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Taylor Manrique
ELL Teacher Interview- Final
T&L 333
7 December 2017
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The teacher I decided to interview for this final project is a very experienced teacher of

20 plus years, Michelle Gress, a long-time family friend. I decided to interview her because she

has a lot of teaching experience with ELLs and non-ELLs, not to mention that she is a very

respected teacher in the East Valley School District, so I thought she would be the perfect person

to interview for this final. She has also spent much of her teaching career trying to learn the ins

and outs of how to effectively teach ELL students and make their experience in school enjoyable

and educational, which I really admire. For this interview, Mrs.Gress was kind enough to allow

me to voice record the interview, which allowed me to actually listen and comprehend what she

was saying, instead of focusing on writing down vivid notes. The school that she teaches at is a

school she has been teaching at for almost her entire career, Moxee Elementary, a school located

in Moxee, WA. Mrs. Gress can be reached by email at gress.michele@evsd90.wednet.edu, or by

school phone at (509)573-7700 ext. 7709.

I began the interview by asking Mrs.Gress how much experience/how long she has been

working with English Language Learners(ELL), she mentioned to me how she has always had at

least of few ELL students in her classroom, especially because of the fact that the Yakima Valley

is predominately Hispanic. However, she made the effort herself to learn more about how to

teach these particular students in an effective way, which is very honorable in my eyes,

especially since there are not enough teachers in many school districts who are capable of

teaching a student that English is not their primary language. Shortage of qualified ELL teachers

is something that Mrs.Gress stressed during our interview, especially because teachers need to

have experience and qualifications so that the ELL students can be taught well, if not, then the

students will suffer.

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The topic of her experience led to me asking her what the most challenging part of

teaching ELL students was, and without even thinking about it she said that the most challenging

part is making sure the students understand the vocabulary, even if they claim that they do. This

was not surprising to me considering transitioning from one language’s sentence structure to the

way English sentences are structured cannot be easy, especially for a young student, which is

something we have discussed in all of the T&L courses I have taken so far. If her students do not

understand a word, then Mrs.Gress gives them another definition of the word, or shows them a

picture, or asks a classmate to translate the word for the student in their primary language. She

also does not just tell the student they are wrong if they get something wrong, she does things

like repeating the sentence in the correct way so they can identify what they did wrong. This is

something we have talked about many times in this T&L course throughout the semester, and I

have even used this strategy in role-play activities in class. We have discussed that this is an

effective strategy for correcting an ELL student because they will not feel discouraged and they

will be able to identify their mistake(s) on their own. I am going to use this with my students in

the future.

At the end of answering that question, Mrs.Gress got into talking about her ELL students

taking the WASL(state test) and how one of her students did not understand what a loaf of bread

was. This topic led to my next question, which was about accommodations for ELLs for state

tests and just tests in general. Although they cannot use dictionaries or anything like that, she did

say that they are allowed to be taken into a separate room with an ELL teacher and have the

instructions read to them as many times as they need in their primary language. This was good to

know as in the video we watched in class about the Hispanic boy who could not read the

directions on his tests, was given no help and no accommodations to help him
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succeed(Immersion, YouTube, 2009), it was nice to know that at Moxee Elementary they do

something to help their ELL students on state tests. The fact that some ELL students are allowed

nothing to help them succeed on state tests, without it being considered cheating, is a very

striking issue to me. Giving those students absolutely no accommodations for state tests when

they are unable to speak or comprehend English, especially when it is written, seems to be a

form of punishment for the child, which is not right. How can they prove their knowledge or

show their progress on an assessment if they do not know what the text is saying/asking? Even if

it is something as small as a Spanish to English dictionary, some kind of accommodation should

be provided for ELL students during all tests, until they no longer need them.

The next question I asked Mrs.Gress regarded how she became prepared and what helped

her prepare the most to teach ELL students. She told me how she was forced to learn some

Spanish when she taught in kindergarten, because the students could not translate for each other

like they can in older grades. However, the biggest thing that prepared her is the GLAD(guided

language acquisition design) program her and her colleagues go through. She said this program

provided units from each subject and gives strategies on how to teach each subject to ELLs. She

also mentioned how her students really love the GLAD program, especially her ELL students, so

it is really easy for her to incorporate the strategies in her classroom. Mrs.Gress talks about how

in the GLAD program, the topic they always discussed was sheltered instruction and strategies

on how to use it, as well as how vital it is to all students, but ELL/ESL students especially.

