Join us for a conversation with Kyla Burns and Thomas Griffin from JHS and Aaron Meyer from Summit as they share valuable insights on how to effectively communicate with ESOL families during parent-teacher conferences. Learn practical tips for building rapport, overcoming language barriers, and fostering meaningful partnerships to support student s…

On a day in 1621, in the first autumn after the pilgrim fathers landed on the shores of Massachusetts, the settlers were going to have a feast with turkeys they had shot, and some of the corn (maize; we in America first called it Indian corn and then just corn, for short) they had raised, when they were unexpectedly visited by the friendly sachem M…

In 1957, a now-forgotten gospel singer named Billy Williams (with a group called “The Charioteers”) released a cover of an old Fats Waller recording of “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” and earned himself a million-seller gold record. The song wasn’t new, obviously, and some of the its popularity came from its nostalgia value. Bu…

When I was a small boy, I recall that there were sober and intelligent religious programs on television on a Sunday morning. The most winsome might have been Davey and Goliath, a clay-cartoon of quite high quality, wherein the boy, Davey Hansen, had to learn lessons of truth, honor, charity, forgiveness, and trust in God, all while accompanied by h…

Whenever Debra and I happen upon a movie like today’s Film of the Week, we have a standing jest that comes from Ricky Ricardo’s comic mispronunciations of English in the old I Love Lucy show: “The man’s got magnesia!” Of course, Ricky meant amnesia, which would require the services of what Ricky, dazed by the English spelling, once called a “physik…

One of our most beloved hymns of remembrance, included in many an Episcopalian hymnal, originally had the title, Yesu bin Mariamu, as it was written in Swahili by the Anglican missionary, Edward Stuart Palmer. Once I saw that title, the linguist in me said, “No, it can’t be — bin Mariamu sounds Semitic!” Well, so it is. That’s because the Muslim Ar…

Have you ever looked up on a dark night and tried even to estimate how many distant twinkling objects are visible to the naked eye? Well, there were so many stars shining in the firmament of American popular music of the early to mid-twentieth century that it’s impossible ever to hope to count them all. Most of the time here at Sometimes a Song I k…

In my entry on our Word of the Week, decide, I had occasion to talk a little baseball, and to mention the most decisive home run in Major League history. After all, you can’t get more decisive than hitting a walk-off tie-breaking home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Seven, which is what Bill Mazeroski did in 1960. Maz is still with us…

Note: Due to a technical glitch with Substack, this post did not go out as scheduled. Our apologies! Our Poem of the Week is a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s second most quotable play — second to Hamlet, though you could make a case for Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Macbeth. Brutus is a friend of Caesar, and an ally of Cicero and w…

The year was 1858, the place was Philadelphia, and a young minister, Dudley Atkins Tyng, was delivering a sermon before five thousand men. It was a meeting of the recently formed Young Men’s Christian Association, back in the days when every word in that title meant a great deal. The Reverend Tyng, an Episcopalian, had been drummed out of his paris…

The most famous judicial decision in Scripture was both a matter of judgment and of detective work. You’ll remember the two women who came before King Solomon, each claiming to be the mother of a little baby. The true mother claimed that the other woman had had a child who died when she smothered it by accident at night, and before daybreak this ca…

Looking for a way to improve your teaching skills in the classroom when it comes to supporting our English Learners? Morgan Vana and Evan Hammons from Timber Ridge Elementary discuss some of the ways they have enhanced their practice. Guest(s) - Morgan Vana and Evan Hammans Thanks for listening!! If you are a Johnston Teacher and want more informat…

We have a chat about what ELPA21 is, what it means to our students, and how we can use the data from this assessment to support our ELs. Guest - Melissa Grinstead Thanks for listening!! If you are a Johnston Teacher and want more information on our programming, please go to the student services webpage and click on the ESOL tab. This webpage is lin…

Our first episode takes a glance at some of the recent history of ESOL programming at Johnston Community Schools along with some of the future goals. Guest - Melissa Grinstead Thanks for listening!! If you are a Johnston Teacher and want more information on our programming, please go to the student services webpage and click on the ESOL tab. This w…

Chapters 17-19, Teaching english & Chapter 6, Unlocking

Let's begin from the very beginning. There are so many acronyms related to ESOL. You have probably heard such words as ESL, ESOL, ELL, EL, L1, L2, and LEP. What do they all mean?