Student Profile

Hi, my name is Angelita. I am an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher in Fulton County Schools in Georgia.
         I have completed my bachelor degree in elementary education in Ateneo De Zamboanga University, a Catholic school in the Philippines owned and managed by American and Filipino Jesuit priests. I specialized in General Science for my first three years in college, and later changed my major to English as a Second Language. Later, I pursued my graduate school study in Cebu Normal University in the Philippines, but left before completing my degree since I got a job offer to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) in China. After teaching (ESL) for about six years, I decided to enroll in a graduate school program here in the United States. I recently completed my master's degree in English as a Second Language (ESL) at American College of Education.

I have been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) for over 10 years. I have taught young and adult students from Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, France, Jordan and the Philippines. Now, I am in my third year of teaching kindergarten to fifth-grade students in the United States, and I realized that I needed to upgrade my professional skills and knowledge to better support my diverse English language learners. All of my graduate school coursework modules presented various teaching methods and materials needed to achieve success in a diverse ELL classroom environment. I am really excited to use different teaching strategies using culturally diverse and sensitive materials for my ELL students for them to build connections and make learning more meaningful.

I love learning and it is my first goal improve my professional skills so that I can provide interesting, engaging and provide differentiated learning experiences for all my students. It is important that I get to know my students in order to meet their individual learning needs. For example, I would like my students to learn knowledge and skills that they can use in real-life situations. I also hope to see my ESOL students become fluent and confident English communicators by providing them the right supports and accommodations in their language acquisition process. In addition, I will continue to encourage my students to continue using their home language with they are at home. 

My next goal is to become better in collaborating with my peers, and to plan for collaborative learning experiences for my students. I believe that ELL students need to work collaboratively using different cooperative learning strategies. It is important for me to continue to use authentic assessments to gather data to guide my instructional planning. For example, during our Professional Learning Community meeting I share my students’ progress and their work samples. Then we collaborate to design our unit plans, common assessment and intervention strategies for students who need extra support.

My final goal is to become proactive in finding and evaluating research-based studies so that I can implement some strategies to improve my students' academic and language performance. In the future, it is my plan to conduct an action research in order to find out what works best in my classroom. The result of my action research will guide the teachers in our school in choosing the strategies that will best support our English language learners. For this to happen, I need to continue reading more examples of action research from other educators and I also need to review the skills I learned from Research Methods. My goals will be beneficial for me to continue to uphold my philosophy that each child is capable of achieving his highest potential if given the right learning experiences with support and accommodations based on his language and academic needs.