Teaching English Language Learners K-12

The author examines the immense demands faced by ELL educators and offers specific strategies to address these special challenges.

In Jesness- twenty-five year career as an educator, he has worked with English learners in a number of environments. He has taught ESL in public middle and high schools, special education for bilingual children at the elementary level, and language arts and social studies in classes that included both English learners and regular education students. Jesness has also taught students privately, ranging from preschoolers to top executives of multinational corporations. Over the years, he has worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for public schools near the Texas-Mexico border, for Berlitz Language Schools, and for small, privately owned language schools in Mexico and Japan.
Jesness holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and earned an MA in Spanish and an ESL teaching endorsement from the University of Texas, Pan American. He was the first non-Hispanic to earn a graduate degree in Spanish literature from UT Pan American. Jesness currently lives in League City, Texas with his wife and three daughters, and teaches Spanish and ESL at Victory Lakes Middle School. His email address is furnes@yahoo.com.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jerry Jesness's commonsense guidebook for teachers of English Language Learners. It is easy to read, jargon-free, and clear. Anyone who helps children learn English as a second language will find this book to be immensely helpful.