Are Your English Language Teachers Tracking Growth—and Worse Off for It?

How Smart Automation Can Reduce Teacher Burnout and Strengthen Your English Langauge Teachers

Every district EL leader knows the pressure:

• “Where’s the data?”

• “Are we meeting compliance?”

• “How are our multilingual learners progressing?”

  
  

But behind the reports, charts, and checklists lies a harder truth:Your most dedicated English Language teachers are exhausted—and growth documentation is one of the biggest culprits.

In classrooms across the country, teachers are spending hours collecting, organizing, and justifying evidence of language development—often duplicating efforts across spreadsheets, paper portfolios, and assessment tools that don’t talk to each other.

And the irony?This documentation often doesn’t lead to better instruction. It leads to burnout.

So the real question isn’t how do we collect more data? It’s: How do we collect the right data, automatically, so teachers can focus on instruction and relationships?

The Burden Is Real—and It’s Pushing English Language Teachers Out

According to a recent survey by the American Federation of Teachers, more than 75% of educators report frequent job-related stress, and over one-third say they’re likely to leave the profession within the next two years (AFT & RAND Corporation, 2022).

For EL teachers, that pressure is magnified. They’re tasked not only with instruction but also with:

• Tracking progress across for each student

• Documenting language use for LPAC, Title III, and IEP meetings

• Creating differentiated lessons for students across proficiency levels and content areas

• Communicating with families—often across language barriers

  
  

In their book Breaking Down the Wall, Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder emphasize that “language specialists are often expected to collect, track, and report on data in ways that exceed what most other educators face—without additional time, tools, or support” (Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2020).

The Case for Automation: Not a Shortcut—A Strategy

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about cutting corners.It’s about designing a system that does what humans shouldn’t have to.

Margo Gottlieb, co-founder of WIDA, argues that “the evidence of student growth is most powerful when it’s captured over time, across contexts, and aligned to clear language goals” (Gottlieb, 2016). But that kind of evidence shouldn’t require hours of manual labor to assemble.

Smart automation supports what research already tells us:

• Students improve when feedback is timely and targeted

• Teachers thrive when systems are streamlined and intuitive

• Programs succeed when data informs, rather than controls, instructional decisions

What to Automate (And Why It Matters)

Here’s where automation makes a measurable difference for your program—and your staff.

1. Student Samples and Language Domain Evidence

Instead of manually collecting and scoring writing and speaking samples:

• Use platforms like AIR Language to prompt students with speaking tasks that are transcribed and time-stamped.

• The system tracks growth automatically over time—across reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Impact: Teachers stop wasting time archiving samples. Data collection becomes embedded in learning.

2. Goal Setting and Student Reflections

Self-assessment is a best practice—and a powerful metacognitive tool—but often skipped due to time constraints.

With digital self-assessments:

• Students choose and track their own goals

• Responses are stored, time-stamped, and accessible for LPAC meetings or portfolios. Think a google form in which students score themselves.

• Teachers see a visual of student confidence and domain focus

Impact: Teachers spend less time “proving” growth. Students co-own their language development journey.

3. Progress Reports and Portfolios

Every quarter, teachers scramble to pull together data for progress monitoring, parent communication, and meetings.

Smart platforms:

• Auto-generate growth snapshots from activity data

• Include timestamps, audio samples, scores, and goals

• Create exportable portfolios in seconds

Impact: Teachers spend time discussing student progress—not compiling evidence of it.

What This Frees Teachers Up to Do

When automation takes care of documentation, EL teachers can focus on what actually accelerates growth:

• Conferring with students

• Modeling academic discourse

• Building classroom routines for language use

• Collaborating with general education colleagues

As Larry Ferlazzo regularly writes in his blog, The Best Ways to Support ELs, “When students feel ownership, and when teachers have time to build meaningful relationships, everything else follows.” (Ferlazzo, 2023).

A Program-Level Shift: From Manual Labor to Systemic Insight

This isn’t just about saving time. It’s about reclaiming teaching as the center of the EL classroom—and creating programmatic consistency across schools and teachers.

When you automate the right things:

• Teachers trust the system

• Students engage in their own growth

• Principals see clear progress

• Compliance becomes a byproduct of good instruction—not the goal

  
  

  Click below to download a free checklist to make your program more efficient.

  
  

EL Program Efficiency Checklist.

Download • 263KB

Final Word: Don’t Add More. Replace the Right Things.

Your EL teachers are already working at capacity. They don’t need another checklist or spreadsheet.They need a system that lifts the weight—not adds to it.

AIR Language was built with this exact mission in mind.

• AI-powered documentation

• Student-driven progress tracking

• All built into the learning—not after the fact

  
  

Book a call to see how AIR Language can lighten your teachers’ load—and still deliver the evidence your district needs.

Citations

• Ferlazzo, L. (2023). The Best Ways to Support ELs. Education Week.

• Staehr Fenner, D., & Snyder, S. (2020). Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success. Corwin Press.

• Gottlieb, M. (2016). Assessing English Language Learners: Bridges to Educational Equity. Corwin Press.

• RAND Corporation & AFT. (2022). Educator Stress and Intent to Leave.https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-4.html