This will be my final observation blog post for the semester, and in this post I'm going to talk about some observations and basically just sum up my experience and how much I have seen the students progress since I began my journey in practicum.
The morning class started off a little slow because they had to ask her a lot of individual questions about their exam that they took last Thursday so they did not really start class until about 8:30. However, I had the pleasant experience of listening to them talk about their own homelands and what they thought the difference between the United States and their countries were specifically. What sparked the discussion was that one of the students was wondering why everyone in the United States thought it was the best country in the world even though it has negatives, and Sue posed the question to the entire class to answer. Some did choose to sit back and listen quietly to the discussion but some were extremely involved in what Sue was saying. She talked a little about her own views on politics in the country and that they for her were a negative but she asked them what they thought was positive and what was negative. One of the students mentioned that we are very individualistic here in the US which I can totally agree with; they said that they felt like the news was only local and we did not get much national news like they do in other countries. I felt the same way when I was in Spain. I was amazed that they had so much to talk about in Spain as well as Europe, whereas we in the US only get news about our own specific county, not even the entire state at times. It does show that we do not care about anyone outside even our own city let alone other states.
Another student mentioned that she did not understand why Americans were always in a rush and why they never seemed to relax. She said she has grown accustomed to that kind of lifestyle having lived here for 6 years, but she said it was really confusing to her at first about why everyone was constantly stressed out about work and school, but now she definitely understands what American culture is like and she has mostly assimilated to it. I agreed with this as well; Americans are generally stressed out all the time because our system of employment is very different than that of other countries, but one student said that she liked our employment system because in her country she did not get paid every 2 weeks like clockwork like we do here. She was a pharmacist and did not even make enough money to support herself, let alone her husband and children. It boggles my mind because I could not imagine that someone who has a high-paying job like that would not be able to afford to support their family. It is definitely eye-opening.
The same student (the pharmacist) talked at length about her own experiences in the Congo and what she loved most about the US was the freedom and safety that she feels here. She feels like her children are always safe and even though she works in housekeeping and her husband does as well, they make way more money than they did in the Congo and they are very happy with that circumstance. She is studying to get her pharmacy licensure here in the US because it does not transfer over to our system, which I think is ridiculous. Education is so sparse in those countries and she does not even get to use what she worked so hard for. It makes me angry and just so sad for her. I wish rules were different.
For the classes I observed at Heartland, mostly what I saw the biggest difference in was their perception of errors in their daily activities, like the editor-in-chief, syllabus stress and TOEFL-style sentences where they had to correct and find errors, was that they were much, much quicker in finding which ones were the errors with the most accuracy and then being able to fix them without too much thought. This was quite different from when I began observing and they did not always get the answers right and had to really work it out in their head before they answered. Now they feel so much more comfortable talking in front of their peers in error correction and in discussion. As the semester went on, they went much more in-depth than I ever would have imagined. They are able to speak in paragraph discourse and in the past which I cannot even do in Spanish very well! I was so impressed with how long they could go on speaking and be understood by their audience, not to just to sympathetic listeners like me and Sue. I was so proud to see them progress since I have made connections and gotten to know the students. I was definitely sad to leave them!
At Bloomington Junior High, the progress that I observed was a little less obvious only because I spent less time at the school and less extended one-on-one time with each student as I did at Heartland. However, I noticed that the students over the course of the semester felt really comfortable speaking to me more instead of only talking to Kathy. Both of the girls were much more willing to participate in the class discussion even if they did not have to speak. They wanted to help out the teacher a lot and were very respectful of her and of me as a translator/observer. The students seemed very comfortable with me being there and even expressed some sadness that I was leaving. I figured they would not because they are junior high boys; I do not expect displays of emotion, but they let out a sound of disappointment when I told them it was my last day, which I was happy to hear that I had made an impact. The students seemed a lot quicker in answering questions from the discussion and did not have to think as much when they spoke; I mostly paid attention to the less advanced speakers. One of the boys has grown so much in his speaking abilities and his comfortability factor with the other boys in the class; they actually talk to him and include him in their conversation now even though he is from a different culture and speaks a different language than them. I am glad to see that they are no longer segregating as much as they had been before, and that they wanted to help their peers. They seemed to learn more about the Constitution and even though they joked about certain stuff (they are boys after all), they seemed to really know what was going on and were able to get engaged in discussion without much prodding from the teacher. I wish I could have stayed around longer to see how they did on their test, but I will keep in touch with Kathy and find out!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Observation Week 9: 4/24 and 4/26
I am mostly going to focus on observations from Heartland since while I was at Bloomington Junior High they were mostly doing testing and reviewing so I was not directly involved in the course this week. I will focus more on it next week.
