ESL Specialist Interview
I interviewed Angela Criswell, an ESL specialist at Horn elementary in Alief. Her school has a very large English language learner population. She explained that her school has two ESL specialists as well as other support staff like two ESL paras to help with pull-outs when the students enter second grade and begin their transition to classes without Spanish content. This school is culturally sensitive, providing programs that promote biculturalism and biliteracy by valuing the students first language (Wright, 2015, p. 114). According to Angela these programs include duel language and bilingual education. I failed to ask what type of bilingual education program the school offers but based on the interview a timeline of two years and that certain subjects were taught in the home language and others not, I would say that it is a transitional bilingual education program. Unfortunately, according to Wright (2015) this type of bilingual program still focuses on assimilation because t...