911 or Not

A few days, or should I say nights, ago my husband woke me up from a deep sleep. His words to me should have been alarming, "I'm having a heart attack!" My question to him was "Where does it hurt?" "My back, between my shoulder blades!" Without a second thought I replied, " You're just having a gall bladder attack." With that I rolled over and went back to sleep. It wasn't until I was halfway through my 5:00 morning shower that I remembered this conversation, not knowing if it had been real or a dream. I finished showering, wondering if my husband was ok, but first I was going to shave my legs. Good Grief! He could have been dead! But no, there he was, snoring away. I woke him up and asked him if he had been in pain and if he'd woke me up in the middle of the night. Well, yes he had and he wasn't too happy that I had given him no attention or help.

Now, I'm not sharing this because I'm especially proud of the fact that I didn't get worried and call 911 in the middle of the night or that I didn't even jump out of the shower when I remembered the conversation. I'm sharing this because of how similar it is to when many teachers or administrators hear that an ESL student is having trouble. Too often the issues are ignored, thinking that the fact the student is a second language learner is reason enough to let things pass, it doesn't warrant the attention needed to take care of their academic needs until they have enough English to do the work. Or on the other hand, there's times that special education placement is the first step in trying to help students in trouble without assessing the whole child, the whole situation.

A wonderful book that takes a serious look at ELLs at each level of language acquisition is "Differentiation of Instruction and Assessment for ELLs" by Shelley Fairbairn and Stephaney Jones-Vo, Caslon Publishing. It is worth the money! The book comes with a full size poster that is full of strategies and other useful information, a must for classroom teachers who are serious about meeting the needs of all students.

As for my husband, it was a gall bladder attack, according to Dr. Pat. Has he been to a real doctor to check it out? No. My only words of caution to him is that he'd better not wake me up again unless it's a real heart attack and then he'd better make darn sure I know he's serious.