Driving the Lesson Home: Teaching ELLs in Rural and Low-Incidence Regions

By Sarah Auerbach, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

Rebecca Wurdak keeps a journal of every animal she spots while driving. "I have a little 'animal log,' I call it, and every time I see an animal, I write it in-date, mile marker, animal type, dead or alive," she says. "A couple of weeks ago, I saw a moose."

Wurdak has plenty of time for this pursuit. As a teacher of English language learners (ELLs) in the rural Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, she starts her day in the car, commuting from home to the first of two or three schools she will visit that day. Her car, which doubles as her office, contains a bewildering array of teaching materials, which she uses to serve 26 ELLs at seven different grade levels in four different elementary schools. "In one day, I'll start in one school, drive to school number two, finish the day in school number three, and then drive home-about 15 to 20 miles during the day. No two schools are more than ten miles apart, but I could be driving from one end [of the district] to the other," says Wurdak. And she sometimes must backtrack to a school to meet with a parent or teacher or attend an Individualized Education Program meeting. "There's always a chunk of time that I miss in the day as I'm traveling," she says. "Sometimes I get to a school and I'm like, 'Oh, the book I want is over at the other school,' so that's a little challenging." On more than one occasion Wurdak couldn't find a classroom for a one-on-one session, so she has taught ELLs in the lunchroom, a closet, and just about any empty space she could find. "You have to get creative sometimes," she says with a laugh.

Wurdak's story is common for ESL teachers in low-incidence ELL schools (defined as having less than 25 percent ELLs). These schools, like Wurdak's, tend to be located in rural areas, though this is not always the case, particularly in states that have relatively low ELL populations to begin with. In Vermont, for example, the "high-incidence" district is Burlington, which boasts 379 ELLs, but that is still less than 25 percent of its total student population. If you break Burlington down by schools, you do find one or two that would be considered high-incidence, but it's hardly a blip on the nation's ELL radar screen. That's because 70 percent of ELLs are enrolled in only 10 percent of the country's public elementary schools, leaving the remainder widely distributed in low-incidence schools. And unfortunately for these students, and for teachers and administrators like Wurdak who are charged with their education, low-incidence schools on average provide less professional development for teachers, fewer support and enrichment programs for students, and less parental outreach and support. They're also understaffed and underfunded when it comes to educating ELLs, according to state administrators. That means more miles per day for Rebecca Wurdak, and a constant need to respond creatively and nimbly to the day's challenges.

One of the toughest obstacles for Wurdak and her colleagues is that low-incidence schools tend to lack structured plans for identifying, tracking, and exiting ELLs. These plans are crucial for successful education, writes Barney Bérubé in his book Managing ESL Programs in Rural and Small Urban Schools. Bérubé is now retired from his position with the Maine Department of Education, but his book is still one of the best one-stop guides to the issues involved in low-incidence and rural ESL learning. But school districts with limited exposure to ELLs rarely have these plans in place. "They have to scramble when new kids enroll," says Jim McCobb, coordinator of ESL/bilingual programs for the state of Vermont-where ELL enrollment grew 18.4 percent over the last decade, while overall enrollment shrank.

In districts and schools that have previously had no ELLs, administrators are often inexperienced, and with no systems in place, the potential for costly errors is high. In one New Hampshire district, an administrator unfamiliar with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reporting requirements misreported her district's ELL population as zero, says Christine Noon, Title III coordinator for New Hampshire. (Title III is the section of NCLB that sets out requirements for English language instruction and provides guidelines for how funds are distributed to schools.) The next year, when a principal in the district went looking for Title III money, there was none. "Now there's a lot more awareness," says Noon. "I think it is partly because of the No Child Left Behind law. That's one thing that's been good about [NCLB]; it has put [ELLs] on the map."

Rebecca Wurdak has done her own chasing after Title III funding. In her district, the Caledonia North Supervisory Union, there is a plan in place for educating ELLs, but funding is a major challenge, as it is for most low-incidence ELL schools. Rural schools in many states already have funding crunches, because there just isn't as much revenue from property taxes in rural and agricultural areas. When ELLs come pouring in, there's no money to spare, and the budget process lags behind the arrivals. "It's not like, 'The kids come, we're going to give you money today,'" says Nancy Rowch, director of Title III programs for the state of Nebraska, where the three largest districts account for two-thirds of the state's ELL population. "It never happens at the same time the kids show up." And rural and low-incidence areas, like all school districts, must account under NCLB for the presence and progress of their ELLs, even if they have too few to qualify on their own for Title III funding.