Something that I noticed about the syllable stress and error correction activities like editor-in-chief is that the students get very involved in what they are doing, even sometimes to the point of arguing about the material that they are learning. I think the editor-in-chief is really difficult at times for them because the activities and errors are so nit-picky, in my opinion. I think that Sue even does not get all of the errors that the book lists for the activities. I think the ones that they miss the most are hyphenated words, content errors, and apostrophe usage like with possessives, mostly. They do tend to get the ones that are for contractions like 'you're' and 'I'm', but not so much for, for example, 'Tim's' because most languages do not have possessive apostrophe usage; I know for sure that Spanish and French do not have that, so the students understandably are very confused about the possessive. Sue even said that in their writing they still directly translate it to 'the dog of blank' and other similar structures. I think that the syllable stress activities they understand for the most part, but some that have learned British English in the past have some trouble because people who speak British English put the stress on different syllables. For example, they were talking about the word 'vitamin' in their syllable stress opener on Tuesday, and in American English we pronounce it VI-ta-min and they were pronouncing it vi-TA-min, which obviously sounded very strange to me and Sue. Sue pointed it out to the students pronouncing it incorrectly and they were very confused. She then asked about their learning of British English and they seemed a little less puzzled about why the pronunciation was so different. It is just such a common misconception about World Englishes like we talked about in class this week, that they can be so similar yet so different in so many ways. I just am a little puzzled at why some students get so frustrated and argued about pronunciation with Sue, because the pronunciation is pretty much unchangeable at this point but obviously language is ever-changing but things like pronunciation do not vary too much in standard English.
Some really awesome stuff that Sue does that I really would like to do as a future ESL teacher is that she always gives historical context for their genre readings, which I mentioned before. I just love that she always gives them the whole picture for assignments and for reading materials, because that is something that most teachers I feel leave out at times, especially with ESL learners and they need it the most! Also, Sue always takes as much time as possible to explain their activities and why she does the things she does with her lessons because they are very curious about the language. I feel like I never asked very many questions when I was learning Spanish at least until college because I never felt that confident about asking. I admire them for wanting to know as much as they can about the language. Sue takes as much time as she needs to explain concepts to them; in this case, they were having issues with the possessive apostrophe and she had to do a mini-lesson spontaneously about it since some of them had had no prior experience learning about how to use it. They also have a lot of trouble with the perfect and progressive tenses in English, which I find interesting because a lot of other languages have those tenses; maybe they just are not set up the same way as our system. Sometimes I feel privileged to know English because those tenses are just so innate to me, and I can see how hard of a time they have learning them, and I can sympathize with them because I felt that way and still feel that way learning Spanish even now. It is definitely a process.
Another thing that I love about observing this class is the discussion that they have about their genre readings; this week they were reading about the Great Pyramids in Egypt which was a non-fiction genre reading. I think it was so funny that they can get into this long discussion about how aliens possibly built the pyramids and I loved it because I watch the show on History Channel and had something to contribute to the discussion. I think it is really cool that they can get so into the readings and that they can talk at length about the topics. It shows that they have progressed so much since I have started observing. Their discussions used to be like 15 minutes, now they are at least 30-40 minutes which is awesome for them. It shows that they have more confidence in their opinions and speaking abilities, and I think it helps that Sue is very patient and always lets them ask questions about the material they are reading. She always uses the fact that she has internet in the classroom to her advantage and shows them pictures using Google so that they can have a visual about their material. I think it is especially important in ESL classrooms to give students the whole picture, not just bits and assume that they understand everything about their reading. I'd rather them not accomplish every chapter in a textbook so that they can really gain something from the class.
Side note: got their poetry book today. Going to put it in my portfolio!
Something that I noticed about the syllable stress and error correction activities like editor-in-chief is that the students get very involved in what they are doing, even sometimes to the point of arguing about the material that they are learning. I think the editor-in-chief is really difficult at times for them because the activities and errors are so nit-picky, in my opinion. I think that Sue even does not get all of the errors that the book lists for the activities. I think the ones that they miss the most are hyphenated words, content errors, and apostrophe usage like with possessives, mostly. They do tend to get the ones that are for contractions like 'you're' and 'I'm', but not so much for, for example, 'Tim's' because most languages do not have possessive apostrophe usage; I know for sure that Spanish and French do not have that, so the students understandably are very confused about the possessive. Sue even said that in their writing they still directly translate it to 'the dog of blank' and other similar structures. I think that the syllable stress activities they understand for the most part, but some that have learned British English in the past have some trouble because people who speak British English put the stress on different syllables. For example, they were talking about the word 'vitamin' in their syllable stress opener on Tuesday, and in American English we pronounce it VI-ta-min and they were pronouncing it vi-TA-min, which obviously sounded very strange to me and Sue. Sue pointed it out to the students pronouncing it incorrectly and they were very confused. She then asked about their learning of British English and they seemed a little less puzzled about why the pronunciation was so different. It is just such a common misconception about World Englishes like we talked about in class this week, that they can be so similar yet so different in so many ways. I just am a little puzzled at why some students get so frustrated and argued about pronunciation with Sue, because the pronunciation is pretty much unchangeable at this point but obviously language is ever-changing but things like pronunciation do not vary too much in standard English.
