Small Schools, Small Scale: Analyzing Program Models for English Language Learners in Rural High Schools

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

“A Midwestern Meatpacking Town Welcomes Immigrants.” “In A Small Missouri Town, Immigrants Turn To Schools For Help.” Headlines like these have increasingly appeared in the news in recent years as demographic shifts have increasingly changed the face of rural areas in the U.S. From 2000 to 2013, the percentage of students officially classified as English Language Learners (ELLs) doubled and over 300,000 students classified as ELL are now attending rural schools (Johnson et al., 2014). These changing demographics mean small town high schools increasingly need to build programs that support ELLs, programs that can be a challenge to build due to factors such as teacher and administrator turnover, time and resource limitations, small numbers of ELLs, or their distance from other schools with whom they can share knowledge and resources (e.g., Johnson et al., 2014; Barley & Wegner, 2010).

This poster is based on an ongoing study of literacy instruction for ELLs at 6 small town high schools. The researcher is spending 3-4 weeks on site at each school, attending ESL, English Language Arts (ELA), and Spanish language classes each day on site, taking observation notes during classes and writing up analytical notes at the end of each day. Other data sources include interviews with teachers, students, and administrators, classroom materials, and student writing samples.

The poster will contextualize the study by including data on the growth of linguistic minority populations in small town high schools. It will point to the limited research on the topic of ELLs in rural schools, focusing especially on issues of language program scale, funding challenges, limited professional development opportunities, and constant staff turnover. The bulk of the poster will focus on depicting the ELL support at three different schools, ranging from a school that multiple teachers characterized as “simply chasing funds” to a school where ELL students were put into specialized English sections that aligned more with an ELA curriculum than a traditional ESL curriculum. It will include information on how schools cope with challenges hiring, funding, and retaining ESL teachers, namely a dependence on technology via programs like Rosetta Stone while also harnessing the expertise of their Spanish language teachers. The presenter will be ready to discuss the implications of his work for faculty in teacher education and educational leadership programs.

Author

• Todd Ruecker, The University of New Mexico