No child left behind? How about when their English teachers don’t know English…
posted at 3:01 pm on September 4, 2007 by Bryan
From the “you can’t make this stuff up” files…
Hundreds of students in Arizona are trying to learn English from teachers who don’t know the language, state officials say.
The kids are taught by teachers who don’t know English grammar and can’t pronounce English words correctly. Last year, for example, a Mesa teacher stood in front of a class of language learners and announced, “Sometimes, you are not gonna know some.” A teacher in Phoenix’s Creighton Elementary District asked her kids, “If you have problems, to who are you going to ask?” A Casa Grande Elementary District teacher asked her kids to “read me first how it was before.”
Each year, the state evaluates a sampling of classrooms where kids are learning English. Last year, officials visited 32 districts and found similar problems at nine. Some teachers’ English was so poor that even state officials strained to understand them. The state also found that students learning English at all ages were being taught by teachers who did not have appropriate training or materials. At a dozen districts, evaluators found teachers who ignored state law and taught in Spanish.
Are they teaching English in Spanish?