Haslett teachers outline expanded supports as district ELL population grows

Teachers from Haslett Public Schools presented a multi-tier effort to better serve English-language-learner students, describing a voluntary teacher cohort, three-day SIOP training and classroom strategies designed to increase speaking and engagement.

"We took, we've done 3 days out of 4 of training," said Emily Proctor, a fifth-grade teacher, describing the sheltered-instruction SIOP framework the group is using to create more speaking opportunities and partner activities. Proctor and other presenters told the board they formed a book study and used classroom-based experiments—timers, gamified dice activities and partner talk—to increase oral language time so students can then improve writing and other skills.

The presenters gave district-level and school-level figures to illustrate the need. District data in Skyward showed 4.85% of Haslett K–12 students identified as English learners in 2022–23 and 6.9% in 2023–24, but teachers said their classroom relationships suggest the share is closer to 10% at their site. "We have about 393 students attending the school, and 40 of those students have another language other than English spoken predominantly at home," the lead presenter said.

Teachers said the disparity reflects families who decline to mark English-learner status at enrollment. They also emphasized that supporting multilingual learners should be a whole-classroom responsibility, not the work of a single ESL teacher. "This isn’t just great for those kiddos that are identified in Skyward… but really every student that we see is a language learner," Proctor said.

Board members asked practical questions about continuity between elementary and secondary programs and access to assessment data. Teachers told the board that WIDA (the assessment used for English learners) score sheets are sent to buildings in the fall but that classroom teachers sometimes lack timely access. "We're gonna look into that because we haven't had that yet, but we are going to look into that because that is something that we think would be helpful," one administrator said during the exchange.

Presenters credited a grant (board members indicated Jamie Trimmer applied for funding) for covering recent training costs and asked the board to consider continued support so more teachers can be trained.

Next steps announced: teachers said they will continue sharing lesson resources and training informally with colleagues at middle and high school levels, and the administration said it would check how WIDA results are distributed to ensure classroom teachers can use scores for day-to-day instruction.

The presentation concluded with board appreciation and an offer from teachers to present successful practices to other buildings.