🦇 Are All The Teachers Speakers

As a teacher, I use my voice all day, every day. It can be quite taxing, but since using this, I can remain mobile and everyone can still hear me without having to strain or raise my voice. the built in speaker is definitely loud enough for the entire class to hear me and the rechargeable battery lasts for weeks. The resource speaker does not intend to make people buy his ideas or have them at the edge of their seats. The goal of the resource speaker is either to provide information or show proven ways to implement something. The resource speaker is like a teacher who does not give grades. You must know the difference. These Teacher Day poems and wishes can be used by kids on cards or with gifts. Lessons Are Fun I'm happy you're my teacher; Thanks for all you do. You make learning easy; Your lessons are fun, too! By Joanna Fuchs. Poems for teachers must include short poems from little kids. Yes, Teachers are Public Speakers Too! Most possess the confidence and skills to speak to an individual, but public speaking for teachers is another thing altogether…. One of the essential characteristics of being an educator is the ability to communicate effectively. A person may be an expert on a particular subject, but if they are unable to communicate it well, the students’ learning will suffer. Funny Keynote Speaker for Teacher. Charles Marshall is a sought-after education speaker who captivates his audience. Speaking to educational organizations across the country, Charles proudly says “I believe in teachers.”. In fact, Charles credits his very existence to teachers. Since his parents met while they were teaching, he can honestly The Annual Teaching Plan is for History Grade 11 and contains a full-year annual teaching plan for Term 1, Term 2, Term 3, and Term 4. HISTORY-ATP-MEDIATION-GR10-12 Download. HISTORY-ATP-GR11 Download. NASIONALE-HERSTEL-JOP-GESKIEDENIS-GR11 Download. CysK3. Larry Ferlazzo Larry Ferlazzo is an English and social studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. Today’s post brings an end to a series that might be called “Everything you wanted to know about supporting ELLs to speak English but were afraid to ask.” Academic Talk’ Michele Kimball is a managing consultant at McREL International. Previously, she was a bilingual early-childhood educator and a national school support consultantMy advice to teachers of English-learners is basically the same as what I tell all educators I work with Students need to talk in class because the one doing the talking is the one doing the learning. Silence may have been golden back in the day, but it was never a teaching tool, it was just an expression of I say “talk,” I’m referring to academic talk. Sounding like a book involves rich vocabulary and habits of thought that need to be taught and learned, which is different from talk outside of the classroom. In other words, formal talk versus informal talk. Also, leading the conversation in the classroom makes students feel enormously proud of themselves. Alternating between direct instruction and small-group work, educators can gradually build each student’s knowledge base as well as can be scary for educators at first. Allowing students to do the verbal heavy lifting may look like chaos during a formal observation. That’s why a gradual release of responsibility, popularized by David Pearson and Margaret Gallagher in 1983, is so important. For learning to stick, educators have to move past the notion that they are the focal point of the classroom. By working gradual release into the process of vocabulary expansion and exploration, everybody has to grapple with the new knowledge, and nobody is left entirely on their own. For educators to be effective, we need to be PIE—purposeful, intentional, and explicit—in the the inundation of our lives by technology, all of us—and definitely students—are having fewer conversations. We also know that conversations oral language development or the lack thereof impact writing. As a result, all students, regardless of home language, need to be taught how to speak. Even highly literate adults are interacting these days largely via thumb-typed sentence fragments with lots of images. People are losing the ability to string enough ideas together to have a conversation. The needs of English-learners and English natives are merging. In essence, the process of acquiring academic English is basically the same for students of all language backgrounds, including native-English I would like to point out that speaking and writing are correlated. Writing in the classroom is normally thought of as quiet time, but ideas get explored in greater depth, with greater detail and more thoughtful vocabulary when students and adults have an opportunity to talk them over first. Guiding students toward using academic oral language with each other in the classroom is a key literacy tool. Talk Routines Cindy Garcia has been a bilingual educator for 15 years and is currently a districtwide specialist for P-6 bilingual/ESL mathematics. She is active on Twitter at CindyGarciaTX and on her blogIn order for students to develop their speaking skills, they need consistent and multiple opportunities daily to speak in English. How can routines during which all students are expected to take part in academic conversations be embedded in the daily classroom schedule? Before starting a math lesson, students can take part in a number talk. Students solve a computation problem and then share their reasoning. Before starting a science lesson, students can analyze an image and then discuss the connection to the concept they are learning. At the end of any lesson, students can complete a 3-2-1 exit ticket and then share one or multiple parts with different students. A 3-2-1 exit ticket asks students to share three things they learned, two questions they still have, and one idea that resonated with them. Going beyond think-pair-share and facilitating structured conversations can support students in developing speaking skills aligned to their grade level. One example of a structured conversation is QSSSA, which stands for question, signal, stem, share, and assess. The teacher shares and posts the question for students. The students use the given processing time to generate a response, and when they feel ready to share, they use the predetermined signal. A sentence stem or sentence frame is used by students. This ensures that students will speak in complete sentences and practice vocabulary that the teacher thinks is the most important. Once the signal has been given by all students, the student shares their response using the sentence frame. As students are sharing with