After 11 years of teaching all the high school level English as a Second Language (ESL) courses I thought were available in the state of Texas, I was suddenly assigned the task of teaching “Practical Writing ESL”—the objectives for which, I was told, were straightforward and easy to follow. Once I looked at them myself, I came to realize that this was probably instituted as a remedial course to help get English Language Learners (ELLs) to pass the writing portion of our state assessment. The expectation, it would seem, would be to dole out practice writing prompts all year to better “prepare” the students taking the course.

The problem is, I don’t do that.