Some really awesome stuff that Sue does that I really would like to do as a future ESL teacher is that she always gives historical context for their genre readings, which I mentioned before. I just love that she always gives them the whole picture for assignments and for reading materials, because that is something that most teachers I feel leave out at times, especially with ESL learners and they need it the most! Also, Sue always takes as much time as possible to explain their activities and why she does the things she does with her lessons because they are very curious about the language. I feel like I never asked very many questions when I was learning Spanish at least until college because I never felt that confident about asking. I admire them for wanting to know as much as they can about the language. Sue takes as much time as she needs to explain concepts to them; in this case, they were having issues with the possessive apostrophe and she had to do a mini-lesson spontaneously about it since some of them had had no prior experience learning about how to use it. They also have a lot of trouble with the perfect and progressive tenses in English, which I find interesting because a lot of other languages have those tenses; maybe they just are not set up the same way as our system. Sometimes I feel privileged to know English because those tenses are just so innate to me, and I can see how hard of a time they have learning them, and I can sympathize with them because I felt that way and still feel that way learning Spanish even now. It is definitely a process.
Another thing that I love about observing this class is the discussion that they have about their genre readings; this week they were reading about the Great Pyramids in Egypt which was a non-fiction genre reading. I think it was so funny that they can get into this long discussion about how aliens possibly built the pyramids and I loved it because I watch the show on History Channel and had something to contribute to the discussion. I think it is really cool that they can get so into the readings and that they can talk at length about the topics. It shows that they have progressed so much since I have started observing. Their discussions used to be like 15 minutes, now they are at least 30-40 minutes which is awesome for them. It shows that they have more confidence in their opinions and speaking abilities, and I think it helps that Sue is very patient and always lets them ask questions about the material they are reading. She always uses the fact that she has internet in the classroom to her advantage and shows them pictures using Google so that they can have a visual about their material. I think it is especially important in ESL classrooms to give students the whole picture, not just bits and assume that they understand everything about their reading. I'd rather them not accomplish every chapter in a textbook so that they can really gain something from the class.
Side note: got their poetry book today. Going to put it in my portfolio!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Observation Week 8: April 17 and 19
This week I chose to focus on the use of technology in the classroom for both environments, and how the use of that technology affects the classroom dynamics. A couple of things before I begin my blog post that I wanted to point out:
1) Differences in English use: Sue prefers the English-only immersion method, while Kathy lets them use as much English or Spanish as they need to understand the material. I just wanted to clarify this since I may not have talked about it before in my blog posts.
2) A comment today at Bloomington Junior High made me very sad and taken aback. The students were taken out for an hour to do reading test for the MAP tests, and they came back. Some looked perfectly fine and some looked very discouraged. They talked a little about the test, and once they were getting down to business with the lesson for today, Kathy asked them to get out their worksheets for the day. One of the boys jokingly said, 'Oh come on, Ms. B, you know we need help with this.' And she replied, 'Nah, I know you can do that.' And one of the other boys said, 'But we're in ESL. You know we're stupid.' I was so startled and it broke my heart to hear him say that! I have been in the classroom with these students for about 4 weeks now and they are so bright and eager to learn. I guess I could believe where they get that mentality from; the school treats them like they are below the other students which may be true in matters of academics, but certainly not true in all other respects. I immediately told, 'You know that isn't true, C.' and he just shrugged and went back to his seat. I feel so bad for these students that they are so discouraged in school and discouraged by their peers, who I do imagine make some mean comments towards them. It would not be junior high without mean people around you.
Anyway, moving on to the core of my blog about technology...Sue tends to use technology for pretty much everything in class. She uses it for all of their daily activities, their reading assignments, and for their homework assignments as well. The students have a Blackboard component for their course; they do not do anything on there but post their journal entries and it just has some general information about the course and their syllabus. Sue uses the Document Camera the entire class period; the classroom has an overhead projector that she uses with the DocCam for the entirety of the lesson. Occasionally she will use the whiteboard to do extra examples than what is not on the document that they were already given, but I have only really seen her use it when she is doing spontaneous mini-lessons about certain grammar points or she will use it to draw pictures of something that she cannot describe in words for them. I would say that this class definitely has a dependence on the use of technology for the lesson itself, but mostly in the sense that she needs it so she does not have to write everything on the board. The students and Sue all have papers that they write on; none of them bring laptops to class or an iPad, so it is all hand-written. I think that while this technology is extremely useful and such a God-send for teachers, it is very hard to shake our reliance on technology. I have grown up in the world of technology; I had my first computer in my house when I was 4 because my dad knew that they were going to be a big deal in the future, and he was so right. I think it is good that Sue has given them everything on paper because it is too hard to do these activities on laptops. One day the technology did not work for her though and she resorted to writing on the board for the entire lesson; it was the only time I had ever seen do that but she took it very easily and adapted quickly to the situation. Teachers do have to do this on a regular basis because you really never know when things are going to go wrong. However, Sue is able to adapt quickly because she has been a teacher for over 25 years and taught when there was no technology so that definitely has helped her over the years.
