The power of inclusion
With the Latino population growing across the country, schools are having to deal with teaching ESL. Some schools are providing forward thinking programs to support the education of Latino students including this school in Walworth County.
So while it might surprise a visitor to this small city in Walworth County that Latino children are just shy of 40% of the district enrollment, longtime residents know the stories of families drawn to the area by a range of jobs, including work at nearby farms, canneries and resorts.
But despite the rich ethnic diversity, youths in this district of a little more than 2,700 students often found themselves on different academic tracks for years, based on how quickly they could grasp the difference between scene and seen or wade through vocabulary words specific to a chemistry class.
Thats changing this year as the district pushes to better integrate English language learners into mainstream classrooms, pairing up content-area teachers with those who previously specialized in English as a Second Language or bilingual education.
…Some additional changes are in the works to better support Delavan-Darien’s English language learners, Deavers said.
This past fall, DPI provided Spanish and Hmong translations for parts of the state achievement tests for the first time. Of students with limited English proficiency in the state, nearly 60% are Latino and about 30% are Hmong.
“We should get a better measure of what the kids actually know,” Deavers said of the new translation accommodation.
It’s interesting that taking steps as providing tests in the students’ primary language is unique enough that it is a story in the news paper. We need to move forward enough that this is common place, and that students are given the proper tools to learn, no matter their primary language.
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