Post 112: Case Study of an ESL Pullout

Post 112: Case Study  of an ESL Pullout class

ESL Pullout--Students are pulled out of the regular mainstream class during part of the school day and take ESL classes to improve their English. ESL pullout is the most expensive of all program models in bilingual ESL education because it requires higher extra resource teachers who are trained in second language acquisition. In the United States, ESL pullout is the most implemented and least effective model. Problems with this model are lost time and students access to the full curriculum, lack of curriculum articulation with grade level mainstream classroom teachers, and no access to primaryu language schooling to keep up with grade level academic work while learning English. The social assumption is that the language the student speaks is a problem to the mediated, and students often feel they are stigmatized by attending what is perceived as a remedial class. (Ovando, 29)

I taught at a high school where students with low English proficiency were pulled out of the mainstream classroom, and placed in an ESL setting. We taught English grammar, reading, speaking and writing. We did not do any Sheltered English Content area teaching. These students' English were too low for any kind of content area teaching. Students came from Mexico, and many South American countries as well as China and Vietnam. Students came from mainly low income families. Some students had never been in a classroom before so we had to teach them classroom etiquette such as raising your hand when you want to say something in the classroom. We had very few textbooks so we had to make a lot of copies in the Resource Room so students would have something to study.

Some students spoke no English at all. Some students had families still in their home country and were in the US only with aunts, uncles or just older siblings.  The circumstances of each student differed widely from student to student.  If the ESL student had parents in the States, these parents were too busy to come to the Parent Teacher Night meetings. Instead, I met mainly with older siblings or an occasional aunt or uncle. Mostly on Parent Teacher Night, I sat in an empty classroom.
The mainstream students looked down on these ESL students because ESL pullout students were seen as 'remedial' students or confused with Special Ed students as the 'dumb' students simply because these students did not speak English.

We, ESL teachers worked closely with The Resource Room staff to provide our students with enough teaching material or to find books. The Resource Room staff was very helpful in helping us make enough copies of grammar book material for all students since we did not have enough textbooks for so many ESL students that we had. We had large classes of over 40 students at a time.

At the time, I was teaching both French and ESL. What a world of difference! Both sets of students were learning a second language, both required me to know Second Language Acquisition skills and in both classes I taught using the Natural Method. In both classes, I taught SL reading, writing, grammar, listening and speaking. In both classes, the students were eager to learn the L2. That's where the similarity ends. While the ESL Pullout students were viewed as 'remedial, dumb' language students, the French students were viewed as 'gifted, bilingual' students learning a high class language like French.  While the ESL students were asked to assimilate into American culture and lose their L1 as soon as possible to get into mainstream English classes, the French students status were highly regarded as possible future college students and FL is seen as a valuable asset on the college application form. 

On Teacher Conference night, all the French students' parents came and were eager to know and learn about their kids progress. In the French class, the kids eagerly wanted to learn about French culture, French food and French way of life. In the ESL class, there was no interest whatsoever for the ESL teachers to get to know the ELL culture, food or customs. In the ESL pullout class, the only culture being taught was American customs, American holidays, and American language. The goal was not to learn about other cultures, but to teach ELL English as soon as possible. In Ovando's book, Bilingual and ESL Classrooms, Teaching in Multicultural contexts, when we teachers fail to acknowledge the ELL culture, this has a damaging effect on ELL self esteem, and self identity. When we fail to acknowledge a ELL culture and our only goal is simply remediation, this is called Substractive Bilingualism which is what was happening in the ESL Pullout class. Ovando states that the best kind of bilingual ED/ESL class model is the dual immersion two way Bilingual model where ELL culture enriches the ESL/L2 and L1 experience--this kind of 2 way culture exchange is called Additive Bilingualism where the ELL gets to maintain his L1 heritage and celebrate his L1 heritage. I will talk about the benefits of the Dual Immersion Bilingual model in my another blog post.