LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires public schools to monitor limited English speaking students and show them making progress. It's a mammoth task in the Clark County School District, where roughly one-third of more than 300,000 students are identified as English language learners. Among district students, 157 languages from 147 countries are spoken.
Both schools and students struggle to meet the federal mandate requiring evidence of annual improvement.
It's the same diversity visible in the local workforce, said Norberta Anderson, director of the district's English Language Learner Program, or ELL. Almost 40 million visitors flock to Las Vegas annually, and their needs are met by an army of service industry workers bulked up by new immigrants who send their children to public schools.
One of the strategies passed on to regular teachers is that gestures are paramount in working with English language learners. Instruction often can morph into a game of charades, said Laurie Daly, an ELL teacher at Spring Valley High School.
"Think back when you took your first foreign language class," she says. "It's much of the same thing. We use flash cards, and we play all sorts of games. It's like starting from scratch."
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