While searching for funding, Wurdak learned that under Title III, districts with too few students to qualify for funding can form consortia and apply together for the funds. She needed 43 ELLs to be eligible for the Title III funds, but had only 26 in Caledonia North. So she got a list of other low-incidence districts from Vermont's Jim McCobb, then sat down at the phone and sought out educators in each of those districts. It was a surprisingly tough sell, says Wurdak. "The first couple of times, people weren't sure: 'What's going on? Is this really worth it?'" Some of the educators in the not-yet-official consortium must travel two to three hours to attend the group's monthly meetings, which rotate around the region to divide the driving burden. That's yet another block of time that Wurdak now spends in her car.

But Wurdak's newly formed consortium plays another important role in the lives of its members: It provides fertile ground for exchange of ideas, information, materials, and strategies. "Now people are definitely saying this is a good thing, let's keep it going, and that's regardless of whether we have funding or not; this is just purely beneficial to us," she says. At the meetings, the educators discuss goals, plans, and professional development strategies for the coming year, and sometimes sit down with student files to talk about how to ease certain students' elementary- to secondary-school transitions.

This kind of cross-district cooperation is essential to relieve two of the biggest burdens on low-incidence schools and professionals: strained or nonexistent staff and an absence of in-service and professional development for both ESL and classroom teachers. Many low-incidence or rural districts have no ESL teachers at all; when new ELLs arrive, the districts sometimes hire consultants to work with existing classroom teachers or hire retired teachers or paraprofessionals. Even when a district is prepared to hire a certified or endorsed teacher to meet its needs, there is often trouble finding someone willing to work part-time. It's particularly challenging since certified ELL teachers have spent a lot of time and money on their own education and aren't prepared to settle for part-time salaries or jobs without benefits-not to mention the kinds of crazy commutes and unusual job circumstances they're likely to face in low-incidence districts.

It's not just teachers who are in short supply. As if Wurdak and other teachers like her aren't stretched thin enough, few rural and low-incidence districts have local administrators who can devote themselves to ELL or Title III issues, leaving teachers to double as administrators. That's true for Wurdak in the Caledonia North Supervisory Union, and for enough other Vermont districts that the state's McCobb has identified an ELL coordinator in each district-a teacher or administrator who, regardless of background, can make ELL issues primary. He brings those coordinators together on a regular basis for meetings, professional development, and moral support. These meetings also help Wurdak and her colleagues cope with the shortage of professional development opportunities. This shortage-common in rural regions-not only makes it hard to attract good teachers, it also makes it hard to transform existing classroom teachers into ELL-endorsed or -certified teachers, or even to help bring them up to speed on basic ways to help ELLs.

Rebecca Wurdak has taken up the professional development challenge, too. She surveyed 60 classroom teachers in the Northeast Kingdom to find out what ESL-related professional development they craved. Based on their answers, she put together a set of workshops that includes second-language acquisition, adapting content-area instructions for ELLs, welcoming newcomers, and collaboration techniques. Wurdak's efforts in this arena in part reflect her firmly held belief that communication between ESL instructors and classroom teachers is key. And that's not just a theoretical point for Wurdak: If she doesn't keep the communication lines open, she's liable to find that her time in the car has been wasted. One day she arrived in a classroom, ready to pull out an ELL for one-on-one time, only to discover that the class was about to embark on a field trip. In situations like that, when communication does go awry, Wurdak can't get mad or kick up a stink; she has to find a way to build an important language lesson out of whatever's on tap. That's partly because she can't afford to lose one minute of opportunity with her students, but it's also because her relationships with classroom teachers are essential to what she does.

New Hampshire's Noon also focuses much of her professional development efforts on classroom teachers. She targets reading instruction, encouraging classroom teachers to use better materials and better strategies, such as repetition, and exhorting them not to dumb down the curriculum. Noon also does information sessions with classroom teachers to debunk myths about ESL, such as the prevalent belief held by students that the ESL teacher speaks six languages, or the myth that kids will "just pick up" language in the classroom.

One of the roles of good professional development is that it helps to retain quality teachers-both ESL and classroom-in rural areas. Vermont's McCobb partnered with St. Michael's College in Burlington to write a Title III professional development grant that will support teachers in rural school districts. St. Michaels will provide nine to ten teachers with scholarships to attend a program that will lead to ELL endorsement. It is McCobb's hope that because those teachers are already coming from rural areas, they will tend to return to those areas to continue their careers, improving the quality of English learning that can take place in those regions.

