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A small classroom didn't keep English Language Learner teacher Tiffany Gebhardt from bouncing off the walls last week.

Gebhardt was all smiles Tuesday morning as she worked with a group of six kindergarten ELL students at Soda Creek Elementary School. Gebhardt said that exuberance is necessary to reach a group of 5- and 6-year-olds learning English for the first time.

One of the activities with her students involved Gebhardt singing a song.

"I am special, I am me. No one walks the way I walk. No one talks the way I talk. No one plays the way I play."

Gebhardt, whose students' native languages include Spanish, Mandarin, Uzbek and Haitian Creole, emphasized and mimicked motions for the words "walk," "talk" and "play," the three words she and her students worked on that morning.

"If I'm animated, it will increase their comprehension," she said. "This group is in the early phase of their language acquisition."

Gebhardt and other ELL teachers in the Steamboat Springs School District have smaller classes this year, with lower enrollment after years of steady growth. The 2009-10 numbers are current as of last week. Districts don't take their official student counts, which determine how much funding they receive from the state, until Oct. 1.

ELL enrollment in South Routt is down by one student from a year ago. The Hayden School District couldn't provide exact numbers of ELL students in its schools after starting the school year Sept. 8. But Hayden Valley Elementary School Principal Rhonda Sweetser said enrollment there, which represents the largest number of ELL students in the district, has seen a "slight increase" this year.

The decline and rise

Tatiana Achcar, executive director of Integrated Community, said the county could be seeing a bit of an "exodus" of the immigrant community because of the economic slump and lack of job opportunities for parents.

"It's a moving target, and it's very difficult to ascertain the number of the population that has stayed and the number that has left," she said. "Students seem to be the best number to gauge that."

Integrated Community promotes and supports the bringing together of diverse cultures in Routt and Moffat counties.

Achcar said when jobs were plentiful and the region was flooded with work in the construction, landscaping, hospitality and housekeeping fields, Steamboat and surrounding communities saw an influx of seasonal workers. She said when newcomers realized the need didn't wane, they became permanent residents, moving their families and enrolling their children in school.

When that happened, ELL enrollment in area schools swelled. Steamboat's School District had its highest number of ELL students last year with 160, up from 104 the previous year. The enrollment in Hayden more than tripled, from four students in 2006-07 to 13 in 2007-08. In South Routt, the district saw its biggest enrollment jump during those same years, from 14 to 23 ELL students.

The growth in Steamboat created the need for the district to add full-time ELL teachers at each of its four schools.

Hayden doesn't have any dedicated ELL teachers, but Sweetser said the elementary school students could receive additional help if needed. South Routt also doesn't have any ELL teachers, but Superintendent Scott Mader said it has ELL coordinators at each campus, one of whom is a fluent Spanish speaker, to provide additional assistance. He said ELL coordinators also work to help translate during parent-teacher conferences.

Mader said with less than 6 percent of the district's enrollment representing ELL students, the district isn't at a point where dedicated ELL teachers are needed at each school.

The programs

At Steamboat schools, ELL teachers work with small groups of students for only a short period of the day. For example, Gebhardt only teaches ELL students directly for about half an hour every day. Kari Faulk, the ELL teacher at Steamboat Springs High School, works directly with students for 90 minutes each day.

For the rest of the day, Gebhardt and Faulk collaborate with classroom teachers and assist students individually as needed.

"Our main focus is helping students learn English and become proficient in learning the academic content of their classrooms, just like their peers," she said. "We're really working hard here at Soda Creek to provide teachers with strategies to make instruction more comprehensible."

In South Routt and Hayden, that support is provided by school staff members as needed on an individual basis. Like Steamboat, whose ELL students spend most of their time in school with their peers - not in ELL classes -Sweetser said at the elementary school, they've found that one of the best things was integrating ELL students with their peers.

The same is true for South Routt, whose ELL students spend their entire school days in classes with their peers.

Like their peers, ELL students participate in the annual Colorado Standard Assessment Program testing. But they also take the Colorado English Language Assessment program tests, which measure their year-to-year growth learning English.

Achcar said Integrated Community offers English as a Second Language programs for adults but doesn't offer any programs for school-aged children. The organization has been in contact with the Steamboat Springs School District to support its ELL efforts and collaborate, she said.

She said support could assist teachers, whom she said often become advocates for ELL students and their families.

"Oftentimes, immigrant families are low-income, with many other hardships and pressures," she said. "They're trying to survive with fewer resources. There are language barriers, and they rely on their children to communicate. It's a role reversal. ELL instructors often get involved with that. I have a tremendous admiration for anyone involved in ELL."

The challenges

Sweetser said the biggest challenge for ELL students at the elementary school is vocabulary, trying to grasp words they may not be familiar with to understand lessons or homework assignments. But she said it's amazing how well many of the students perform without being able to speak English.

"I've been impressed with the progress kids make," she said. "If they have a base language, no matter what it is, if they're proficient in that language, it's incredible how well they grow. It's amazing how fast they catch up, can improve and do well."

In addition to vocabulary, Gebhardt said another challenge for ELL students was, in some cases, doing twice as much work as their peers.

"They're learning a language as well as the content of that grade level," she said. "Depending on where they are with their language acquisition, it may be difficult for some."

Gebhardt said language acquisition may be easier for some younger students because they're less inhibited, but older students have a better understanding of their native language to build on.

At the high school level, Faulk said the biggest challenge for some ELL students was learning academic language.

"Most students in the high school program have a pretty good command of the English language socially," she said. "If you think back to high school - learning history, biology and math, all these new words come with them. We have to keep that in mind when we're teaching."

Teachers said the ability to speak English usually comes before the ability to read and write. Faulk said that's a result of students speaking and hearing English all day. She said if anyone has lived in another country and tried to thrive with a foreign language, they'd likely understand what students go through.

"It takes a very long time to get the same level as native speakers, in terms of functioning at academic levels," she said. "It can take seven years. We're working hard, and they're working really hard, too. They want to get better."