applied for a study abroad program in Brazil, which would be her first trip out of the country.
“I experienced life as a language learner,” she says—something that shaped the rest of her life.
Her experience as a language learner started before she even left the comfort of the United States. A young, inexperienced traveler, Ms. Baines-Washington arrived at the gate for her flight to Brazil just twenty minutes before the plane took off.
“The woman at the gate—well of course she’s speaking Portuguese, I’m speaking English, I can’t understand,” she says. “And I’m in between crying and not understanding. I eventually get on the plane but I was, you know, I was traumatized.”
“It was at that moment that I understood,” she explains, “this is what people who don’t understand a language are going through—constantly.”
In Brazil, the realization really set in: Ms. Baines-Washington learned how difficult daily life was as a language learner. Even mundane tasks like ordering food or trying to get medication was a struggle. As someone who is literate, she found it challenging to have to think about how to communicate. “I know what that feels like, to be an adult and not be able to communicate,” she explains. “It’s upsetting, initially, because you’re like, ‘I know what I want to say! I have it, I just can’t say it.’”
The challenge was also a fun one for Ms. Baines-Washington, though. After returning from Brazil, she knew she wanted to pursue multilingual education. “I like the process,” she says, “and then I just had so much more empathy for people who were going through it.”
Ms. Baines-Washington uses what she learned through her study abroad experience to remind herself of the daily challenges that her students and their families are going through. When parents come in and are frustrated, she always brings in the BCA or calls Pacific Interpreters.
Her top priority, she says, is making sure that she and the parent understand each other completely despite any language barrier. “I always tell my parents: I’m not trying to say that you don’t understand,’ she explains. “That’s not the case. I want to make sure that we are able to communicate.”
Ms. Baines-Washington also makes sure that her students and their families feel culturally welcomed and represented in her classroom. She keeps books about her students’ cultures and countries in her classroom, and she spends time talking about what it means to be learning English as a second language.
In the beginning of the school year, she has her students read a book about a Chinese girl who tells her teacher that she hates English and refuses to speak it. By the end of the book, however, the girl is chatting in English with her teacher. “You don’t have to give up your identity, your culture—anything—if you’re learning this other language,” Ms. Baines-Washington explains. “It’s just another part of you.”
Non-ESOL staff have also started to become more aware of cultural expectations and language barriers. At Key School, with the help of the BCAs, the staff have participated in professional development sessions about interacting with immigrant communities.
“It’s also very challenging,” Ms. Baines-Washington notes, “because the classroom teachers have so many students that they’re responsible for.”
It’s not just the ESOL teachers who are reaching out for more professional development and resources about how to support multilingual families, Ms. Baines-Washington says. Classroom teachers at Key are very eager to learn more.
“I really do believe that it’s becoming more of a welcoming environment,” she says. “It’s changing for the better, and I think many of our students who felt a little lonely in the beginning, with more people coming in, then it really feels like this is family.”
Ms. Baines-Washington is proud of the progress that her school and the District as a whole have made. Still, she knows that there is still much work to be done for ELL students.
“I just wish people would understand the complexities that our students face,” she says. “And that’s school-wide, that’s District-wide, that’s city-wide, that’s state-wide, and on the federal level—it’s on every single level—to really understand what it’s like to not understand a language, and to have to function in that language.”
“I wish that every single person would have to go to a country and function in a language that’s not their first language,” she concludes. “Imagine.”
