1. When students' official transcript is sent to UC or any college, ".6" literature course title will be the same as regular literature course title.
2. UC requires four years of English but does not require those courses be world literature, ethnic literature, and English literature. Only American literature is required. The other three English courses must include at least two years of literature; however, those can be any literature courses. Therefore, it is possible that an ELL takes one year ELD 7/8, one year literature composition, one year .6 American lit and one year European lit and still fulfills UC requirement.
3. It takes an ELL at least three years to acquire enough English skills to function in a regular English class, and it takes about five years for the student to perform at the same level with a regular student. Regular English teachers have been frustrating why some of the 99 students are not getting anything in the class. It is simply that they are not ready. Language acquisition is not something that happens over night.
4. Compliance issues: if a student exits ESL by parent request, we cannot exclude him/her from taking any regular English classes. However, English department teachers can decide their standards of each courses. They can even make recommendations to retain students just like Math and Science classes. We are not allowed to eliminate ESL course titles if we do have ELLs identified by the district.

Anne Jorgensen lead a case study of one of her student's essay. Teachers brainstormed how we could do differently based on what we knew and what we learned to help students like this one. The following is a summary of opinions that we received:

1. Many teachers thought that the proposal to install 5 or 6 computers in their classrooms wouldn't work because this is not an elementary school. If ELLs are not doing the same work as regular students in that regular class, then they shouldn't pass a course called "world lit" or "American lit." Just compare that to an advanced algebra class: if 30% of the students in that class have no idea what fraction is, can they interact with some computer programs in the class and still get advanced algebra credit?
2. Some regular teachers liked plan three (to eliminate ESL title), but Lydia pointed out that it might not be possible.
3. Many teachers said that plan four was a good plan in the past, but again, even we had a full time teacher in the lab as a tutor, we could not give regular literature credit to those students since they would not be able to handle regular work.
4. Regular teachers were willing to look into plan five to see if it was feasible. Also, English department teachers would like to work on their grading policy and standards before any action/plan being taken or voted on.

In summary, teachers liked the opportunity for the round table discussion and the dialogue between the two departments. Also, they felt it was positive that they could meet face to face with a district administrator so that they could clarify issues regarding student placement, ESL/Bilingual program, and compliance. They wished that a site administrator could be there when teachers addressed some issues that might impact the master schedule.

Fan Fang has sent out an e-mail (Cc to Dr. Tom and Margaret Chiu) to all department members seeking follow-ups on the topics that we discussed at the Thursday meeting. A follow-up report will be submitted.