Lauren Nicole Slade

At this time I was living in Washington and I was in preschool. Since I was not in Arizona where the state board demanded change, I did not experience any change. Even when the supreme court handed down its decision later in 2009, I did not notice any change because I did not know any ELL students.

This court case means I will have to adhere to state policies in regards to the teaching of ELLs. I heard recently that Arizona is moving away from having ELLs separated for much of the day to having them in more general education classes. As a biology teacher, this means I can expect to have more ELLS in my classroom and I will have to make sure that the support and differentiation in my lessons is fitting to more students needs.

During this broad range of years I lived in both Texas and Washington. In 2002, I was in Washington and in Kindergarten. I did not know any ELL students, nor was I at the point in my schooling where I would notice and increase in standardized testing or focus on standards. I graduated in 2015 in Texas, and although I had heard of no child left behind at that point I don't think I knew what it was because it had been in affect the entire time I was in school, so to me that was normal.

Since this is no longer in affect, nor was I teaching during this time period, this did not affect how I teach my subject matter. However, I think I need to be careful to not replicate the teach to the test mentality that I experienced a lot in school and which is harmful to ELL achievement.

In 2009 I was in seventh grade in Texas, and in 2015 I graduated from my high school there. Interestingly, I never heard of race to the top once during those years. It was only when I started this Master's program a few months ago that I first heard this. Like I talked about with ESEA flexibility, the development of the new standardized test we began to take in high school maybe was related RTTT instead. I don't feel my school focused anymore on college or career readiness than it already had after 2009, but I was also in 7th grade so maybe I just didn't know they were implementing new focuses.

This would no longer affect my teaching because the act is no longer in affect. However, I think it is important to make sure your students are prepared for the world, whether that be college or a job right out of school. I also believe to meet the needs of ELL students this should not be pressuring or high stakes when they are trying to take risks and learn something that is very difficult like a new language.

I have heard of common core, but growing up in Texas where it was not adopted, I did not experience it. I have seen examples of kids doing common core math, which must have introduced some new methods for teaching certain math skills. Based on how I've seen math taught with common core, I already have a negative view of it because it has students use 10 steps to solve a problem when only 3 are require. And while it may make each individual step easier, I think they should know how to do the slightly harder steps and get it done in a simpler fashion.

Again, I was not a teacher at the time common core was adopted in the majority of states. As an incoming teacher, I will not be using common core or NGSS since Arizona has developed its own set of standards. I do wonder if they AZ standards have an equivalent to the common core academic language skill standards which would help with language differentiation strategies.

In 2011 I was strating my Freshman year of high school in Texas. During those years the standardized test changed from TAKS to STAAR testing, and I wonder now if was related to this act or not in an attempt to develop a "next generation" assessment. I did not hear about this act though until I read about it in the book, and I was unaware no child left behind had been altered in any way.

Again, because I wa snot a teacher during the time this was in affect it did not affect how I teach my content area. However, I think it brings up a good point about the problem with lumping at-risk students into one large group. As a teacher, I need to address students individual needs, and lumping them into a large heterogeneous group like that does not accomplish that goal.

I graduated high school in Texas in 2015. I have not been in public education since then, until I started my teaching internship two weeks ago. Since most states did not implement until 2017 or after, I did not experience this in school. I have also never heard of this act until I read about it in the book.

This act will definitely impact me in teaching my content area and helping ELL students. I must make sure students are learning both content and language proficiency in the class. Any necessary accomodations must be made according to state content and ELP standards to ensure ELLs are successful in learning English and other content areas.