What I Learned from My Mentor ESL Teacher

The prior teacher before me was an incredible help and she and I had worked so closely together for so many years. Like I said, I was the general education teacher who had all of those students in my classroom. And along the way, she taught me a lot of things, not just about English language development, but procedural things. She would explain how she did the enrollment; she would explain how she did these things. And so I think I had an advantage because of that.  

Once she moved, I still would text and call her and ask for suggestions, because in my area, there are not a lot of people in my role. It is indeed, in the state of Tennessee, a hard-to-fill licensure area. There are not a lot of people who have this endorsement, so there are not a ton of us around. I have been able to kind of build a bond with a neighboring county, the county that my school is within with their EL teachers as well. And that's been helpful. But a lot of times I've been on my own using the internet for resources; there are not a lot of English language teachers in my area.