In the class at Bloomington Junior High, it is a pretty similar situation. Kathy uses a SmartBoard which is an interactive whiteboard basically; she can put documents up on the screen and edit them as she goes along. It is certainly a helpful tool when they are practicing outlining and highlighting because she can show them on the screen what they have to do, because ESL as we all know is all about the modeling. The modeling is especially helpful for the students who are still at very beginner levels and they can just imitate the action even if they do not know exactly what they are highlighting. She pretty much only uses worksheets that she copied from her textbook and the students work on those individually or in pairs if they do it quietly. I would say that she does not totally need technology in her class because she does have a whiteboard and I have seen her use it plenty of times during class like Sue does, when she needs to draw something or give a spontaneous mini-lesson about something for the students so that they can grasp the main points. I'd say that both of the teachers adapt very easily to technological breakdowns; I feel the junior high students freak out more if the technology goes down because they are so accustomed to it. The SmartBoard was not functioning right today, for example, and the students were saying, 'Oh, Ms. B, fix it! Fix it!' And she said, 'It's fine, I can write it on the board.' and they seemed like they did not comprehend why she would do that. I think they are just used to all their teachers using technology that they do not know what a world is like without it. They even do all their standardized testing on computers. In my pen-and-paper test days, I did not know how to take a test on a computer but I have done so since high school. It is always interesting to see the generation gaps for me even only being 8 years apart from these students and how much the technology and the reliance on it has changed since I was in junior high and high school. But I do reflect on my own experiences and know that I would be totally lost without my computer because of college professor expectations as well. I think that students knowing how to use all this technology is only going to benefit them in the long run.
1) Differences in English use: Sue prefers the English-only immersion method, while Kathy lets them use as much English or Spanish as they need to understand the material. I just wanted to clarify this since I may not have talked about it before in my blog posts.
2) A comment today at Bloomington Junior High made me very sad and taken aback. The students were taken out for an hour to do reading test for the MAP tests, and they came back. Some looked perfectly fine and some looked very discouraged. They talked a little about the test, and once they were getting down to business with the lesson for today, Kathy asked them to get out their worksheets for the day. One of the boys jokingly said, 'Oh come on, Ms. B, you know we need help with this.' And she replied, 'Nah, I know you can do that.' And one of the other boys said, 'But we're in ESL. You know we're stupid.' I was so startled and it broke my heart to hear him say that! I have been in the classroom with these students for about 4 weeks now and they are so bright and eager to learn. I guess I could believe where they get that mentality from; the school treats them like they are below the other students which may be true in matters of academics, but certainly not true in all other respects. I immediately told, 'You know that isn't true, C.' and he just shrugged and went back to his seat. I feel so bad for these students that they are so discouraged in school and discouraged by their peers, who I do imagine make some mean comments towards them. It would not be junior high without mean people around you.
Anyway, moving on to the core of my blog about technology...Sue tends to use technology for pretty much everything in class. She uses it for all of their daily activities, their reading assignments, and for their homework assignments as well. The students have a Blackboard component for their course; they do not do anything on there but post their journal entries and it just has some general information about the course and their syllabus. Sue uses the Document Camera the entire class period; the classroom has an overhead projector that she uses with the DocCam for the entirety of the lesson. Occasionally she will use the whiteboard to do extra examples than what is not on the document that they were already given, but I have only really seen her use it when she is doing spontaneous mini-lessons about certain grammar points or she will use it to draw pictures of something that she cannot describe in words for them. I would say that this class definitely has a dependence on the use of technology for the lesson itself, but mostly in the sense that she needs it so she does not have to write everything on the board. The students and Sue all have papers that they write on; none of them bring laptops to class or an iPad, so it is all hand-written. I think that while this technology is extremely useful and such a God-send for teachers, it is very hard to shake our reliance on technology. I have grown up in the world of technology; I had my first computer in my house when I was 4 because my dad knew that they were going to be a big deal in the future, and he was so right. I think it is good that Sue has given them everything on paper because it is too hard to do these activities on laptops. One day the technology did not work for her though and she resorted to writing on the board for the entire lesson; it was the only time I had ever seen do that but she took it very easily and adapted quickly to the situation. Teachers do have to do this on a regular basis because you really never know when things are going to go wrong. However, Sue is able to adapt quickly because she has been a teacher for over 25 years and taught when there was no technology so that definitely has helped her over the years.
