ELL/ESL Teacher Interview Final

ELL/ESL Teacher Interview Final

Hannah Schumsky
Washington State University
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An ELL educator has the opportunity to step into different cultures as well as sharing

their culture with his or her students. The ELL educator I chose to interview for this project was

a woman named Kate Hellmann. She is the administrator at the Washington State Intensive

American Language Center, which is a multi-sight English learning program. Kate also oversees

the Intensive American Language Center in Tri-Cities. She is not currently teaching a class right

now but instead oversees the English Language Learners here in Pullman. Dr. Hellmann has

been teaching ESL for 15 years but just more recently became an administrator. She said that

while she was teaching ELLs; as it’s the same here at WSU, that they cap their class sizes to 15

students per classroom at every level. They do this because smaller class sizes are proven to be

more successful.

When I began to ask her about the challenges that she goes through with ELL’s she

quickly changed her phrasing to saying the “greatest challenge”. This to me was a sign that she

loves what she is doing. Kate went on to say that the greatest challenge with teaching English

Language Learners was differentiating the instruction so that you are reaching every student.

Although they are smaller classes, it's still just as hard to reach each student because you are

having to meet all the different demographics of each of the students. The challenge is that most

of the time the classes are mixed which means that they are all learning differently even though

they are in the “same level”. She also said that they assess the students all in the same way but

you must differentiate your instruction based on the learners. Dr. Hellmann was also very

enthused when i asked her what the most rewarding part of her job was. Although she loves

being in a classroom with ELLs, she finds it most rewarding when she finds out what her

students are doing after the program. She explained that English is a vehicle and once it is

learned and mastered, this allows the ELL students to go far beyond what they ever thought.
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They are not learning English just for the fun of it or to check a requirement box, but instead they

are learning to excel in their academics and then later become successful in their job of choice.

When I asked about group and one-on-one teaching, Kate said that here at the IALC they

do not teach one-on-one unless the students are going to the learning resource center. The IALC

believes in communicative pedagogy and using authentic material. She also said that they do a

lot of small group/large group work and there is always minimal teacher talk time and maximum

student-centered time. She also believes that one-on-one tutoring works best when a student has

“fossilized”, meaning they are older and may have picked up bad habits while learning English.

As for group, classroom learning, she finds it important to implement all ways of learning and

that is why she tries to find a good balance between hands on work and discussion and lots of

audio. In Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners it states “The teacher’s job is to

provide comprehensible input in a safe and enjoyable classroom environment… The teacher uses

a wide variety of techniques, such as total physical response (TPR), ample visuals and realia,

small group, and other activities involving meaningful communication… “(Wright, 2015). In my

last student interview who was an ELL student herself, she agreed with natural approach that was

talked about in the textbook. I remember her saying that the best help was just to simply have

conversations so that she could listen as well as think of a response in English.

Going deeper into the interview, Dr. Hellmann shared that she speaks both Spanish and

English fluently. She had the opportunity to learn Spanish in the seventh grade. Later she went

on with that early learned skill and got an undergraduate in Spanish and English literature.

Which lead her to greatly excel. Later, she went on to teach Spanish at a community college for a

couple years. It was so important to her that she emphasized how helpful it has been to be fluent

in Spanish because she has been able to connect with her students on a personal level, if the
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ELL’s first language was Spanish. Not only does it help with connecting with her students but

even more so, connecting with her students’ parents. Obviously, there are language barriers with

students and parents that don't speak Spanish as their first language but at least she can connect

with one culture. After a few years of teaching Spanish, Kate realized that although she liked

teaching Spanish, she found it more rewarding to be teaching English to students that wanted a

better life for themselves. It wasn't that one was easier than the other because inevitably, the

foreign language teaching strategies are the same for English. She just simply enjoyed teaching

the international students compared to the American students.

Towards the end of the interview I began to ask questions about her teaching strategy and

how it has changed since teaching ELLs. I love the way she phrased her strategy. She explained

it as that all teachers start off with a small toolbox of what they know and how they can give that

knowledge. As time goes on your toolbox grows as well and you learn more about what works

best for your students. Kate specifically said that she has seen her teaching strategy evolve over

the years and now she notices that she is paying much more attention to meeting the needs of

students in the classroom. She went through a time where she wasn’t sure as a teacher, that what

she was teaching her students was really sticking. Kate didn’t have the skills in her early years of

teaching that she does now. For example, she now has skills to check their comprehension of the

material then being able to jump right back into class on the fly.

Kate Hellmann has proven over her 15 years that she can do most and all jobs that arise

to the surface. She has experienced all different kinds of classrooms, teaching an abundance of

material. She was never teaching those students a language, she was teaching them a whole new

world… and along within each language comes new culture, people and new experiences.
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Works Cited

WRIGHT, W. E. (2017). FOUNDATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE

LEARNERS: Research, theory, policy, and practice. S.l.: MULTILINGUAL MATTERS.