s the amount of parent participation in the school and can work against the accomplishments made in the classroom. If parents are intolerant of the new culture that their children bring home in order to uphold their native heritage, then students get caught in the middle of a cultural battle and class work may reflect this struggle. (M.Fidler, personal communication, June 9, 2001). We discovered no evidence of this occurring at Arzu’s school.The only disadvantage to having ESL students in class becomes apparent when the child has such a low level of English comprehension that it interferes with the material being presented. When the student cannot ask, “May I go to the bathroom?” or has no clue what the teacher is talking about, the situation can get scary. One-third of the teachers interviewed did not receive any ESL training. Most mentioned that they received adequate help form the ESL teachers and some noted that their teaching materials provided accommodations for ESL students. There is a common desire to give more time to ESL students, but the teachers come up short providing it. The teachers greatest concern mentioned is to have students up to speed with English language use, especially in high school where abstract ideas are most difficult to understand. Most students said that they felt no disrespect displayed toward their culture except six third-graders from the same class said one or three people do not respect their culture (M.Fidler, personal communication, June 9, 2001). However, the same third grade teacher mentions during her interview that she had not been trained to teach ESL students and mentioned that she feels sorry for them and how hard they struggle with the language barrier in class. This was the only information throughout out the interviews leaning in the direction of culturally diverse students hindering the learning environment. We are curious as to the effect the Pygmalion effect ...
