For my short practicum, I was placed at one of the largest schools in Vancouver, which also has one of the largest populations of ELL students. During the one staff meeting that I attended, two of the multicultural liaison workers were introduced to the entire staff (not just the teacher candidates). I found this slightly strange, because this staff meeting was held during November; I would’ve thought that the multicultural liaison workers would have been introduced to the staff at the beginning of the year, so that teachers could get as much help for their ELL learners as possible.

In my SA’s grade 12 biology class, there were several students doing very well, but there were also quite a few students who were struggling to keep up with the material and did not do very well on their unit test. When I asked my SA if there were any modifications he tries to make for students like ELL students, he says that he can’t really do much for them because biology is a very content-driven course, and there is very little time he can dedicate to slowing down for these students (especially this year when they lost several weeks because of the strike). He even mentioned to the class that if they were not meeting a certain grade, they should reconsider taking the course because it’s an elective and not a course they necessarily need to graduate.

The majority of the students in my SA’s IB biology 11 class did not appear to be ELL students. However, I did notice while marking one of the assignments that I assigned them, that although they understood the majority of the terms that they were learning in their unit, they couldn’t quite grasp what the terms meant in a context outside of the example they were shown in class. While observing the classes that my SA taught, he relies heavily on lecturing, but does give examples and diagrams to try and better explain the concepts to the students. I think that when I start teaching during the long practicum, I will try to use as many different ways of explaining concepts to the students as possible, and try to relate the different concepts to things that they know and understand.