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So Much for Resolutions

Seriously, I've never abandoned a resolution so quickly! I've not had a moment to actually plan anything out fully. My lunches have been spent on the phone, my prep period trackdown other people and so on.

This first week back, a new student arrived. Now, this student was expected and had actually attempted to enroll just before the holiday break. Mostly that week was spent in a furious round of emails being sent from various people within our district. Why such a flurry? Oh, this student speaks no English. Now, we have plenty of students who do not speak english as their first language, but according to the information we recieved this student spoke very little english and had even less formal education. What do we with this student? What do we use for evaluative tests? What classes should this student be placed in?

Now that this student is here, we discover that actually, he/she has no english skills at all. Nada. Everything that we have pretty much requires some english skills. Basic ones, but this kid does not know the phrase "OK". I've been to several countries where english is not the main language. I've met people who barely speak english... everyone said "OK" and this kid looks at me with a blank stare. Seriously, I thought "OK" was pretty ubiquitous. Perhaps that makes me the stupid American, I dunno.

Meanwhile, since this kid qualifies for nothing but ELL and we don't really have an ELL program, I'm guessing he falls under RtI. Response to Intervention is supposed to provide interventions for students who doen't qualify for any thing else... Anyways, I somewhat took it on to figure out what to do with this student. Obviously, regular classes won't work. We ended up cobbling up a schedule and some programs, but for the most part the student will be working on learning basic english and I'm hoping for the best.

If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears. So far, everything that has been suggested is way to advanced.
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