According to Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners, sheltered instruction is

grade-level content instruction that is given in English, but in a way ELLs can comprehend

better(Echevarria & Graves, 2011, pg. 92). Mrs.Gress uses many hands-on and visual strategies

in her classroom to cater the sheltered instruction method. The emphasis on the importance of
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sheltered instruction from Mrs.Gress was also how we described it in class and what the book

says about it, that it is very important. In class, we also talked about how things such as word

walls, posters, and group work could help ELL students comprehend instructions better. The

book suggests that this strategy is very helpful to ELLs success in learning English as their

second language. Although we have talked about GLAD before in class, I have never heard of it

being a program for teachers to use as a guide for their ELL students, which I thought was very

helpful and interesting. I learned that this is something I can use after I am graduated from

college to keep expanding my knowledge on how to teach ELL students, and get ideas on

activities and strategies to help them learn in my classroom. This program is something that

should be introduced to all teachers in the education system because it is very helpful and useful.

Even if a teacher is not specialized to teach ELL students, every teacher should have the ability

to teach ELL students, because anyone could have an ELL student placed in their classroom, a

student who deserves to learn from a teacher who can teach them effectively.

For the next question, I asked Mrs.Gress about the kind of system that her school uses for

ELLs, such as the Pull-Out ESL method. She told me that her school does use the Pull-Out ESL

method, which takes the ELL students out of their mainstream classroom for 30 minutes a day,

3-4 days a week. She said every year it switches for which subject the ELL students are pulled

out for. For example, last year the students were pulled out during reading and writing, but this

year they are pulled out during math and science. The Pull-Out ESL Moxee Elementary uses is

the same method described in the textbook, which says thatPull-Out ESL is where the ELL

students go to another classroom where they are provided instruction for 30-60 minutes a day, 2-

3 times a week(Wright, 2010, pg. 107). The textbook also mentions how this program is one of

the least effective models that schools can use, which is the same implication that Mrs.Gress
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used when she was describing it to me. Mrs.Gress and the textbook both mention that this

method makes ELL students feel uninvolved with their peers and makes them feel as though they

are not as smart as their peers because they have to have more instruction in a different room.

During class discussions on this topic, we have discussed how we do not particularly like this

method for the same reasons Mrs.Gress and the book listed. I have learned that it would probably

be more effective if schools, such as Moxee Elementary, tried another strategy to help their ELL

students, a strategy that allows them to always stay in their mainstream classroom. A strategy

that schools can use that is effective, is the Pull-In ESL method, which is where the teacher

comes into the classroom to help the ELL student and work with their mainstream teacher

collaboratively(Wright, 2010, pg. 108). This strategy allows the ELL student(s) to stay in their

mainstream classroom at all times, but still get the one-on-one instruction that they may need

throughout the day.

Getting on the topic of the Pull-Out ESL method, I asked Mrs.Gress if she liked this

system, or if she preferred that her ELL students stay in their mainstream classroom. She said

that she prefers that all of her students stay in their mainstream classroom at all times. The reason

for that is she can see that, especially in older grades, they feel isolated from their peers and do

not quite understand why they have to be put in a different room to be taught the same thing that

all of their other peers are learning. She believes that staying in the mainstream classroom with

help coming to them is the most effective, which is basically what the textbook says and what we

have talked about in class. This is something I agree with, especially hearing the perspective of a

very experienced teacher and hearing all of the other methods in class and from the book that are

much more popular and effective. I have learned that although the Pull-Out ESL method is a
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strategy that schools can use, it is not the only one, so school districts should explore their

options and keep an open-mind when deciding on a method to use in their schools.

The topic of students feeling isolated from their peers got us on the question of if she

notices patterns of ELLs and their interaction with their peers, and she said in the lower grades

no, but in the higher grades she believes it is a little different. She said that in lower grades, the

students are really good with their ELL peers and helping them try to understand the instructions

and assignments. But in higher grades, she says it becomes more complicated because that is

when students start to form their social groups, so if an ELL is getting pulled out of their

classroom during the day, they are not getting that same interaction with their peers, therefore

they may feel left out and secluded. This is similar to what we see in the video we watched in

class, the Hispanic boy was unable to connect with his peers in the same way because he could

not speak to them in English, so he only fit in with the peers who also spoke Spanish(Immersion,

YouTube, 2009). From experience in the younger classrooms I have volunteered in, I have seen

the students helping their fellow classmate trying to learn English with homework, and treating

them as they would any other classmate. For example, in a Jefferson Elementary kindergarten

classroom I volunteered in, there was a girl from Africa that had recently moved to the U.S, and

her classmates helped her and treated her no different than they treated their other classmates,

which seemed to make her very comfortable in her classroom. In older grades, such as higher

elementary and beginning middle school grades however, I have seen that those students that get

pulled out of their classroom tend to not have good relationships with their peers, which seems to

be the typical pattern.

