Maya McFadden Photo
Inside Isabel Senes' ESL class Tuesday morning: NHPS's English language learner student enrollment has increased from 4,199 to 4,626 since October.
Career High School freshman Cecilia translated the sentence, “The horse is under the desk,” from Spanish to English in her head before saying the words out loud to her classroom conversation partner Enmerl — as part of a playful exercise in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class designed to help city public school students from a variety of linguistic backgrounds get up to speed in English.
That exercise played out Tuesday morning in teacher Isabel Senes’s first-period ESL class on the second floor of the 141 Legion Ave. public high school.
Senes’s class is made up of students from 9th through 12th grades who all immigrated to the United States between one and four years ago. The students’ English-language proficiency skills range from beginning to intermediate.
Tuesday’s class included students who immigrated to New Haven from Afghanistan, Guatemala, Mexico, Russia, and the Dominican Republic. All are working towards proficiency in the English language.
The class took place as the number of multilingual learners in the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district continues to grow and grow. From last October to March 7 of this year, the number of English language learners enrolled in the district has increased from 4,199 to 4,626 students. The district identifies English language learners based on a screening that concludes that the student is not yet proficient in English.
During Tuesday’s class, Senes helped her students work toward that goal of becoming proficient in English with a lesson in prepositions.
In a classroom that Senes shares with Career’s Spanish teacher, students sat in a circle of desks with posters reading phrases in several languages like “bienvenidos a la class de espanol,” as well as colorful country flags.
This week is the last week of lessons for Career’s school year. Next week, Senes’s students will be taking final exams on what they’ve learned during previous lessons on subjects like linking verbs, helping verbs, and prepositions. Therefore, Friday is the last review class the ESL students will have before their final exams testing their English proficiency. The final day of school is June 17.
Senes began Tuesday’s class asking the students, “What’s today?” In unison several students said in English, “Tuesday, June 4.”
Senes also announced to her class that a part of the final exam would be an oral interview with her for her to assess the students’ ability to form English sentences and participate in simple conversations.
This was followed up by a “mood-meter check-in” where students told Senes how they felt around 8:15 a.m. by picking either the color red to represent angry, yellow to represent happy, blue to represent sad, or green to represent calm. Several students shared they were feeling blue and red.
Tuesday’s class lesson focused on reviewing their last class introduction to prepositions. Using a “class pacing tracker,” Senes was able to tell each student what assignments to review or revise and which practice sheets still needed to be completed.
The class practiced their prepositions through partner work and independent worksheets.
Each pair of students then did a two-minute activity that required them to use a small stuffed animal to quiz their partner on knowing their location words.
While one student moved the toy around to locations like under the desk or behind their backs, their partner was tasked with saying aloud responses like, “The toy is under the desk.” The students alternated between the roles and practiced the words they recently learned like “next to,” “above,” and “under.”
After the partner activity the students went on to practicing the prepositions lesson by completing handouts independently or in a pair. Once comfortable with their understanding, several students went on to do a “mastery check,” which is a short and direct quiz of the students’ understanding of the specific day’s lesson.
Senes: "The bird is in front of the desk."
As students worked through their review packets, Senes worked at the back of the classroom with students to answer specific questions and offer extra support to some students with incomplete past lessons.
A junior named Adil brought Senes his completed worksheet to check. As Senes reviewed the sentences he created using the preposition words, she told him, “Your backpack is not ‘in’ the desk, what should it be?”
Adil corrected his sentence to instead read, “My backpack is on the desk.”
Senes again helped him work through another mistake, telling him, “The door is not in the right side but on the right side.”
“Prepositions are very hard, so I understand,” Senes added.
One part of a worksheet asked students to read a calendar marked with specific occasions like April Fools Day and a birthday. The worksheet asked the students to identify what day of the week the different occasion fell on, which again challenged some students to figure out whether to write April Fools Day is ‘in’ Tuesday or ‘on’ Tuesday.
Throughout the 80-minute period students worked at their desks at their own paces on the practice activities. Once completed they joined Senes in the back of the classroom to do their mastery check quiz.
The mastery check is a part of the modern classrooms teaching model, which Senes uses to allows for instruction both in her ESL and sheltered content courses, to have a teaching pace most effective for each student to learn.
Senes opted to be trained in the modern classrooms instructional model two years ago after being introduced to the project during professional development. This year makes her second year of using the model to better support her newcomer students.
When first introduced to the teaching model, Senes recalled thinking “I can’t do another thing.” That’s until she learned that the model’s blended instruction and self-paced structures would help her to see her students gain confidence in their English learning more than she’s seen in the past using traditional teaching practices.
When her students are able to move through different lessons at their own pace, it allows Senes to tailor her instruction and attention to whoever needs it most.
Senes uses the model to provide the students with structured lessons that include direct instruction through videos and in the classroom, then note taking, and independent and partner practice activities.
This has especially helped Senes to better adjust her instruction method’s to the changing needs of today’s students who deal with challenges like interrupted education, which many newcomers often face.
The model also works well in Senes’ classrooms because her students vary in their English proficiency skills.
“Mastery checks show me that even though we’re not all doing the same thing all the time, there’s individual growth,” Senes said.
Senes with student Adil.
When Senes began as a part-time educator in 2016, she said Career had a caseload of 42 ESL students.
That has since grown to more than 80 multilingual students at the school.
That’s been the largest challenge for Senes since she’s become the full-time educator spearheading several ESL-related intervention opportunities for students. With an additional part-time staffer, Senes said the school would be able to better help provide its ESL students with resources and support.
When Senes first began, Career had no ESL classes or sheltered content courses. Seven years ago, as a part-time staffer, Senes would have to instead push into classes or pull individual students out to help provide extra supports. However, due to the increasing population and the ineffective past methods, Senes said, this year Career introduced several sheltered content courses for multilingual learners to get supplemental supports in the classrooms for all content areas.
Senes concluded that more than two years ago she saw much less progress with her students’ English learning using the traditional teaching practice of instructing all of her students at the same pace.
“It’s just not realistic,” she said. “Some need repetition, so I can’t move on yet, but if I don’t, others who advance more quickly will shut down or disengage. The self pacing is really the beautiful part.”
One of her students, Adil, arrived in New Haven from Afghanistan his freshman year of high school. He didn’t know any English at that time. He enrolled at Career in the spring of his freshman year, then moved to Middletown for his sophomore year. He returned back to New Haven during the final marking period last year and spent his junior year this year at Career again.
His years of interrupted education have caused Senes and Adil’s other educators to work to help him catch up in his English learning and other academic needs.
Right now Senes balances several roles beyond a classroom educator by providing her students with additional academic support, counseling her fellow teachers, running professional development for her colleagues, acting as a translator and liaison with Spanish-speaking parents, and making the schedules of the school’s 80-plus ESL students needing to be placed in sheltered content courses.
She added that an extra staffer would be helpful to observe students’ classrooms and to meet with ESL students in small groups to provide academic language support.
Senes’ ESL and shelter content courses are typically meant for newcomers to spend the first two years of high school learning not just English, but also familiarizing the students with school norms like using Google Classroom and computers. “There’s skills they need to develop to prepare them for being a student, like confidence levels with just coming to a brand new school.”
Adil told this reporter Tuesday that he prefers to work independently and enjoys classes like Senes that allow him to do so at his own pace. “When I came to America I didn’t speak any English and didn’t know anyone here,” he said. But with Senes and other educators’ help, Adil said he’s gained more confidence in his English speaking.
“Sometimes when teachers explain, I don’t understand a lot,” he said. “I really learn a lot from the videos and notes.”