Wurdak has her own spin on what makes a great ESL teacher in a rural or low-incidence setting. The best teachers, she says, possess four traits: They're mobile, flexible, passionate, and good communicators. Wurdak is a living example of all of these, but it's her passion that comes across most vividly. When she's driving, between logging animal entries and listening to folk music and NPR, she thinks about students who are going through a rough time. "I try to figure ways to help them as best I can, get the family in touch with whatever services may help, help the family so they can communicate with the services-finding an interpreter is not always easy out here."

One thing that's tough for her students and their families is the isolation of life in a rural setting. With her Title III consortium, Wurdak has begun solving the problem of her own isolation from colleagues, but it's not so easy to solve the isolation problem for her students. "They're struggling and feeling alone, whereas in a larger setting, you might have several Spanish speakers, so you'd have someone to turn to when you need a break or need a little stress release and be able to communicate in your own native language." If she worked in only one school, she'd be able to act as that break or stress release for students: "I'm a safety zone for them. I take them out into a quieter space, have a little one-on-one time so I get to know them really well." But because of her commuting life, if a student needs her, or a teacher wants to call her in, she's not always available, and an opportunity for communication or learning can be missed. "The fact that I can't be at a school all day can be frustrating."

To some degree, technology has helped reduce isolation in mostly rural states. In Nebraska, Rowch collaborated with her comprehensive center (a federally funded organization charged with helping to implement NCLB) to produce an ELL knowledge base that includes links to information about civil rights law, developing programs, notifying parents, and identifying, assessing, and monitoring ELLs. The knowledge base is publicly available at www.helpforschools.com and includes a Framework for Rural Schools document that specifically addresses the challenges of building a plan to teach ELLs in rural and low-incidence settings. Nebraska also pays for every district to have access to the TransACT library of documents, which includes education-related administrative documents translated into 22 languages.

In New Hampshire, Noon says that the reality of life in rural states has worn down resistance to computer-based educational solutions-and the solutions themselves have improved dramatically. "We used to look askance at districts that wanted to spend a lot of their Title III money on computers because we were afraid that kids would be stuck in a corner with a computer and some software, but that's gotten much better, because there's talking software." Distance learning may soon be a reality for more students, too. In Nebraska, a large number of districts experiment with distance learning through their Educational Service Units (Nebraska's state-mandated consortia of school districts), though there are no programs specifically for ELLs. In the future, distance learning could help bring together geographically isolated ELLs-and maybe shorten Wurdak's commute in the bargain.

Rebecca Wurdak would be the first to tell you that even with the best new technologies-and even with the best ESL teachers-things can't run smoothly without the support of good administrators. "[Vermont's] Jim McCobb has been a great person," says Wurdak. "He's really good for the state. He's a very busy guy but he knows so much." She says she recently attended a meeting with him, during which, "Somebody would bring up a student: 'Oh, I have a student in my district who X,' and Jim would say, 'Oh, you mean-' and he'd give the name of the student. How many state directors know so many students by name, just from the description? He's really in tune with what's going on, and I give him credit." But not all administrators are Jim McCobbs. It can be very hard to sell administrators-and school boards-in rural and low-incidence areas on the necessity of delivering adequate education to ELLs, even with civil rights laws to point to. "There may be the feeling in a district among some people that this really isn't necessary. We often have the We-Never-Did-This-For-My-Grandfather Syndrome," says Noon. "I always tell people, 'What kinds of computers did your grandfather have? What kinds of jobs was he trying to get? Now you have to get a two- to four-year [higher] education to succeed.'"

For all the problems of English language learning in low-incidence areas, rural schools can be the perfect location for an ELL to flourish. Rural schools, which are also often small schools, have a high graduation rate, says Jerry Hoffman from the Nebraska Alliance for Rural Education. "[Rural] schools sit at the center of the community socially, politically, economically, and culturally," Hoffman says. "They provide a great habitat for learning." That can be especially true for ELLs. Classes in rural communities are small, and ELLs can't get lost in the shuffle that often accompanies life in larger, more urban schools. In the Nebraska town of Ewing, every one of the ELLs passed the state writing test-even though some of their non-ELL peers failed. The superintendent attributes their success to the dedication of one half-time teacher to those students.

It's a good reminder of the fact that part of the reason for the success of rural schools is people like Rebecca Wurdak, people who are willing to drive 20 or more miles a day to improve the lives of 26 students of English. Without people like her, it might be nearly impossible to overcome the obstacles facing rural and low-incidence districts. But Wurdak just keeps driving. "You gotta love what you do, because you're out there doing it everywhere, and you're always on; rarely is there a down time," says Wurdak. "I'm very optimistic and positive here, which has also helped my program. Sometimes people come across as a little frustrated; you can't be frustrated; you can't let it get to you; you have to just keep trying." Drive a few more miles, log a few more moose, change a few more lives.

If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.