Welcome to reality.

I am teaching an intersession class. While most students are on vacation, some attend school for 20 days, 4 hours per day to catch up. In my case my students are catching up on reading comprehension, reading fluency, ESL or all of the above. I have 20 students. 12 3rd graders and 8 2nd graders. One girl just arrived from Guatemala and speaks no English.

4 students are from the bilingual program. They are the prime example what happens when someone without formal SLA background is teaching bilingual class. Language arts were taught in Spanish and Math in English. While these students reading fluency in Spanish is way ahead of their English counterparts, they do not have even a rudimentary knowledge of English phonics. SH sound and CH sounds which are not differentiated in Spanish are the same to them. As a result they spell 'shop' as 'chop'. So I worked with them using explicit instruction and minimal pairs. While they can differentiate between the 2 sounds, they cannot produce them orally. I am going to spend this week on these sounds. In addition, "f" and "wh" sounds are also confused, not to mention, they have no clue about "th". Their teacher was a bilingual speaker and that's how he got the job. He does not have BCLAD or passed his Spanish A levels. These students are starkly different from another bilingual class taught by a qualified teacher. His students read in Spanish 1 grade above and in English on grade level.

I most enjoyed working with a girl from Guatemala. She is bright and enthusiastic.

One little 2nd grader has special needs. She can hardly read at the end of 2nd grade.

This is the most diverse intersession group I have ever taught.