According to the ESL Mission Statement: .
Vrain Valley School District English.
as the second language program is to meet the needs of .
limited-English proficient students in understanding, speaking.
reading and writing the English Language. While students.
are in the ESL program, they will continue to develop proficiency.
in challenging academic subject matter, and will become .
integrated in the school and the wider community as they.
work towards completion of their education" .
Students need skillful and knowledgeable teachers to open for them the door to diversity beyond which is found a rich and complex global people bonded by similar experiences, feelings, fears and love. As teachers or me as a teacher who works with second language students, we must know the importance of bilingual and ESL education. Unfortunately, many people in our same career and of course, those not involved with education don't realize why having these programs is so crucial and important. After doing some research on the subject the results surprised me. As of the year 2000-2001, Spanish speaking students ranked as the biggest minority in the United States representing 79% of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) population. The Vietnamese ranked 2nd representing 1.95% of the LEP students. Basically, Spanish is the native language for 3 out of 4 LEP students in the US. In Colorado alone, there are 59,018 LEP students whose native language is Spanish. These figures help to make people understand the reason and importance of providing these students with ESL classes as well as bilingual programs where they can learn the content areas in a language that they understand while they are learning the second language. .
If we also add that there are many schools that are unable to provide these kinds of programs for their students. Whatever the reason may be, there is still a very important way in which any bilingual teacher or not, can be helpful to English Language Learners (ELL).