In the class at Bloomington Junior High, it is a pretty similar situation. Kathy uses a SmartBoard which is an interactive whiteboard basically; she can put documents up on the screen and edit them as she goes along. It is certainly a helpful tool when they are practicing outlining and highlighting because she can show them on the screen what they have to do, because ESL as we all know is all about the modeling. The modeling is especially helpful for the students who are still at very beginner levels and they can just imitate the action even if they do not know exactly what they are highlighting. She pretty much only uses worksheets that she copied from her textbook and the students work on those individually or in pairs if they do it quietly. I would say that she does not totally need technology in her class because she does have a whiteboard and I have seen her use it plenty of times during class like Sue does, when she needs to draw something or give a spontaneous mini-lesson about something for the students so that they can grasp the main points. I'd say that both of the teachers adapt very easily to technological breakdowns; I feel the junior high students freak out more if the technology goes down because they are so accustomed to it. The SmartBoard was not functioning right today, for example, and the students were saying, 'Oh, Ms. B, fix it! Fix it!' And she said, 'It's fine, I can write it on the board.' and they seemed like they did not comprehend why she would do that. I think they are just used to all their teachers using technology that they do not know what a world is like without it. They even do all their standardized testing on computers. In my pen-and-paper test days, I did not know how to take a test on a computer but I have done so since high school. It is always interesting to see the generation gaps for me even only being 8 years apart from these students and how much the technology and the reliance on it has changed since I was in junior high and high school. But I do reflect on my own experiences and know that I would be totally lost without my computer because of college professor expectations as well. I think that students knowing how to use all this technology is only going to benefit them in the long run.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
4/25 Reading
Reference: "Made in America", Chapter 10
1) "They all meet on the playing field of a school, interacting across and through the divisions in classrooms, academic tracks, and program separation that have been created by educators" (pg. 228) - I chose this quote because of the 'playing field' metaphor that was given here in this chapter. It is a good visual image of a type of baseball or football field where the players are the educators, the administration and the students and one has to fight against the other to win in the school system. Unfortunately, it is a never-ending battle with schools and bilingual or ESL programs. I see it every day in Bloomington Junior High. My cooperating teacher said if she did not love the kids so much, she would have quit a long time ago because she feels beaten down by the administration. They never seem to support her ideas and do not respect her college education and Master's Degree in ESL enough to help her out, even though she got the degree to be employed in the school. She said sometimes she misses her job at the ELI because they appreciated her efforts there and they always were supportive of her new ideas about curriculum. I saw the same thing at Andrew High School too when I was there, the teacher being beaten down by the system and having to concede to what the administration wanted instead of what statistics and empirical research support in the high school environment. I can only hope that things are going to change in the future and I will not have to fight as hard as these current teachers do.
2) "Separate is not equal. Equal is interpreted as the same treatment for all. This was a race-based legal paradigm" (pg. 230) - I think it almost goes without saying that using precedents set up by a completely different America (that is, the America of the 1950's and 60's) is ridiculous and outdated. America in the Civil Rights Era was a totally different environment than what the students in Bayview are facing every day. Yes, they face marginalization from their Caucasian peers and even by other cultures in their own school, but it is not as if they are being segregated completely from other students, like the African-American students were in that decade and decades before. I do concede that some students go to a school like the Newcomer school, but it is their own choice to do so, not because a law mandates that they do so. They have independent choices to make and are not entirely bogged down by legal business. The idea of 'separate, not equal' made no sense then, and it makes no sense now. Equality has a tricky definition, especially in this age of being politically correct. Equality for me means that students are treated with equal respect, dignity and ability to succeed. It means that every teacher comes into a room and believes that each and every one of their students can achieve and succeed in their classroom. Separation from their peers inherently demonstrates that they are not equal in the eyes of the school district and administration, and I can see why these students feel depressed and like outcasts. They feel as if they are being marginalized because they are not Caucasian, not because of their language. Yes, they should have separate classes for them for the mere fact that it is very difficult for them to keep up in mainstreamed classes. They would be failing out of school if they were in that environment all the time; they probably would pass if the class was extremely small or they had an aide the whole time which does happen but not very often. I do not believe that this separation is because no one believes in them, it is just what is best for them at that given time. I do feel that some students get stuck in this separation and then do not want to leave because of the safety and security of being with people who understand and sympathize with their situation. However, it remains true that they can leave the classroom when they are ready to be mainstreamed so this indicates that situations have slightly improved in that domain, but still have a long way to go.
