A Day in an ESOL class

My daughter is a teacher of teachers, an academic coach.  She's good at it, she loves it, but she misses teaching high school students. 

Due to the recent firing of a terrible teacher, she's offered to take over two hours of her classes along with her coaching duties.  

These classes of English As a Second Language have been so demoralized by having a racist teacher (who was heard to say, "You have to talk to these students like dogs").  Day's first day was so inspiring I had to write about it.

She found a set of books at all grade levels, 3rd grade up.  She gave each student a bag of books and told them to find the one that they can read with ease.  While she'd planned to spend fifteen minutes on this endeavor,  they were having so much fun, it took half an hour.  Okay, her rationale was that they should enjoy reading in Spanish while learning English.  (Each book was written in both English and Spanish.)

After reading for a few minutes, one boy stood up and said, "I love this book!  I love reading!"

So she took the whole class to the library to find books that matched their reading levels, mostly in Spanish.  She recognized books she had read and one girl wanted to read the same books in Spanish. By the end of the class, every student and even the adult translator had checked out books to take home.  

They were clearly excited and New Teacher was ecstatic.  A boy stood up and said, "I love you!" to Day.

Another said to the translator, "This class was so much fun!  I'm not bored anymore."

After one of Marcus' friends overheard the previous teacher's rude comment, he went to the principal and reported it.  Nothing was done. There were other similar offenses, no action. (One was threatening them that if they spoke Spanish, the police could show up at their doors.) 

 "We have to tell your mom," Marcus' friend said.  "She won't let this keep happening."

And sure enough, they fired the. mean teacher and Day agreed to do whatever it took to get these kids in good hands, even if it meant teaching the class herself for the rest of the year.

"I love my new teacher," one student told her next teacher of the day.

"What's her name?" the teacher asked.

"Mrs. Learny!" the girl said. 

P.S.  During the pandemic, certified teachers have retired early and have left some classrooms to substitutes with no teaching experience or training.  The woman who shouted at the kids had been the substitute for the entire year.