ESL Tutoring

As nearly everyone knows, nowadays, E.S.L. stands for English as a Second Language. In most cases, non-English speaking children are able to pick up the English language amazingly quickly, when they are fully immersed into an English-speaking environment such as a school. However, until they develop a certain measure of proficiency with spoken English, these students get very little from the time they spend in the classroom; nor do they get much benefit from print materials such as textbooks, novels, classroom handouts, etc.

Whenever we become aware that, for a particular individual, English is not the language spoken at home, we investigate the student's fluency with spoken and written English. If there is any evidence that the student does not speak and read English fluently, we will ask a representative from the E.S.L. program to sit down with that student to establish whether or not he/she is eligible for special tutoring in English from one of our E.S.L tutors.

Because of limited funding, the qualified ESL students at KJH are bussed to Inglemoor High School for one or two periods of instruction in English as a Second Language. The teacher who works with our E.S.L. students is Mr. Robb Brownell (rbrownell@nsd.org). After their E.S.L. class, the students take a shuttle bus back to KJH, arriving with plenty of time to pick up on the KJH schedule beginning with second period. Fortunately, Mr. Brownell also has an Instructional Assistant, Ms. Carol Shiermeyer (mabdi@nsd.org),who spends a couple hours on our campus, most mornings, working individually with our E.S.L. students. With the additional help of these E.S.L. services, most of our non-English speaking students become fluent in this new language far more quickly than they might otherwise, with the result that they typically will be able to keep up with the assigned work for their grade level far more rapidly than would happen if they were to be simply plopped into a classroom.

If you would like more detailed information about the E.S.L. program in Northshore, please feel welcome to talk with your child's school counselor or with the school principal.