3) "There was explicit resistance to the idea of using children's home languages in the schools and to the implication that more Spanish speaking and Latino teachers would need to be hired" (pg. 234) [Response to Chacon-Moscone Bilingual Bicultural Education Act] - This completely surprised me. This is what seems to be a great document to support bilingual/bicultural education in schools but Madison completely turned it down. Obviously, no document or act is without its faults but the book did not detail everything about the act so I am not sure what it entails and how it would have been implemented. I think it is so sad that they just turned it down because they did not want to hire bilingual teachers. In California, finding a bilingual teacher would not be difficult at all. Most of the population in California speaks Spanish or Chinese and both of these languages would be a huge asset to any school. Again, it all comes down to money as it always does. Money is a big deal in schools especially since schools do not get enough of it then and still now. It surprises me that education never gets any funding from any government agency, and I recently discovered that the Secretary of Education is from Illinois. I would like to know what he is thinking about our own schools here as well as in the country, especially in places with high bilingual populations like Chicago or Los Angeles. It just makes no sense that schools would not bilingual or bicultural education when that is the audience that they are catering to in their schools. It just goes to show that they do not want to face reality about their population of immigrant students and still want to cater to the Caucasian community instead of to the immigrant population, which to me seems racist and unfair. Using a student's home language in school gives them a sense of pride and makes them feel as if English is not being privileged as much as it does right now. Teachers need to appreciate all the respective cultures in their classroom and have days specifically for their culture, like Hmong, Spanish, Congolese, Vietnamese, whatever you come into contact with, no matter what it is. Students can benefit from knowing about other cultures as well as show off their own!
4) "Will we stand up for equal access and equal opportunity? Will we finally grapple with the ways in which our schools sort or exclude children based on their skin color, national origin, or home language?" (pg. 237) - The book leaves us with this question to contemplate. I think it is not just a question for teachers or administration or Laurie Olsen as an observer, but for the United States as a whole. I think that people have been standing up for equal opportunities in this century, and things have been slowly progressing, so I do believe that there is still hope for these children who come here with their families hoping for a better life and better opportunities. Immigrants have been doing this since the late 1800's, and I think it will continue for a good long time. Current issues in the Spanish-speaking community with immigration spark debate all across the country and coming from my stance as an educator and a person who speaks Spanish, I think that it is a difficult issue even for me to form an opinion on; on one hand, immigration makes us more diverse and brings new ideas to the table, but on the other hand, population growth is not being maintained in the United States and immigrants are only going to big cities for opportunities when there are plenty of places that they can go that can support more people and more jobs can be created. I do not know if that would work, but I feel like it might relieve the larger cities. I think that someday people will be given equal access, but it is going to take a long time. I do not know if it will even be solved in my lifetime; we are just now discussing these issues and they are not even at the forefront of discussion in this country. Right now there are more pressing issues for the government to decide on like the national budget, but we do need people to stand up for these children and make their case for them. Educators are the number one group of people that can do that.
1) "They all meet on the playing field of a school, interacting across and through the divisions in classrooms, academic tracks, and program separation that have been created by educators" (pg. 228) - I chose this quote because of the 'playing field' metaphor that was given here in this chapter. It is a good visual image of a type of baseball or football field where the players are the educators, the administration and the students and one has to fight against the other to win in the school system. Unfortunately, it is a never-ending battle with schools and bilingual or ESL programs. I see it every day in Bloomington Junior High. My cooperating teacher said if she did not love the kids so much, she would have quit a long time ago because she feels beaten down by the administration. They never seem to support her ideas and do not respect her college education and Master's Degree in ESL enough to help her out, even though she got the degree to be employed in the school. She said sometimes she misses her job at the ELI because they appreciated her efforts there and they always were supportive of her new ideas about curriculum. I saw the same thing at Andrew High School too when I was there, the teacher being beaten down by the system and having to concede to what the administration wanted instead of what statistics and empirical research support in the high school environment. I can only hope that things are going to change in the future and I will not have to fight as hard as these current teachers do.