each other, the teacher is listening and assessing students’ content understanding and speaking skills. Technology tools such as Flipgrid allow students to record themselves speaking. Flipgrid can help lower students’ affective filter because students can record a video or just the audio. Students can review their recording and redo their recording until they are satisfied. Flipgrid is fun and engaging for students because it has backgrounds, stickers, filters, and other tools they can use during their recordings. Students also have the opportunity to view/listen to each other’s recordings and leave positive comments. Translanguaging Lori Misaka is a teacher-librarian at Waipahu Intermediate School in Hawaii. She has been an English teacher working with multilingual students for eight years and served on the Hawaii state education department’s Multilingualism Policy Advisory Committee from 2020 to 2022Strategies to support ELLs in developing speaking skills begin with recognizing that they are not just “English-language learners” but are multilingual ML students who are proficient at translanguaging. Professor Ofelia García of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York explains that translanguaging is “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named and usually national and state languages.” In other words, what our ML students do naturally—combine their first languages with English to communicate with family and peers—allows them to use all of their language skills in a free-flowing, steady stream of conversation. Promoting translanguaging in your classroom encourages unhindered communication, without judgment or privileging English-only to encourage your multilingual students to develop speaking skills includeUsing multilingual word walls or personal dictionariesAdding phrases like “in any language” and “in English” to your learning objectives Do you include a language objective with your content objective? If not, try adding in speaking skills as part of your daily objectivesEncouraging students to use home languages when taking notes, labeling, filling in graphic organizers, students record short home-language videos for their familiesAllowing for home-language discussions in partners or small groups Learning greetings and key words in your students’ home languagesFinding and using resources in your students’ home languages Using translation sites, apps, and bilingual dictionaries content area glossariesIntentionally creating space for students to freely use their home languagesIncluding language info in getting-to-know-you activitiesSpeaking should not only happen in summative assessments or in formal settings. When students are encouraged to use all of their language skills daily in class discussion and activities, they will feel more confident in practicing their newly acquired language as well. My co-worker compared expecting students to speak only English with asking students to go through the school day with one arm tied behind their backs. Limiting communication in their home language limits learning and practicing English, as it inhibits thinking and great example of what ELLs can do when their home languages and cultures are incorporated into their learning is Waipahu Wayfinders, a summer program conducted in 2020 at Waipahu High School in Hawaii. Wayfinders was a unique opportunity for our multilingual students to learn how to transition to virtual learning during the pandemic while also creating tutorials for their classmates. I was part of a team of six teachers who led lessons in using Google Classroom, sending a professional email, and creating, sharing, and organizing files in Google Drive. We encouraged students to use their home languages with each other and to incorporate them into their assignments. As a final project, students made multilingual websites and screencast tutorials in Chuukese, Ilokano, Marshallese, Tongan, Samona, Tagalog, and English to share what they learned with their peers. These websites and tutorials have been shared with schools across Hawaii and in the Philippines and Marshall Islands. The amount of language produced during the four-week program, in English and in students’ home languages, was a constant, fluent stream, as students had to learn the tech skills and then produce their own tutorials. These students became resources for classmates and their families and gained confidence in their communication translanguaging in your classrooms and see how much your monolingual students learn from their multilingual peers and hear the language output of your MLs increase exponentially. Thanks to Michele, Cindy, and Lori for contributing their thoughts!This is the final post in a multipart series. You can see Part One here, Part Two here, Part Three here, and Part Four question of the week isWhat are the best ways to help English-language-learners develop speaking skills?In Part One, Laleh Ghotbi, Anastasia M. Martinez, Ivannia Soto, and Jody Nolf shared their Anastasia, Ivannia, and Jody were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows Part Two, Wendi Pillars, Jana Echevarria, and Isabel Becerra contributed Part Three, Irina McGrath, Ciera Walker, Chandra Shaw, and Keenan W. Lee offered lessons learned from their Part Four, Valentina Gonzalez and Julia López-Robertson wrote contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in can also contact me on Twitter at Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As Expert Strategies for a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones are not yet available. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 11 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list Was Another Busy School Year. What Resonated for You?How to Best Address Race and Racism in the ClassroomSchools Just Let Out, But What Are the Best Ways to Begin the Coming Year?Classroom Management Starts With Student EngagementTeacher Takeaways From the Pandemic What’s Worked? What Hasn’t?The School Year Has Ended. What Are Some Lessons to Close Out Next Year?Student Motivation and Social-Emotional Learning Present Challenges. Here’s How to HelpHow to Challenge Normative Gender Culture to Support All StudentsWhat Students Like and Don’t Like About SchoolTechnology Is the Tool, Not the TeacherHow to Make Parent Engagement MeaningfulTeaching Social Studies Isn’t for the Faint of HeartDifferentiated Instruction Doesn’t Need to Be a Heavy LiftHow to Help Students Embrace Reading. Educators Weigh In10 Strategies for Reaching English-Learners10 Ways to Include Teachers in Important Policy Decisions10 Teacher-Proofed Strategies for Improving Math InstructionGive Students a Role in Their EducationAre