What additional skills does a high school English teacher need for ESL students?

If an English teacher is working with ESL students in high school, what extra qualifications or responsibilities do they have? Are there specific training programs that help teachers support these students?

Working with ESL (English as a Second Language) students does require some specific skills and understanding on the part of the teacher. At the most basic level, teachers need patience and creativity, as well as an awareness of each student's cultural background—this can impact both how students learn and how they approach the English language.

In terms of qualifications, ESL teaching certification is often recommended. This typically involves coursework in linguistics and pedagogy, as well as specific strategies for teaching English learners. Various states and districts may have different requirements, so the teacher needs to check with local education authorities.

Some additional responsibilities for an English teacher working with ESL students might include:

- Developing lesson plans that are accessible for students at varying levels of English proficiency

- Using visual aids and other resources to aid comprehension

- Assessing students' language proficiency and monitoring progress over time

For ESL instruction, teachers often adopt specific strategies, like using contextual clues to aid understanding, encouraging cooperative learning, integrating listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in lessons, and teaching vocabulary explicitly.

One popular training program for teachers of ESL students is TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). This provides a lot of practical strategies that teachers can use to help their students become more proficient in English. Similar programs include CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), although these are often used more in the context of teaching adults or teaching abroad.