Agent Mandy Yom (ELL Kindergarten)

Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to create positive relationships with students and families in a kindergarten class for English Language Learners. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is Mandy Yom of Skokie, Illinois.

 

In this episode we discuss:

• A game to put yourself in the shoes of an English Language Learner (ELL)
• How a sheltered ELL kindergarten program works
• How students are selected into the program in Illinois
• Mandy’s path to teaching
• Building relationships with ELL families
• Learning the value of boundaries
• Striving to find ways to include data-driven feedback into her practice
• Needing to adapt the kindergarten curriculum for ELLs
• The various challenges of distance learning
• Non-traditional ways of communicating with families
• Her ideal school: getting families truly involved