I then began to ask Mrs.Gress how she incorporates her ELL students in class discussions

so that they are able to answer questions and not feel uncomfortable. She told me that she has her
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students share their answer with their partner, then she has them share what their partner said, so

that they feel more comfortable sharing out loud. This strategy fits well with the Think-Pair-

Share method that we have learned about in class. According to an article we read for this class

by David and Yvonne Freedman, called Three Types of ELLs, states that an effective classroom

is one where the teacher uses scaffold instruction with their ELLs while also placing them in

groups with their peers(Freedman, 2004, pg. 3). This is exactly what Mrs.Gress does in her

classroom. I have learned that the Think-Pair-Share method is not only very beneficial to ELL

students, but beneficial to those students who are shy and hesitant to share out loud, feel more

comfortable doing so. When we practiced this method in class, thinking about the subject,

sharing ideas with a partner or group, and then sharing out loud in front of class, made it easier to

do as you shared the ideas of multiple people and not just your own, even as a college student

this made it easier to share in front of a whole class. Hearing this incorporated into a real

classroom proved to me that students working with their classmates gets the student more

involved with their peers and more involved in discussions.

This topic got me into asking the question of what kind of strategies she uses in her

classroom to help her ELL students learn. She said she uses a lot of hands-on and visual

strategies, because she believes seeing it in front of you is much easier to comprehend then just

reading it on a piece of paper. One thing she does that I thought was helpful is she gives the

students a word, then they use hand motions to describe the word, this is called a “total physical

response”. The example she gave me for this was the word “orbit”, and in science orbit is the

motion of moving around something, so she has her students demonstrate what an orbit looks

like with their hands, then they say something like “orbit, to spin”. Over the many years I have

been in school, I have learned that many students are visual learners and learn better from seeing
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things done directly in front of them, this is how I learn best. Over the course of this particular

section of T&L and from this interview, I have learned that for ELL students, visual

representations of concepts in all the different subjects, is vital. The reason being, as Mrs.Gress

described, is that having a concept with a picture to go along with it, is easier for the student(s) to

remember. All teachers should use visual representations to go along with what they are

teaching.

On the topic of her particular strategies that she uses, I asked her what she felt was the

most effective. She said that the physical and hands-on strategies are the most effective because

they allow the kids to see it first hand, especially with words that have many different meanings,

because ELLs struggle with that a lot. In her classroom they do a lot of drawing and hands-on

work, which is something we have discussed as being beneficial in class. From my other T&L

courses, I have learned that using things such as word-walls and posters with pictures on the

subject, are very beneficial to have in a classroom for students. As I mentioned before, I have

learned that this strategy, especially from personal experience, is very beneficial to students,

especially ELLs.

Then I got on the topic of asking if she has books and other resources for her ELL

students in other languages. She said that she does have books in other languages, books that are

the same books used in American schools, just in another language. She also has books on other

culture that she has available that any of her students can read so they can become informed on

other cultures besides their own. In the article by David and Yvonne Freedman, they suggest that

an effective classroom is when the teacher provides culturally relevant books during some of

their lessons. This way, the students feel more engaged in the readings as the books relate to their

personal experiences(Freeman, 2004, pg. 3). I have learned this in my T&L 339 class as well. In
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that T&L class, we stressed that in our classrooms, we should have culturally relevant books

available to all students, that way those ELL students know their culture matters, and so the rest

of the students can become more culturally aware. I have learned about many different texts from

T&L courses and from this interview, that I can use in my future classroom.

The last questions led to me asking Mrs.Gress how or if she tries to incorporates her ELL

student’s cultures into her classroom. She does this booklet every year around Christmas time, it

is full of different countries and cultures around the world, and her and her students fill it out

with things from each countries culture for Christmas. This is how Mrs.Gress keeps her students

culturally aware and how she incorporates everyone’s culture in her classroom. This reminded

me of my T&L 339 class that I took, where we would do a different culture every week and

make something that was from another culture, which I thought was very fun and educational.

From this question, I gained a great idea of a great activity that I can use in my future classroom

with my students, an activity that is very culturally relevant.

On the topic of culturally relevant texts and incorporating her student’s culture(s) into her

classroom, I asked Mrs.Gress about some ways in which parents can get involved in their

student’s education at home. She told me that the best thing that parents can do is just try to help

their students with their homework. She said that because some parents may have trouble helping

their students because they may not speak English, that she will send the homework home with

the student in both their primary language and in English. If that still does not work, then she will

schedule either a conference with the parents, either over the phone or at home, with the help of a

translator. The biggest thing she emphasized about this subject was the fact that people assume

that parents of ELL students do not care about education, when in fact they really value it and

value the teacher(s) teaching their child, they just may not have the ability to help their students
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with their work. I have always known, especially from being in all of these T&L classes, to

NEVER make assumptions or feed into stereotypes, but this question helped me understand that

reaching out to parents and putting in that extra effort to help their student, can really make a

difference. Reaching out to parents can not only improve the parent-teacher relationship, but it

can give the parents a guide on how to help their student at home, which can only benefit the

student in the long run.

