ELL Families and School English Language learner (ELL) students are the fastest growing student population in the USA today. There are the challenges of creating programs that can accommodate all students, including the ELL students, and the political issues, cultural practices, language barriers, school policies and is literacy practices and achievements, its socio-cultural influences, bilingualism and home language use with the parental and community resources for English acquisition and the ways and means that both the school and home can help the ELL students to achieve their goals. The socio-cultural influences on English Language learners affect how they interact with other students. They are expected to behave at school in the way that the dominant culture expects them to behave, but at home their family traditions and attitudes to education are different. They endeavor to cope with the changes of a new country, a new language, a new home and a new school. Many English language learners are bilingual. They speak Spanish at home as they acquire English at school. It is very effective when their parents speak, read and write with them in the native language. Home language use has a great influence on students both at home and school, as the student has to learn to adjust at school in the state’s language, which is different from their native tongue. That same student has to continue speaking his or her native language at home. Those students who practice speaking, reading and writing in their first language and become more proficient in their native language at home gain more chances to develop academic language at school. As they learn the content of academic subjects and English, English language learners have “more academic experiences to transfer” when they come into control of “cognitive academic language proficiency” skills in Spanish. When parents are involved, students are helped to succeed. Their involvement depends on the co-operation of parents, teachers and the schools. According to Vera, parental educational involvement is one of the most important factors that predict school success and has been thoroughly studied in the US and in other countries (Vera, 2012). Involvement at home includes monitoring home work, volunteering, communicating and working together with the community. “Funds of knowledge” are hidden inside students’ households and communities. These include the “social histories of the households, methods of thinking and learning and practical skills related to the community’s everyday life, especially their labor and language” (Genzuk, 1999, p10). All of them provide opportunities for learning and are necessary for a household to function well and to preserve its well-being. Every household is an educational setting, the main function of which is to pass on knowledge from the elders in order to make it easier for its dependents to survive (Genzuk, 1999). The English Language Learner student can benefit from various language support programs that the community has. There are cultural materials that are available that can build linguistic skills. The information that the community gathers on the English Language learners may vary, as the students may understand a problem in one language and solve the problem or answer the problem in a second language. Some English Language Learner families have lived in the USA a number of years. Some are high achievers while others struggle academically. Some may feel very comfortable at school while some may feel unwanted. The English Language learners are seen as a diverse group that does not fit into any category and comes with challenges and different learning opportunities for an education in the USA and for acquiring the English language. The school and home can encourage students with their class objectives, their writing skills, the connections between their academic accomplishments, their content knowledge and all that the English Language Learner can contribute to both the school and home in a variety of ways by sharing their experiences of home at school and school at home. There are differences between the school and home that just cannot be avoided; the school has to learn how to handle certain differences when it comes to English Language learners, while the home has to meet the school half way. In addition, teachers, students and parents must have a good rapport. This writer and her school can improve home and school partnerships with ELL families by engaging with parents, for the families give a picture of culture that is marked by usually continuous and productive activity and that is more than just food, dance and folk lore. Gonzalez found that when teachers engaged with parents, when teachers visited their homes, “pivotal and transformational shifts take place in teachers and in relations between households and schools and between parents and teachers” (Gonzalez, 1994). In her study of a Mexican working class community in Tucson, Arizona, Gonzalez pointed out that the knowledge about family and school matter exchanged between the families and teachers can be used for creating lessons with academic content. For example, a Mexican parent demonstrated how to make candy; as a result, the students at the end of a week had studied mathematics and science concepts, nutrition, consumer education, cross-cultural practices, marketing and advertising.

References

Genzuk, M. (1999). Tapping into community funds of knowledge. Effective Strategies for English Language Acquisition, 9 – 21.
Gonzalez, N., Moll, L., Tenery, M., Riviera, A., Rendon, P., Gonzales, R., & Amanti, C. (1994). Funds of knowledge: learning from language minority households. Urban Education, vol (29), 444 – 471.
Vera, E. M., Israel, M., Coyle, L., Cross, J., Knight-Lynn, L., Moallem, I., & ... Goldberger, N. (2012). Exploring the Educational Involvement of Parents of English Learners. School Community Journal, 22(2), 183-202.