TA showed no favouritism towards gender or ethnic background of student, during her
frequent interactions, and treated all the students with...respect and attention...Her
interaction gave her classes a very relaxed, almost semi-formal feeling, and the students
responded extremely positively towards this environment.
Teacher:‘Differentiation is my biggest challenge because of the mixed abilities in my
classes. For example one girl can barely speak, is having to learn phonetics, and in the same
class there is another girl who can already write detailed paragraphs. Meeting the needs of
every child is my biggest challenge’.Ben had taught EAL and was able to document minor details about the environment
which were geared towards helping students learn. His observation of the style and
quality of the teacher’s interactions capture the atmosphere in the class, her
informal and accessible manner and the underlying respect for students. This tea-
cher seems very open to new ideas. Her own appraisal of her biggest challenge—
differentiating work for students shows how well she knew her students, their
difficulties and capabilities.
46.11 Teaching for Tests
Amy (BSU researcher in Henrico County Elementary School)
I sat with JR who had twofifth grade boys at level 1 English. JR told me they are exempt
from every test except for science, therefore, the lesson was spent going through a practice
science test paper. JR knew it was a lost cause and struggled to keep one of the children
engaged but there wasn’t much he could do as the child knew very little English....he said
‘it’s just one of those things’and continued to teach as much as he could to the children,
despite the fact that he knew they couldn’t understand much. I felt so frustrated...as I felt
that time spent was wasted on the science paper that could have been used to teach and
learn English. The fact that they even have to sit the test in thefirst place is ridiculous.
I didn’t realise testing in Virginia was a major thing. I always thought in England that
testing was over the top but here in America it really is beyond anything I could have ever
imagined.
Teacher:‘It feels kind of strange trying to explain honestly why we must test kids who we
know just can’t do it! It doesn’t help their self-esteem, but we have to play this test game.’Formal testing is a stressful, labour intensive, time-consuming activity, not just the
process of testing itself, but also the preparation and time leading up to tests. Data
collection coincided with the testing period. Amy was frustrated on behalf of the
children who were clearly not ready. Amy values children’s entitlement to an
appropriate education, but depending on local policy on testing, this is something
over which teachers quite often have no control. It seems unfair that students are set
up to fail in summative assessments. It seems that it is the teachers who are being
tested on their teaching. They feel the pressure to produce good results, even though
they know that testing will not encourage learning in every case. This seems unfair
for children and teachers in schools which lack expertize in EAL, or are inade-
quately equipped for EAL. Yet it is important to have base line data on the
690 G. Bhatti and G. McEachron