There Better Ways Than Standardized Tests to Assess Students? Educators Think SoHow to Meet the Challenges of Teaching ScienceIf I’d Only Known. Veteran Teachers Offer Advice for BeginnersWriting Well Means Rewriting, Rewriting, RewritingChristopher Emdin, Gholdy Muhammad, and More Education Authors Offer Insights to the FieldHow to Build Inclusive ClassroomsWhat Science Can Teach Us About LearningThe Best Ways for Administrators to Demonstrate LeadershipListen Up Give Teachers a Voice in What Happens in Their Schools10 Ways to Build a Healthier ClassroomEducators Weigh In on Implementing the Common Core, Even NowWhat’s the Best Professional-Development Advice? Teachers and Students Have Their SayPlenty of Instructional Strategies Are Out There. Here’s What Works Best for Your StudentsHow to Avoid Making Mistakes in the ClassroomLooking for Ways to Organize Your Classroom? Try Out These TipsWant Insight Into Schooling? Here’s Advice From Some Top ExpertsI am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column. The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications. Proposed changes to the New South Wales English syllabus reinforce the misguided idea that the teaching of language and literacy skills should fall chiefly to English teachers, leaving other teachers to focus more on their subject content. The plan follows a report by the NSW Education Authority NESA that found students’ writing standards had fallen sharply over recent years. The draft NSW English syllabus includes specific language and literacy outcomes such as grammar, punctuation, paragraphing and sentence structure, unlike the draft NSW maths syllabus which has no specific language outcomes. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the English Teachers Association said the changes “would hand them an unnecessary burden because literacy skills differ from subject to subject.” Linking language and literacy outcomes to the English syllabus in an attempt to improve students’ writing across all subjects is a flawed approach. It ignores important research on what all teachers need to know about language and gets in the way of students developing the different language skills they need in different subjects. It also risks disadvantaging students who are still learning English. Read more STEM education in primary schools will fall flat unless serious issues are addressed A recent report by the NSW Education Authority NESA found that students’ writing standards had fallen sharply over recent years. How does language work differently in different subject areas? Rather than learning lists of vocabulary or abstract grammar rules, students learn best when they get actively involved in their classroom learning. This means using many different language skills, such as listening to teachers’ explanations, taking notes and developing written arguments. But not all of these language skills can be transferred to different subjects in the same way. Take science, for example. We often think of it as a practical, hands-on subject rather than one focused on reading and writing. But students also need to read scientific explanations and write scientific reports. They also need to use complex language skills to explain, present and test scientific ideas. Skilled science teachers understand and plan for those bits of scientific language that students find difficult. Confusion can arise when a word that means one thing in everyday language means quite another thing in science – like “culture”, when we mean to grow bacteria or cells, or “medium”, when we mean the liquid that bacteria or cells grow in. Students also need to know that in science, unlike in English, the subject of the sentence is not as important as the concept or process we are talking about. So instead of saying, “we saw the water droplets”, we would often say “water droplets were observed”. We also tend to use more economical language in science than in the English classroom. So, it’s a “saltwater solution” rather than “a liquid solution with salt in it” and “condensation” rather than “that thing that happens when water condenses”. We can’t expect English teachers to anticipate these science-specific language challenges. Maths is also often thought of as a “language-free” subject, even though language is essential for understanding and communicating maths. But mathematical language is best taught in the context of doing maths. Some everyday words such as “product” and “domain” mean something quite different in maths, while different terms like “times” and “multiply” mean the same thing. This can be challenging when English is not your first language. Science isn’t just about experiements; it is about reading and writing, too. Shutterstock What about students who don’t speak English as a first language? In NSW schools, 24% of students speak English as an additional language. They have to learn multiple facts, figures and skills in a language that they are still learning. They need their teachers to be able to understand their language challenges and to give them subject-specific language support so they can succeed at school like everyone else. Yet, many teachers say they don’t feel well prepared to teach English language learners. Teachers need to have professional development opportunities available to make sure they are supported to meet the challenges they face in the classroom. Read more Language matters in science and mathematics - here’s why What does the research say? Researchers argue that because all learning involves language, language and literacy should be taught explicitly across all school subjects. Language must be understood and learned in context, not outsourced to English teachers and taught as generic “skills”. If we want to improve the writing of all students, we need to give them lots of practice in using different vocabulary, grammar and text structures in their different school subjects. Then they can learn language at the same time as they are learning about new concepts and contexts. This is particularly important for students who are new to English. Simply dropping them in an all-English learning environment or giving them simplified English will not work. In Australia, the language challenges faced by students from different backgrounds are all too often invisible to teachers. We need this to change. If we are serious about making education fair and inclusive, then all subject teachers should share responsibility for teaching language. All teachers are white. That’s what Estefania Rodriguez believed as a kid going to school in Hartford, Connecticut. When she was four years old, she and her family fled violence in their native Colombia and moved