Certainly, when I was new to public school teaching, the learning curve from teaching adults--which I'd done for about six and a half years--to teaching lower elementary students was steep. The younger the students, the more difficult it was for me. It took several years, and a lot of support from other expert and experienced kindergarten teachers before I ever felt comfortable teaching that age group and lower elementary kids in general.
And teaching content subjects to middle school ELLs using the approach called content-based ESL, which I was told to do my second year, also involved a transition that took quite a few years. Every year I taught social studies, I added more and more English language development. My courses shifted from a class that was little different from the mainstream regular ed social studies classes to a class that incorporated language support specifically designed to help ELLs access the social studies curriculum. It wasn't until I'd been teaching those ESL Social Studies classes for perhaps a decade that I truly felt I was doing them justice and teaching the students what they needed to be successful.
Age has its benefits! source: Graphicstock |