Pathway ESL

Program Overview

Sweetwater Adult Education It is impossible to meet the desired levels of rigor and contextualization in an ESL classroom when all ESL students are grouped together strictly by current performance levels (e.g. beginning, intermediate, advanced). In response, they developed the ESL Pathways program.

The Program of Practice

The problem of practice is one that is common around the entire nation. It is impossible to meet the desired levels of rigor and contextualization in an ESL classroom when all ESL students are grouped together strictly by current performance levels (e.g. beginning, intermediate, advanced). The needs and desires of individual students are vastly different, and are often tethered directly to the goals and reasons each student is participating in the class. Students who would like to go to a university, students who are eager to gain employment, and students who simply want to learn how to navigate their community are often placed in the same ESL classroom, making it virtually impossible to meet all of their needs.

The Response

In 2019, Sweetwater Adult Education began asking ESL students WHY they are studying ESL in an effort to learn their long-term goals and desired outcomes. The results were clear in the Fall 2019 survey completed by 567 ESL students. Students were universally enrolling into Sweetwater’s ESL program for one of the following reasons: a sense of community and functionality, to pursue employment opportunities and advancements, or to support additional learning goals such as earning a high school equivalency or college diploma.

Armed with this knowledge, Sweetwater transitioned to a Pathway ESL program at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. Students would still have access to the traditional stratified levels beginning, intermediate, and advanced, but they would also now be able to select a pathway to better meet their personalized needs.

Students in the “Community” pathway are seeking functional English with a focus on meaning making and navigating the various systems and norms of life here in our border town at the most southwesterly location in the continental US. In the 2019 survey, 39.2% of students identified the Community pathway as their most desired, appropriate fit, making it our largest group. In this class, contextualization can include things such as having a conversation with a child’s teacher, navigating street signs, or a scripted conversation for a doctor’s visit.

Students in the “Workplace” pathway are seeking English language training for the workplace with a focus on essential skills, appropriate professional communication, and employment acquisition . In the 2019 survey, 34.7% of students identified the Workplace pathway as their most desired, appropriate fit, making it our second largest group. In this class, contextualization can include things such as interpreting a safety manual, writing an email to a supervisor, or an improvisational conversation with an “upset customer”.

Students in the “Academic” pathway are seeking English language training for an academic reason, whether it is to pass the GED exam, earn a high school diploma, or transition into our partnering consortia member institution, Southwestern College. In the 2019 survey, 20.5% of students identified the Academic pathway as their most desired, appropriate fit, making it our smallest group. In this class, contextualization can include things such as reviewing multiple conflicting primary source documents and deriving a position, writing an effective essay with embedded citations, or presenting and defending one’s position in a classroom debate.

No single class can meet the needs, interests, and desired levels of rigor for these various groups of students. Traditionally, most of our ESL classes have been most tailored to the largest group, those who identified as “Community” ESL students. The result was that most students were happy with the program, but many students' true needs were not being met. Students attending Southwestern college for the first time did not have the training necessary for rapid success, and adapting to the expected levels of reading and writing was a considerable leap from their experiences with Sweetwater Adult Education. Students now interested in the Workplace line faced similar challenges in the old system, in that they would prepare resumes, cover letters, and interview answers on their own without the contextualized instruction of the school. Then, once they had the job, they had not been trained in their ESL class on how to communicate with customers, co-workers, stakeholders, and supervisors. Conversely, by having ESL Pathways, students have access to just the right amount of rigor and contextualization opportunities to ensure success. Students are moving into the next phases of their life with confidence, experience, and a resolve that can only come from having done something successfully before.

The Unique Features of the Program

The ESL Pathways program has been designed with some unique features that leverage opportunities for success. One unique aspect of the program is the effort to support students with capstones that facilitate next steps in their growth. The Community pathway caps for many students with the opportunity to earn citizenship through the citizenship preparation program, while others cap their experience by completing and celebrating their dedicated hours of community service. The Workplace pathway is supported by a teacher who is credentialed as a job developer, and is fortified by an integrated education and training (IET) program that extends the language training into 21 CTE offerings covering 7 industry sectors. The capstone for many students in the Academic pathway is the completion of all sections of the GED, but it can also come in the form of a high school diploma or a schools-sponsored visit to Southwestern College for possible enrollment and transition support.

Another unique facet of Sweetwater Adult’s Pathway ESL program is the support embedded by our Disabilities and Access Resource Center (DARC), which opened in the 2019-2020 school year. This team of dedicated educators and support personnel is available to all students and has been instrumental in assisting students in identifying their learning preferences, challenges, or disability, which may have been a barrier to educational outcomes. With the DARC team’s support, adults with disabilities in Sweetwater Adult Education’s ESL Pathway program have a new level of support in meeting their language development and life goals.

The Outcome

As students commit to goals and their selected pathway, they are increasingly likely to dual enroll with a related program:

In 2021-2022, 469 students dual-enrolled in the ESL workplace path and CTE programs, facilitated by the workplace pathweay’s capstone Integrated Education and Training (IET) program. As recently as 2017-2018, there were 0 students dual enrolled in IET and CTE, with significant growth in dual enrollment occurring each school year since.

Dual enrollment has also increased dramatically between adult basic education (ABE) and ESL due to outreach to the students in the Academic pathway. In 2019-2020, there were not any dual enrollments between ESL and ABE. Dual enrollees increased to 34 students in 2020-2021, 186 students in 2021-2022, and is expected to jump significantly higher in 2022-2023.

Similarly, dual enrollment between citizenship and the ESL Community pathway jumped from 68 students in 2019-2020 to 184 students in 2021-2022.

Performance data is promising so far with broad gains in percentages of students acquiring an EFL gain comparing the last 2 reporting years, but reliability is low due to impacts of the pandemic on testing practices and procedures. We view the 2021-2022 as solid baseline data for student performance, and look forward to reporting outcomes in future years. Interestingly, student enrollment has begun to shift toward the more rigorous pathways in the program as implementation continues in the meantime. The table below shows enrollment % by pathway for the 2 years of implementation:

Pathway 2020-2021 2021-2022
Community 54.6% 44.4%
Workplace 21.7% 26.6%
Academic 23.6% 29%