2) "Separate is not equal. Equal is interpreted as the same treatment for all. This was a race-based legal paradigm" (pg. 230) - I think it almost goes without saying that using precedents set up by a completely different America (that is, the America of the 1950's and 60's) is ridiculous and outdated. America in the Civil Rights Era was a totally different environment than what the students in Bayview are facing every day. Yes, they face marginalization from their Caucasian peers and even by other cultures in their own school, but it is not as if they are being segregated completely from other students, like the African-American students were in that decade and decades before. I do concede that some students go to a school like the Newcomer school, but it is their own choice to do so, not because a law mandates that they do so. They have independent choices to make and are not entirely bogged down by legal business. The idea of 'separate, not equal' made no sense then, and it makes no sense now. Equality has a tricky definition, especially in this age of being politically correct. Equality for me means that students are treated with equal respect, dignity and ability to succeed. It means that every teacher comes into a room and believes that each and every one of their students can achieve and succeed in their classroom. Separation from their peers inherently demonstrates that they are not equal in the eyes of the school district and administration, and I can see why these students feel depressed and like outcasts. They feel as if they are being marginalized because they are not Caucasian, not because of their language. Yes, they should have separate classes for them for the mere fact that it is very difficult for them to keep up in mainstreamed classes. They would be failing out of school if they were in that environment all the time; they probably would pass if the class was extremely small or they had an aide the whole time which does happen but not very often. I do not believe that this separation is because no one believes in them, it is just what is best for them at that given time. I do feel that some students get stuck in this separation and then do not want to leave because of the safety and security of being with people who understand and sympathize with their situation. However, it remains true that they can leave the classroom when they are ready to be mainstreamed so this indicates that situations have slightly improved in that domain, but still have a long way to go.
3) "There was explicit resistance to the idea of using children's home languages in the schools and to the implication that more Spanish speaking and Latino teachers would need to be hired" (pg. 234) [Response to Chacon-Moscone Bilingual Bicultural Education Act] - This completely surprised me. This is what seems to be a great document to support bilingual/bicultural education in schools but Madison completely turned it down. Obviously, no document or act is without its faults but the book did not detail everything about the act so I am not sure what it entails and how it would have been implemented. I think it is so sad that they just turned it down because they did not want to hire bilingual teachers. In California, finding a bilingual teacher would not be difficult at all. Most of the population in California speaks Spanish or Chinese and both of these languages would be a huge asset to any school. Again, it all comes down to money as it always does. Money is a big deal in schools especially since schools do not get enough of it then and still now. It surprises me that education never gets any funding from any government agency, and I recently discovered that the Secretary of Education is from Illinois. I would like to know what he is thinking about our own schools here as well as in the country, especially in places with high bilingual populations like Chicago or Los Angeles. It just makes no sense that schools would not bilingual or bicultural education when that is the audience that they are catering to in their schools. It just goes to show that they do not want to face reality about their population of immigrant students and still want to cater to the Caucasian community instead of to the immigrant population, which to me seems racist and unfair. Using a student's home language in school gives them a sense of pride and makes them feel as if English is not being privileged as much as it does right now. Teachers need to appreciate all the respective cultures in their classroom and have days specifically for their culture, like Hmong, Spanish, Congolese, Vietnamese, whatever you come into contact with, no matter what it is. Students can benefit from knowing about other cultures as well as show off their own!
4) "Will we stand up for equal access and equal opportunity? Will we finally grapple with the ways in which our schools sort or exclude children based on their skin color, national origin, or home language?" (pg. 237) - The book leaves us with this question to contemplate. I think it is not just a question for teachers or administration or Laurie Olsen as an observer, but for the United States as a whole. I think that people have been standing up for equal opportunities in this century, and things have been slowly progressing, so I do believe that there is still hope for these children who come here with their families hoping for a better life and better opportunities. Immigrants have been doing this since the late 1800's, and I think it will continue for a good long time. Current issues in the Spanish-speaking community with immigration spark debate all across the country and coming from my stance as an educator and a person who speaks Spanish, I think that it is a difficult issue even for me to form an opinion on; on one hand, immigration makes us more diverse and brings new ideas to the table, but on the other hand, population growth is not being maintained in the United States and immigrants are only going to big cities for opportunities when there are plenty of places that they can go that can support more people and more jobs can be created. I do not know if that would work, but I feel like it might relieve the larger cities. I think that someday people will be given equal access, but it is going to take a long time. I do not know if it will even be solved in my lifetime; we are just now discussing these issues and they are not even at the forefront of discussion in this country. Right now there are more pressing issues for the government to decide on like the national budget, but we do need people to stand up for these children and make their case for them. Educators are the number one group of people that can do that.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Observation Week 7: April 10 and 12
I will break this into 2 parts: one for Heartland and one for Bloomington Junior High.
As I have mentioned a few times before in my previous observation blogs, the students at Heartland do error correction a lot in their classes. Usually about 30-40 minutes of the lesson are using those error correction activities, and I sort of thought at first that they would be very quick activities, but I was wrong. The students totally pick apart all of the sentences and it is nice to see because it shows that they are learning how to correct their English, but at times it gets distracting and Sue has to go off on a tangent to clear up anything that is confusing. I do understand that ESL teachers do have to do that on a regular basis, and Sue is very patient, but sometimes I just wonder if it can be taken care of more quickly than it does in her classes. She is great with helping them, but sometimes they can get very demanding and come off annoyed, but I am pretty sure that has to do with their fluency and their still-developing tone in their voice. Something I have noticed over the course of the semester is that they still do not understand hyphenated words in English, like "egg-laying" or "rubber-soled" even though Sue goes over it every time it comes up. I wonder if it is just something that does not translate for them and if they do not have it in their language, and I do understand that that can be a problem and hyphenated words are not easy to understand by any means. I think that is just something that comes with reading a lot in English and then being able to figure it out based on that exposure.