to the United States. “Pretty much life or death,” she says. Her father, a bench jeweler “My dad fixes jewelry; I don’t have any”, and housekeeper mother settled in Hartford. “Housing projects, very dangerous neighborhoods. I know what gunshots sound like,” says Rodriguez, who is getting her master’s in the Learning and Teaching Program. Her favorite thing was going to the library with her mother. “We didn’t have a lot,” Rodriguez says, “but I always had books.” One thing she never had, as far as she can remember, is a white classmate. “I don’t want to exaggerate,” she says, “but I don’t think there was spone in the schools I went to.” It was nearly the opposite with teachers. Her kindergarten teacher was a Puerto Rican woman who spoke Spanish and English, but “besides that, all teachers were white in elementary school, all of them were white in middle school other than, I believe, my PE teacher. In high school, same trend,” Rodriguez says. In public schools today, minority students are — well, it’s probably time to stop referring to them as the minority. According to the Department of Education, about 50 percent of the public school student population is nonwhite a percentage that’s expected to increase for years to come. The statistic that concerns many, from the federal government to states to districts to schools to individual teachers, is that 80 percent of public school teachers are white. Why does it matter if most minority students have white teachers? For starters, a Center for American Progress study titled America’s Leaky Pipeline for Teachers of Color reports that minority teachers have higher expectations of minority students, provide culturally relevant teaching, develop trusting relationships with students, confront issues of racism through teaching, and become advocates and cultural brokers. Lecturer Sarah Leibel, a master teacher in charge of the English/language arts strand and overall recruiting for the Ed School’s new Harvard Teacher Fellows HTF Program, mentions how, in literature, students need “mirrors and windows,” meaning they can see them themselves in stories and also experience unfamiliar worlds. “I see people similarly,” she says, noting that in her recruiting for HTF, they actively look for a diverse cohort of students who will then become teachers. “It’s really important that students have people who reflect back to them their language, their culture, their ethnicity, their religion. It doesn’t mean all the people in their lives have to do that mirroring, but they should have some. And we know that in the teaching profession, there really are not enough mirrors.” In other words, not enough role models. “When I was a teacher in the Bronx, I would get off the train with my little tie on and my khakis and would walk into the neighborhood to go to the school,” says Lecturer Eric Shed, director of HTF. “Everybody else with a suit and tie was going the opposite way, to hop on the train to go to downtown Manhattan to go make some money. That image of a man of color walking into this neighborhood to serve the community has subtle but unbelievably profound effects.” Edverette Brewster, also a master’s student in the Learning and Teaching Program, has his own tie story from his time as a middle school English teacher in Boston. During one “switch-up day,” students came to school dressed like their teachers. “There were so many kids wearing bowties like mine,” he says, laughing. “Even if they don’t even realize it at the time, your students are always watching your moves. I’m very cognizant of that and always watching what I’m doing” — to the point that he would never buy a bottle of wine in the neighborhood. “If I did, it would have to be a covert operation; I’d have to wear a hoodie so the kids don’t see Mr. Brewster walking into a liquor store,” he says. Rodriguez focused on social studies education at Boston University as an undergraduate and, most recently, taught middle school social studies at a turnaround school, what she describes as “the lowest-achieving school for over 25 years in Hartford,” where 100 percent of students were black or Latino and qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. “I really wanted to do this for my community. It’s my home,” she says. “As dedicated and passionate as my white teachers were, there was always that last layer that they never understood, which comes with life experiences and cultural background. I don’t ever make the argument that only teachers of color can teach students of color. Not at all. But eventually you realize, wow, there are a lot of things I was never taught. You start to realize your people have a history and a story in this country, and so do blacks and Asians and pretty much every ethnic minority.” As a student at the Ed School, she wanted to learn how “to fix this problem of not having teachers of color.” She knows some of the challenges, like how black and Latino students are far less likely to graduate from high school or college or pass teacher-certification exams than their white counterparts, which results in a shallower candidate pool. Still, she wonders How do you recruit teachers? And, once you do, how do you support them so they don’t leave the profession? Like many districts, Boston Public Schools BPS has initiatives to encourage minorities to become teachers 14 percent of bps students are white, compared with more than 60 percent of bps teachers. Assistant Superintendent of Human Capital Emily Kalejs Qazilbash, mentions recruitment trips to historically black colleges and universities, a “community-to-teacher” program that offers college graduates with a four-year degree a pathway to becoming teachers, getting successful high school students to consider careers in the classroom, and hiring teachers beginning in March instead of the summer like many other districts. “It’s not quite chicken-and-egg, but it’s a cycle,” she says. “You’re a black student or you’re a Hispanic student, you don’t really see black or Hispanic teachers, so it’s not really on your mind to go into teaching. We say the pithy statement, You can’t be what you don’t see.’” Professor Susan Moore Johnson, and her colleagues at the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, including Nicole Simon, and Stefanie Reinhorn, interviewed 142 teachers and administrators in six high-achieving but high-poverty schools in Massachusetts. “One school was having trouble recruiting teachers of color because the teachers of color they had were leaving, so then the remaining teachers would feel isolated and leave too,” she says. “In schools that have very few teachers of color, they are treated — the word token is really alarming to a lot