Bilingual/ESL
Welcome to Joliet Township’s ESL/Bilingual Page. The purpose of this page is to give students and parents access to information about our program, our philosophy and opportunities available for both students and our families. Our goal is to help our students excel in learning English while continuing their development in math, science, and the social sciences. Students will receive services as long as necessary. Once our students are mainstreamed into the general education program, they are very successful being able to compete and contribute in an all English environment.
While many districts nation-wide are struggling to meet the needs of English Language Learners (ELLs) Joliet Township is fortunate to have a well established ESL/Bilingual program that is based on the most reliable research available and has a long standing tradition of excellence. We have worked with students from all over the world including most of Latin America, Kosovo, India, Asia and Africa. Our Hispanic students receive not only intensive English classes, but their entire core academic content in their native language as well. We are currently comprised of three bilingual instructors and four English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. Joliet Township services nearly 200 hundred students in our program. While the program is housed at the Central campus, we receive full support from building and district administration and the school board. We also receive federal money under title III as well as state funds.
Accountability
Several measures are in place to ensure the success of our program. Our students take core assessments that we use to track their development of skills in English acquisition as well as their academic ability in their core classes. This data is used to track trends and guide instruction. On a large scale, we are measured by the ACCESS and the PSAE. The ACCESS is given annually in January and February and is used to measure a student’s language development. For the past two years we have made the Annual Measure of Achievement Objectives (AMAO) in language proficiency. This means that our students are making large strides in their second language acquisition. Our students are now also taking the Prairie State Achievement Exam which is how we track the district’s progress in meeting guidelines set by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
