Margie Lundgren, ELL Teacher, Ben Rush Elementary

Kudos to Margie Lundgren, Lake Washington School District’s “Staff Star” for January 2010.

Margie Lundgren, the English Language Learner (ELL) teacher at Ben Rush Elementary, meets a difficult challenge every day – helping kids to succeed in learning English. She works with students whose home language is something other than English and helps them to learn this new language for both conversational and academic purposes.

Last year alone, Margie worked with 45 students at Rush. Depending upon the needs of the school, her ELL classes (which are grouped by grade level and then individualized) can be as high as 12-15 students. These students represent a wide variety of languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese and Hebrew. Margie has flags to represent each of her students in her classroom and the students are proud to show off which countries they are from.

One of the programs that Margie involves her students with is the ELL Olympians program. The children enjoy this ceremonial event. Each student is given a medal at the beginning of the year to wear on their Olympic Days, usually two or three Fridays a month. The students practice reading seasonal and classic poems they are learning throughout the year. They celebrate their new language skills on Olympic Fridays by standing up in front of their classmates and reading one of their favorite poems, often a Shel Silverstein poem. They have a chart with a list of the poems and every time they attempt to read a poem, they receive a gold star by the poem. The poems are given according to their language ability. At the end of the year they have an Olympic Picnic to perform for their families and receive a trophy for their accomplishments. Many students will have memorized some of their favorite poems. The students welcome the challenge and grow more confident with their newly learned language.

According to her co-workers, Margie never looks for accolades but silently goes about taking care of business for the ELL department and for the Ben Rush staff.

“Margie is positively one of the nicest individuals one could ever meet. Never a complaint, always a smile, always eager to pitch in and do more than her share. The students she works with adore her, as do their families,” said Syd Mack, a sixth grade teacher at Rush.

More about the Lake Washington School District ELL Program
Lake Washington School District’s ELL program, also known as the transitional bilingual program, supports students so they become competent in English and successful in all subjects. Our ELL classrooms honor and respect the many cultures that gather there each day. The district currently provides ELL services to over 1,100 students from 74 language groups. The ELL program is available to qualified students in kindergarten through 12th grade. For additional information, visit the ELL page of the district website.