Empowering English Language Learners Families

Even though English language learners (ELLs), particularly Latinos, are the biggest and fastest growing segment of students in the US, ELL parents still contend with numerous barriers in either becoming involved or being informed about what’s going on at their child’s school, says an article on empowering ELL families through parental involvement.

Some of these obstacles, such as cultural differences, not being familiar with the school system and minimal English skills, can significantly lower parental participation and communication. However, regardless of family income or ethnicity, studies strongly support parent involvement to lower dropout rates in high school years, have better attendance and better grades, it states. Two ways to improve parental involvement include:

• Supporting the professional preparation of educators for school outreach programs and curriculum development.
• Implementing parent involvement programs that are both linguistically-appropriate and culturally relevant.

The article “Five Ways to Engage Parents of ELL Students” says that schools need to make an effort to connect with families. Waiting for them to connect will not work, the article states. Schools need to learn about ELL families, as a whole, while also developing a one-on-one relationship with each family.

Research indicates that ELLs who enter US schools in the primary grades often make good academic progress, says a white paper on enhancing the reading skills of ELLs. However, by the third grade, many fall behind because of the increasing cognitive demands of print-based instruction. In addition, in the lower grades, kids are learning to read, and by the fourth, they begin to read for content so that’s when they really need to have a good grasp of the language.

To help Hispanic ELL students get to where they need to be, many schools bring in the support of the Latino Family Literacy Project, a step-by-step educational process that guides parents in establishing an at-home, regular reading routine with bilingual books. The Project’s proven parental involvement program shows that it helps greatly in building vocabulary, increases reading skills and the level of English, overall. Teachers can attend a one-day, program training at a workshop near them or via an online webinar.