of people, so I’m careful about using it. But it means that individual teachers are being asked to speak for an entire race.” One of the interviewees said being the sole black male teacher “almost feels like I’m in someone else’s house, intruding.” Another, talking about recruiting strategies, mentioned looking for clues on resumes. “We would be like, Oh, my God, I think this is a person that … look at her last name! She speaks Spanish! Let’s try to get her in here right away.’” A study released last September, The State of Teacher Diversity in American Education by the Albert Shanker Institute, examined nine cities across the country and found that only in Los Angeles were minority teachers the majority. Historically, the gulf wasn’t always so vast. Before Brown v. Board of Education, primarily black teachers taught black students. Following the 1954 ruling that desegregated public schools, however, many schools serving black students closed, and those students started attending schools that had been white only. Tens of thousands of black teachers and principals were out of work. By the late 1980s, the Ford Foundation, partnering with the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, made a widely cited commitment of more than $60 million for recruiting minority teachers. And it helped — a bit Today, the federal government and more than half of all states have initiatives in place to recruit minorities to teach in public schools. The challenge is keeping them in the profession. According to one estimate, some 47,600 minorities became teachers in 2003–04. Unfortunately, by the end of the school year, more than 56,000 minority teachers overall had left the profession. And that, many say, is a big part of the problem. As the Shanker Institute study points out, “It makes no sense to put substantial effort into recruiting minority candidates to teach in schools serving disadvantaged students if large numbers of those same teachers then leave those schools in a few years.” Johnson agrees. “We’ve made progress over the last 15 years in recruiting more teachers of color, but I think the real story is that turnover becomes this big undertow,” she says. “Virtually everybody concludes that this has to do with the fact that high-minority schools — which is where teachers of color want to be — are on average more dysfunctional as organizations.” Johnson says minorities who are unhappy in their schools are more likely to leave the profession than white teachers, who are more inclined to transfer to wealthier schools. “I think it’s really important to keep it clear that there are really successful schools serving high-poverty student populations that actually are supportive workplaces,” Johnson says. “It’s just, there aren’t enough of them.” While growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, Brewster always imagined he was an elementary school teacher like his mom, with his Power Rangers figurines morphing into his students. “Weird, I know,” the 25-year-old says, laughing. Yet for a sixth-grade project about careers he picked … law. “Usually when people label you as smart, your career options become lawyer or doctor or engineer,” he says. Brewster studied public policy at Vanderbilt and then planned to do a two-year Teach For America TFA stint before attending law school. TFA took him to Boston. He never got around to the whole law school thing. “Yes, I want my students to write better,” Brewster says, “but a lot of the reason I became a teacher was to show them there is an alternate reality to some of the things they’re dealing with. “I think it’s important for students to see people who look like them. It’s going to be easier for them to listen or understand where a person is coming from, to a certain degree. But any teacher — no matter the race or age — you have to build relationships and get to know your students. I think that’s why I’ve had success. Not just because I’m black.” Rodriguez says she was more “second mom” than “history teacher” at her school in Hartford. “I wish I could say I stuck to teaching, but I’ve had to help students get through really traumatic experiences, just kind of giving them the love and attention they require in the moment,” she says. “And when I did teach, I really didn’t teach history because my students couldn’t read. I had to incorporate literacy skills and math skills and science skills into my lessons because the students were failing in so many different areas.” Choosing education as a career baffled her parents. “My dad, he always said that teaching was important work, but his expectations were higher You’re going to be a teacher? You could be an astronaut!’” she says. “People think of medicine and engineering as these highly professional careers that involve a lot of training, a lot of knowledge, a lot of intelligence, a lot of integrity,” Leibel says, “but people don’t always think of teaching that way. The more that we can do to show people that teaching is complex, that’s it’s admirable, and that it’s really a profession that involves a lot of skills and knowledge, the more we can raise the standard for what teaching looks like and who’s attracted to it.” Or as Brewster puts it “I think paying teachers more money could attract more people to the profession, but I don’t think anybody will solve this problem until, on a global scale, there’s an appreciation for the craft of teaching.” Rodriguez says that, too often, “one exceptional kid is labeled as the one who’s going to make it out of the ’hood. Why would that person become a teacher? There has to be an understanding that this is a profession that takes you into the community to do good work. Unfortunately, success is usually framed by what kind of job can get you out of the community. “There is this connotation that, as a person of color, you’re already less intelligent, so of course you would go into work that people perceive as not as hard compared to being a doctor or lawyer,” Rodriguez says. “I’ve struggled with that. I’ve had to prove or argue how I’m in education because I’m a woman of color, not because I’ve settled on education. I actually chose education.” With the new HTF Program, following an intensive summer training program, the 20 Harvard College graduates in the first class of fellows will take teaching residencies at urban public schools in Brooklyn, New York; Denver; and Oakland, California, then make a four- to seven-year commitment to stay in the classroom. “By making this a high-profile program where Harvard College students — the best of the best’ — are committing to this career, we think it can have a profound ripple effect and implication about what it means to be a