What If We Did This Differently? ESOL Program Innovation Through Teacher Led Policy Enactment

This critical ethnographic case study examines how an ESOL teacher in a rural elementary school enacted policy innovation. Based on one-year ethnographic fieldwork, the study traces how Laura, the school’s sole ESOL teacher, restructured service delivery and developed an individual learning plan for a newcomer student with a disrupted schooling experience. Drawing on the framework of critical policy enactment, the study reveals how teacher agency, institutional conditions, and sociopolitical contexts converge in the daily realities of rural multilingual education. The article calls for systemic recognition of teachers as key policy actors and urges educational leaders to cultivate conditions that support educator-led innovation and justice-centered practices in broader educational settings.