My Journey Begins...

Welcome to my blog!
This blog is going to be my venue for exploring and finding answers to my questions about ELL students who have disabilities. My reason for interest in this area stems from my internship experience, during which time I worked with an ELL student whom my mentor teacher and other school staff suspected might have a learning disability due to the fact that she made very little progress. However, determining if she had a disability would not be a simple task. First, to begin testing, the school needed permission from the parents, who do not speak English. They were invited to a conference for which the school had hired a translator, but declined to show, even after confirming with the translator that they would be there. Secondly, even if the student were to be tested, the language barrier would likely skew the results, making them an inaccurate portrayal of the student's learning abilities. As a result of these issues, the student still has not been tested and it is yet undetermined whether she may have a disability.
My interest in this topic is from the perspective of an educator. If I suspected that an ELL student in my classroom might have a disability, what type of actions should I take? What if the parents do not speak English, as was the case in my internship classroom? How can I accurately determine whether the student's struggles stem from a disability or are due to the language barrier? How can I accommodate the needs of a student for whom English is a second language and who also has a disability? I am hoping that my exploration in the coming weeks will help me find the answers to these questions and that I will develop an understanding of how to adapt my instruction to accommodate the needs of all students.