teacher,” Shed says. Having spent the last year at Harvard as a student, Brewster says, “It’s so much easier than teaching because I’m only concerned about myself for a year and not 50 students.” Teacher “burnout,” he says, “is real.” It’s easy to see why as Brewster describes his job title at his middle school “English teacher, counselor, mentor, father, spiritual adviser.” Shed mentioned a similar list from one of the readings in the course he taught this past spring “One of the authors says, Teachers must be expert psychologists, cops, rabbis, priests, judges, gurus, and, paradoxically, students of our students.’” Brewster would knock on doors after answering a phone call from a parent saying, “I don’t know where my child is. Can you please help?” Driving students to and from school, giving them money for food, mentoring boys who were never even in his class. “I’m not their parent, but I feel responsible,” Brewster says. He calls one former student his son. “He goes to church with me on Sundays. He got baptized last year,” he says. But “there were days when I’m in the [school] parking lot like, I can’t do this.’ But I’d say, If I don’t do this, who will?’” Rodriguez says she cooked meals, purchased winter coats, helped parents fill out job applications, visited juvenile detention centers, attended funerals. “I don’t think these things don’t happen in more affluent schools, but this was like a daily thing,” she says. When she got to the Ed School, she realized, “I don’t have any money in savings. Where did it all go? Oh, my students.” She points out that while all of the students in her school in Hartford were black or Latino, she estimates she was one of only five minority teachers. “Five teachers out of an entire building is just not enough,” she says. “If you’re the only teacher of color in a school, you become the house mom for all the students of color. It’s not sustainable if there’s one of you to meet the needs of so many.” Plus, being labeled the “Latina teacher” gave her a sense that she needed to outperform her colleagues, who were mostly white, middle-class women. Rodriquez was athletic director, coached basketball and volleyball, ran student council, and wrote curriculum for the district. William Hayes, is principal of a Camden, New Jersey, charter middle school, and he understands the challenges affecting teachers in high-poverty urban schools. Some of his students are in gangs or victims of sexual assault or have witnessed drug usage. “Any murder that occurs in the city of Camden, it’s likely that our students are one to two degrees of separation away from the person who was the victim,” he says. One way to prevent minority teacher burnout, Hayes says, is to make sure one or two people aren’t shouldering the social-justice load. At his school, white, black, and Latino/bilingual teachers each make up a third of the staff. The front office workers are Latino. Assistant principals are black, white, male, female. “I think it’s important that staff can have a personal connection with students,” Hayes says. “As a black male, I have experienced what it is to go out into society and nobody cares what you know, to go into college and it’s assumed you don’t know much, or to have people make stereotypical comments. Those are things that aren’t going to be written into the literature books or the math books, but they need to be part of the conversation. We’re not afraid to articulate You are black, you are Latino; it’s not going to be easy for you, but we want you to be successful despite living in a society that doesn’t necessarily honor that.” Johnson says that, in general, the issues of the workplace that matter — to teachers of all races — are much the same strong principal, instructional autonomy, decision-making influence. “I don’t think districts for the most part are successful because they deal with the issue of diversity itself apart from the other challenges of making sure that all their schools work well for all kids,” she says. In December, Hayes and colleagues in Detroit and Washington, incorporated the Philadelphia-based Fellowship, an alliance of black educators that will organize a convening four times a year. More than 120 participants signed up for the first one held last year. Some discussed what it was like, in Hayes’ words, “to be the sole advocate for students of color at their school. It was an opportunity to think, share, and vent. And also to motivate and encourage.” Across the country, there are other groups. One in Boston called meoc, or Male Educators of Color. There’s the mister Initiative Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models in South Carolina, the Minority Teacher Identification and Enrichment Program in Illinois, Teach Tomorrow in Oakland, and too many others to list. The federal government’s teach campaign, which included recruitment visits to colleges campuses like Morehouse by film director Spike Lee, has a goal of recruiting 1 million teachers in the next 10 years, with an emphasis on diversity. Hayes even met with Secretary of Education John King last November about how better to recruit and retain minority teachers. “In some instances,” Hayes says, “this movement is in its grassroots phase. But all students, white students — I think that this country — can benefit by viewing people of color in positions of power that they trust and respect and grow to love.” For exactly this reason, writes Gloria Ladson-Billings, a black professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in a recent essay in Ed Week, “There is something that may be even more important than black students having black teachers, and that is white students having black teachers. It is important for white students to encounter black people who are knowledgeable. What opportunities do white students have to see and experience black competence?” And white students, Rodriguez says, are ready. She mentions a friend, a minority teacher in an affluent district, who teaches her white students about racial inequality and institutional racism. “I say, Wait, you did a lesson on what?’ But white students want to talk about these issues.” Looking ahead, Brewster recently agreed to return to his school in Dorchester for at least a year after graduating. That’s as much as he knows right now. But there is that pull. He mentions a minority friend who teaches in the suburbs. She has told him about the guilt she deals with because she left a high-poverty school for a more affluent one. “I left my kids, and I don’t feel OK with that sometimes,” she’ll tell him. Has he considered a similar move to a suburban school? “Honestly? I don’t know if I could. I really don’t.” But has he thought about it? “It’s something I have possibly thought about, yes.” Johnson, the Harvard professor, pauses when asked if minorities will make up a larger percentage of public school teachers 10 years from now. “I don’t even know how to answer that. I honestly don’t,” she says. “It’s not gone in a good direction lately. And I don’t feel at all confident that public education is going to attract and retain teachers of color unless schools where they want to teach become better places for them to work.” Rodriguez says she isn’t sure what she’ll do after graduating from Harvard. “My heart’s in the classroom, but my role as a teacher for the last four years was unsustainable,” she says. “I’d hate to be one of those statistics, one of those teachers of color who burn out.” Many of her Harvard colleagues are also from low-achieving state turnaround schools. “We’re all thinking, Can I go back into the classroom? Or should I make an impact in education some other way?’” Read The Challenges of Recruiting and Hiring Teachers of Color by Simon, Johnson, and Reinhorn. So, you’re thinking about teaching English as a non-native speaker. Awesome. As someone who has learnt English as a second language, you’re incredibly well placed to teach others. You’ve been through the process of learning English as a second language, so you can be a role model for your students. As someone who speaks English well, you’ll also have tips and tricks to pass on. Unfortunately, discriminatory hiring practices are still quite common in the ESL industry, even as awareness of native speakerism more on that shortly has grown. That said, there are still plenty of ways for you to find work as a non-native English speaker and help and inspire learners of this post, you’ll discover the advantages you have over native speakers as well as how you can find work in ESL teaching, both online and overseas. Pro TipIf you want to become a qualified online language teacher and earn a living from home, I recommend checking out CeOLT Certificate of Online Language Teaching.Click here to find out moreTeaching English As A Non-Native Speaker – Is It Possible?The short answer is yes, of course. In fact, the majority of English language teachers in the world are non-native speakers, and they’re mostly working in state schools around the world. Non-native speakers also now outnumber native speakers. However, the ESL industry hasn’t quite caught up with the reality of the situation. So unfortunately, you will find job adverts that say – native English speakers addition, certain countries only issue visas for ESL teachers to holders of particular passports, thus narrowing the definition of “native speaker” even seems strange in an era of English as a Lingua Franca where there are more speakers of English as a second language than as a first. Also, students don’t necessarily have a preference for learning with a native speaker. But the problems of discrimination have been going on for decades in ESL and old habits are hard to change. The issue of native speakerism remains ever present, The good news is that as a non-native speaker, you have unique advantages that you can emphasize in order to find jobs or get students to work with you. The 4 Unique Advantages Non-Native Teachers Have Over Native English TeachersAs a non-native speaker, you have several advantages that can help you stand out from native English speakers, attract students to work with you and encourage and inspire them to develop their English language skills. 1. You're A Walking Advert For Your ServicesFirstly, as a non-native speaker, you’re often the best advert for your services. Your English skills show your students what’s possible for them as a learner of English. Elena Mutonono is originally from Ukraine and used to be an accent coach for English learners. As someone with a native-like accent in English, she could open her mouth and show students what’s possible by using her LinkedEnglish method for perfecting your pronunciation. 2. You Can Empathise With And Encourage Your StudentsSecondly, as someone who has gone from zero to fluent in English, you know that it's a long and difficult process with highs and non-native speakers, we've been going the same road of learning the language from scratch. We know the obstacles, the feelings of frustration that arise and can help psychologically and emotionally too, overcoming the fear of making mistakes for example. And we can also encourage students that learning a language is a never-ending process. We always learn something new. It is basically a lifestyle. Maria Glazunova, English teacher and author of How To Reduce Your Time Preparing for Online Classes and Prevent Emotional Burnout. You can also help them feel less alone by sharing your struggles with can identify with your potential clients much better and tell them that you too have struggled with a particular topic and this is how you overcame it. It was surprising for many of my clients to hear that I have struggled and still struggle and will always struggle with the use of articles in English because we don't have them in the Russian language. It allowed them to go easy on themselves and not feel bad about making mistakes if their teacher had struggled with the same stuff too. Elena Mutonono 3. You Often Know Your Students' Native LanguageThirdly, you can help your students better because you often know their native language. Dr Sania Jardine from the teaches German learners told me that it reassures them to know they can always switch back into German if need be, in case they get stuck, while also developing strategies to get unstuck without is another example of a speaker of English as a second language with both a high level and experience living and working in the UK as a foreigner. It can be reassuring for students to work with someone who speaks their language. We occasionally have a German moment' in the session where we switch into reflection mode'. That's a space where students have a chance to reflect on their experience without worrying about their language skills. Dr Sania JardineYou also have more insight regarding where learners' mistakes come non-native teacher speaking students' first language can trace back students' errors and explain how the interference of the first language in the second language happened. In case of interference, explaining this to students, making them aware of interference and comparing two languages is more effective than just telling students that they say/write is wrong. Ana Jovic, teacher of English and Serbian 4. You Can Share Your English Learning TipsFinally, you can share your unique tips and tricks for learning English. While many native English