GE teachers might not understand the struggles bilingual teachers have to face because they are not and will ever not be in the same shoe.
GE teacher support each other by sharing materials, lesson ideas, kids, etc. but bilingual teachers are... sometimes, just isolated on their own. Many of the materials has to be created on their own, lesson ideas on their own, and kids are only stayed in one classroom all day (unlike GE teachers who can share students). This causes a lot of separation with the grade level teams and may become stressful at times for the bilingual teachers. There are times where the bilingual teachers have double the meetings and take twice as long to make any materials than the GE teachers because of the language and the system in place. Due to misunderstandings/miscommunications, GE might think of bilingual teachers otherwise.
To help lessen the stress, I've made myself goals for next year.
- to express to GE teachers, whenever appropriate and possible, the needs to translating on the materials given to teachers
- to express reasons why I cannot be in meetings because I have other 100 meetings I have been pushing off
- to be very opened in communication whenever I can to let others know my situation
