Some lessons from online mentoring of English language learners

I just read "Sheltered Instruction for Teachers of English Language Learners: T... in the January 2011 issue of Middle School Journal.The article caught my attention for personal and professional reasons. Personal: Outside of MSP2 and NMSA, I help to coach teachers at a new university in DR Congo who are teaching English to their French-speaking students. And I've never taught English as a second language! Professionally: There have been various requests here on MSP2 to provide support around teaching English language learners in the middle school. Makes sense if you consider the following:

• "In the decade between 1995 and 2005...the overall school population [in the US] grew by 3.7%, while the population of limited English proficient (LEP) students grew by 57% (NCELA, 2005)."
• "Within the ELL population in secondary schools, 44% are first-generation students who were born outside the United States (Caps et al., 2005)."

And of course, most middle grades and secondary teachers have not had any instruction in language learning or language acquisition. No wonder folks on MSP2 ask for help in working with English language learners.

"Sheltered Instruction for Teachers of English Language Learners" summarizes a research project that looked at how pre-service teachers engaged as mentors to middle grades English language learners via online communication. Three things stood out for me in the article.

First, a key finding or realization out of the study was the importance of relationship! The more that the mentors wrote and responded to the students as people and not as students whose worked needed correction, the more that students wrote and improved their writing. The mentors experienced students "shutting down" when the mentors focused on correcting the student's work. The more that the mentors wrote, person-to-person, expressing interest in the student, sharing about themselves, the more that the students wrote, and, ultimately improved.

But if the goal of the interaction is to help students strengthen as speakers and writers of English, then how to do that within the context of relationship? The answer seems to be to "promote noticing." This was the second thing that I found interesting.The pre-service teachers learned how to selectively identify aspects of students' writing and encourage students to develop their own ability to notice and correct. One technique that served this purpose was an "advice notebook." Students made notes in this notebook when the teacher/mentor would point out something. These notes then guided students as they wrote entries back to their mentors.

Finally, I was intrigued that mentors and students co-wrote stories, alternating paragraphs. This provided the mentor with short bits of writing to which she or he could respond. The mentor could model vocabulary or some aspect of writing that the student could see and build upon. And it kept the writing piece for the student short and manageable.

The article concludes with a couple of questions for further discussion:

1. How do you ensure that you are teaching both the person and the content?
2. How might online correspondence create new opportunities and new challenges for teaching writing?