5 Ways to Build Positive Relationships with Classroom Teachers as an ELD Teacher
As an ELD teacher, your job goes far beyond teaching language. Every day, you collaborate with classroom teachers to help multilingual learners (MLs) succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. You may co-teach lessons, plan instruction together, discuss student progress, communicate with families, and share strategies that make grade-level content more accessible.
Strong relationships with your colleagues make all of this easier. When you work as a team, students benefit the most.
In this post, you will find a few simple ways to build positive working relationships with the teachers you support.
1. Start with Listening
Every classroom teacher has different teaching styles, routines, personalities, students, and challenges. Before offering suggestions, take time to listen and understand their goals and concerns. When teachers feel heard, they are more likely to welcome your ideas. In addition, since you'll be working in that classroom, it's a good idea to spend the first few weeks observing. Pay attention to student dynamics, strengths, and areas of need. This will help you better understand the classroom teacher's perspective and identify the best ways to support both the teacher and your multilingual learners.
2. Be a Partner, Not an Evaluator
Your role as an ELD/ML teacher is to support, not to judge the classroom teacher. You are both there for the students. Instead of pointing out what isn't working, offer practical strategies that can easily fit into the lesson. Small adjustments, like sentence stems, visuals, or vocabulary supports, can make a big difference for multilingual learners.
3. Communicate Regularly
You don't need long planning meetings every week. A quick conversation, email, or shared planning document can help both of you stay on the same page. Consistent communication helps prevent misunderstandings and makes collaboration much smoother. Using a Google docs or sheets is the simplest way to give suggestions or add comments, activities, etc for a lesson since anyone can edit the document and see the changes. Each of you should decide on using a specific color when editing to make it easier to ask for clarification or notice the changes that were made on the document.
4. Celebrate Successes Together
When a multilingual learner makes progress, share the good news! Recognizing student growth reminds everyone that your teamwork is making a difference. Celebrating small wins helps build trust and positivity. Additionally, doing it together helps students see that you are a team of teachers and that they can trust you and the classroom teacher equally.
5. Be Flexible and Solution-Oriented
There’s always going to be unexpected situations, schedules changes, or lessons don't always go as planned. Being flexible and focusing on solutions instead of problems helps create a supportive partnership. In addition, ELD/ML teachers might get pulled to cover other classrooms or support during certain events or testing, so it is important to note these changes or communicate them as soon as you know about them to avoid misunderstandings and plan accordingly. Remember that you're both working toward the same goal: helping students succeed.
Working with Difficult Colleagues
Not every collaboration will be easy. Occasionally, you'll work with someone who is resistant to change, too busy to meet, unsure about supporting multilingual learners, or maybe personalities are not a match.
Here are two ways to navigate those situations.
1.Keep the Focus on Students
When conversations become difficult, bring the discussion back to student needs. Instead of saying, "You should do this," try saying, "I think this strategy could help our multilingual learners participate more during the lesson." Keeping students at the center makes conversations feel more collaborative.
2.Stay Professional and Consistent
You may not be able to change someone's attitude, but you can control your own. Try to be respectful, reliable, and positive in every interaction. Continue offering support without taking disagreements personally. Over time, consistency and professionalism often build trust, even with challenging colleagues.
Final Thoughts
Successful collaboration doesn't happen overnight. It takes communication, patience, flexibility, and mutual respect. As an ELD teacher, you bring valuable expertise that helps multilingual learners access grade-level content and thrive in school. By building strong partnerships with classroom teachers, you create a team that gives students the support they deserve.
Remember, the goal isn't to have perfect collaboration every day or perfect relationship with every teacher you support. It's to continue building positive relationships that help multilingual learners grow.
For more resources and strategies to use with multilingual learners:
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