As the interview was coming to an end, I wanted to ask Mrs.Gress what the most

rewarding thing was about teaching ELL students, and she responded with an obvious answer,

which was when the light bulb goes off in the student’s head and they finally get it. She gave an

example of a little girl she had that would say “I have the ADD”, which made Mrs.Gress laugh,

but when the little girl finally learned how to say that sentence correctly, she felt very excited

and accomplished. They cannot teach you this feeling in school, this is a feeling that teachers

experience when they are in the classroom, experiencing this for themselves. When I am a

teacher, I will probably have the same response if someone were to ask me this question. I

cannot wait for the day one of my students finally accomplishes their goal of learning a new

language, and I get to say I helped them accomplish that goal.

The final question I asked Mrs.Gress was what advice she would give to a future ELL

teacher. She said that she would tell them, or me in this case, that the biggest thing you can do

for your students is just be compassionate, if you want to teach them and you show them that,

then they will want to learn from you. If you show them that you care about them and their

culture, and you want them to succeed, then they will because they will be motivated and want to

show you that they can do it. From the David and Yvonne Freedman article, it suggests that an

effective classroom includes a teacher that recognizes a student’s background(Freeman, 2004,

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pg. 3). By doing this, I have learned that students really recognize that their teacher cares about

where and they came from and that their teacher appreciates their culture, which makes them feel

so much more comfortable talking to their teacher and coming to them for help. As a teacher,

showing you care and are genuinely interested in the student’s education, can change a student’s

school experience immensely. This is something that we stress in all of my T&L classes, because

it is the most important for the students to feel welcomed and appreciated.

Overall, I really enjoyed interviewing Mrs.Gress for this final paper. I found

interviewing her very beneficial due to the many, many years of experience under her belt, which

means she had a lot of methods and strategies to share with me that have worked for her in her

classroom and could potentially help me in mine. It was also very refreshing getting to hear from

a teacher who puts a lot of time and effort into learning how to effectively teach her ELL

students, she really cares about teaching them well enough that they can move on to the next

grade and be successful. Almost all of the responses I received from Mrs.Gress related to the

beliefs I have on policies, issues, and strategies. I was actually very surprised by the fact that

mostly all of the beliefs she has on policies and issues, as well as strategies she uses, had a strong

correlation with topics we have discussed in this course and other T&L courses. The information

I attained in this interview are going to help me be a good teacher, especially an ELL teacher, by

showing me the Do and Don’t, and being provided with mistakes the teacher has made and how

she fixed them to be better. Also, the information gives me tips on I can effectively help ELL

students succeed, as well as help their families so they can help their children. During this

interview, I was able to learn so many new ways in which I can effectively teach ELL students,

and all it takes is some dedication, compassion, and a little time and effort. This interview was
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very beneficial to me, and I will definitely be going to Mrs.Gress for any future advice or tips for

my future classroom.
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Appendix

1. How long have you been working with ELLs in your classroom?

2. What is the most challenging thing about teaching ELL students, and why?

3. What was the most helpful thing that prepared you for teaching these students? How?

4. What is the most rewarding thing that comes from teaching ELL students, and why?

5. What strategies do you use in your classroom to help ELL students learn?

6. What strategy or strategies seem to be the most helpful, and why?

7. Do you notice a pattern between ELL students and their peers? If so, what pattern do you notice?

8. What are ways in which parents can get involved and help their children at home?

9. How do you get your ELL students involved in classroom discussions so that they are involved

effectively, but not put on the spot?

10. Do you find keeping ELLs in the mainstream classroom the most for their learning, or using the

ESL pull-out method the most effective for their learning? Why?

11. Do you have books and other learning materials that are in other languages or culturally relevant,

available as a source for your ELL students? If so, what are they?

12. Do you try to incorporate the student’s culture into your classroom? If so, how?

13. What particular system does your school use for ELLs, the ESL pull-out method or does it keep

the ELL students in the mainstream classroom? Why do you think they use this particular

method?

14. For state tests, or tests in general, is there any sort of accommodations that ELLs are allowed to

help them succeed and take the test to the best of their ability? If so, what are they?

15. If you could give one piece of advice to a future ELL teacher, what would it be and why?

***Note: questions not in particular order, questions were answered in all different parts of the

interview***
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References

Wright, Wayne E. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners. Echevarria & Graves,

2001. Caslon Publishing: Philadelphia, 2010. Pp. 92. Second Edition.

Wright, Wayne E. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners. Caslon Publishing:

Philadelphia, 2010. Pp. 107. Second Edition.

Immersion. Media That Matters: YouTube, June 16, 2009.

Freedman, David & Yvonne. Three Types of English Language Learners. National Council of

Teachers of English, 2004. School Talk: University of Texas. Pp. 3.