speakers have learned a second language to a high level, they haven’t learned English as a second language! Zdenek from Zdenek’s English podcast is Czech and a teacher of ESL. He created the podcast to develop his own English skills so he could become a teacher. What an inspiration to his students! And a real example of the dedication it takes to become proficient in the language you’re learning. As non-native teachers who speak learners' language, we know exactly where they struggle. We can tell them what hurdles we dealt with when learning the language we teach and how we overcame those hurdles. Elborg Nopp, teacher of English Do I Need A Qualification?It’s always best to have a qualification if you want to teach ESL as this will give you access to the widest range of jobs. It’s also an advantage to have a bachelor’s degree in any subject. Look for an accredited 120-hour or 160-hour course such as CeOLT or CELTA which includes teaching practice hours. To get onto either of these courses, you’ll need to have at least a C1 level of English. That’s why it’s also a good idea to take an English proficiency test such as IELTS, TOEFL, CPE or CAE so that you can prove your looking for teaching work, you may also need to upload your test results on online platforms to work there or present it during the recruitment process. Unfortunately, discrimination rears its ugly head again here as some companies will recruit native speakers with no qualifications. Being a native speaker doesn’t necessarily make someone a good teacher. So surely everyone should have to have a teaching qualification? The good news is that with a combination of a teaching qualification, a degree and your experience learning English to a high standard, you can attract your own students as well as work for some companies or online teaching platforms. Where To Work Or Find Students As A Non-Native Speaker Unfortunately, some parts of the world are hard to work in as a non-native speaker due to visa restrictions. These countries are China, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. But that still leaves plenty of places where you could work, including from home as an online ESL teacher. Companies Here are some examples of companies you could apply for. I include these only as examples and haven’t vetted them so please do your due diligence before applying. If you’re based in the Philippines and you speak English, you’re in luck. Chinese online education company 51 Talk only hires Filippinos to give online English classes to Chinese students. You can also go for jobs with some of the big “chains” that are well-known in the English language teaching world, such as the British Council, International House and companies don’t specify “native speakers only” in their recruitment and will consider applications from non-native speakers. Here are a few more online schools that will consider your application is an online school where you give individual or small group classes to English learners in central Europe. They require you to be a native speaker of English, Polish, Czech, Slovak, or Spanish and to be a qualified teacher of English. Engoo requires you to be proficient in English, at least 18 years of age and have high speed internet plus a headset and webcam. They provide the lesson plans and you’ll be teaching students in Japan and Taiwan mostly. The recruitment process involves giving a demo lesson. Learnlight also recruits teachers who have proficiency in the language they want to teach as well as a teaching qualification and at least 2 years of experience. There’s a one year commitment as well as a minimum number of teaching hours to give. Online Platforms You can “work” on online teaching platforms such as iTalki, Verbling and Preply, although iTalki specifies that you need to be “near-native”. Verbling requires you to have a C2 level in the language you want to these platforms don’t guarantee a certain number of hours, nor do they provide you with teaching materials. And of course you’ll need a decent internet connection, webcam and microphone. To be listed on the platforms, you’ll upload an intro video and if students would like to take classes with you, they can book them. You’ll also need to provide copies of any proficiency certificates so they can confirm your level, if required. You can set your own rates on the platform, but they will take a commission – the rate varies according to the platform. And you should be registered as self-employed in your country. Build Your Own ESL Teaching Business If teaching for companies or freelancing on platforms doesn’t sound appealing, why not strike out on your own and find students? Creating your own ESL teaching business can be an excellent way to avoid the “native speaker” requirements of certain schools. You can also highlight your experiences as an English learner and show how you managed to learn the language to a high level. Perhaps your experience led you to create your own English learning method which you can share with your students. You can share your experience of English learning in blog posts, on social media or in a podcast. In fact, talking about how learning English has changed your life could inspire students to work with you. It’s certainly a more compelling message than “learn with a native speaker”. And of course, there’s always the school system in your country. In fact, when you take into account all the teachers of English as a second language in school systems, non-native speakers are by far the biggest group of ESL teachers in the world! Just as non-native speakers are now the biggest group of English speakers in the world. If you're serious about starting your own online teaching business, I recommend checking out the CeOLT Certification of Online Language Teaching programme, which includes an in-depth “business” section, in addition to it's comprehensive teacher training can find out more about CeOLT English As A Non-Native Speaker – Final ThoughtsIf you’re a non-native speaker of English, you’re in good company – the majority of ESL teachers are non-natives too! And speakers of English as a second language outnumber native speakers. Non-native speakers are the future. Sadly, the ESL industry hasn’t really caught up to this and “native-speakerism” and discrimination continue to be issues within the profession. But you’re actually in a great position not only to teach but also to attract students thanks to your English proficiency. The fact that you’ve learned English to a high level shows students what’s possible for them. Plus you can share the methods and resources you used to achieve your English skills.

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