The students this week read "Ransom of Red Chief" which is a humorous story about two men who kidnap a boy in the 1800's, and they return him at the end because he is such a brat. It was supposed to be funny for them, but the story got mixed reviews from the morning class and the night class definitely enjoyed it more. A couple students did not even understand the gist of the story in the morning class and Sue had to give them a short summary of what had happened so that they could continue the discussion. Something that I liked about the lesson was that Sue talked about the fact that humor is the most difficult thing to acquire when learning a language, and that is so true. I read things in Spanish for my literature classes and I occasionally get the humor that happens in the story, but I'd say 80 percent of the time I go to class and my teacher laughs at something in the story and I am just blank. I think humor is just one of those things that is very culturally bound and I think it was great that the students were able to find humor in the story that they had to read and Sue was very pleased as well. I think it was great that she mentioned it to them because it definitely helps their self-esteem in their reading skills, which is important for the goals of this particular class. I think that the students are getting better every week in using Bloom's Taxonomy questions to understand the story, because everyone always has something to contribute to the discussion and offer up their questions. Sometimes they get a couple confused, but they are able to understand why they were incorrect and find ways to fix their answers. I think this story was probably just particularly difficult for them because the story was written in the 1800's and the language was very embellished and full of words that are not commonly used like "yeoman" or "reconnoiter". I could see why they got confused.
*Note: Sue is making a book of poetry that the students wrote, so I will have to bring it to practicum when I get a copy so you guys can see! I am interested in reading them!
At Bloomington Junior High this week, they are continuing their study of the Constitution and its Articles. This week was Article 1 and 2. The students receive modified worksheets from an addendum to a textbook, and the textbook is at a third grade reading level. It does bore some of them, but for a few it is very challenging to find the materials. This week I got to work closer to the girls who are the most recent immigrants, and it was certainly an interesting experience to see how much they understood from the reading. I think that Kathy definitely scaffolds their learning because she first highlights what they need to be highlighting in order to teach them organizational skills, and then she has them work on their worksheets from the chapter on their own for a while. I help the girls who do not understand English as well, mostly one of them because the girl who moved here in January has a personal translator to help her with her classes. The girl I work with does pretty well in class; she comprehends about 50-60 percent of what is going on in the class, and I can tell that when she does the worksheets. She has to look at the reading a lot to figure out what is happening on the worksheets, and she will occasionally ask me to translate a phrase or a word for her so she can better understand the reading and the material she has to complete. They took the Article 1 quiz yesterday and Kathy said overall she was pleased with results; the girls got a C and a D, but she said she is going to give them an opportunity to fix their mistakes and get slightly better grades so that their overall grade does not fall too low for them not to pass the unit. She said the hardest thing for them was filling in a table for the amount of years or age a Senator or representative has to be in office, and she said she was confused and switched them on the test. She said it was unfortunate because she would have done better if she had switched them, but she cannot go back and give her a different grade because it is unfair to the other students. It is too bad because I am sure the girl tries really hard, and it is great that she can find everything in the text and be able to find it on the paper, which shows that she is getting some basic skills in reading comprehension. She is at least able to match the words from the book to the words on the test.
Another thing Kathy does to scaffold their learning of the material is to give them a study guide that has pretty much the same questions as the test, but she does not tell them it will be that way because she does not want them to skate by. She tells them it is going to be different so that they actually study the material. I think this is a good tactic for any teacher because I know if I was given the exact study guide I would just memorize the answers and not even really worry about the questions, but for some of the students it does not matter because they do not recognize that they are same questions. Another thing about the girls who speak Spanish is that it is difficult because they are extremely quiet and do not talk unless they really have to; I am sure they are just going through the Silent Period of acquisition and there is nothing I can do at this point but be there and help them through the assignments. After working with them a couple of times, they have gotten a little more comfortable with me and actually attempt to chat with me during the lesson. I do my best to reach out to them, compliment their shirt or nails or jewelery because then they are able to respond and it helps the relationship form so that they feel more comfortable with me later on. I hope that me being there for an extended period will make them perk up a little and boost their confidence.
As I have mentioned a few times before in my previous observation blogs, the students at Heartland do error correction a lot in their classes. Usually about 30-40 minutes of the lesson are using those error correction activities, and I sort of thought at first that they would be very quick activities, but I was wrong. The students totally pick apart all of the sentences and it is nice to see because it shows that they are learning how to correct their English, but at times it gets distracting and Sue has to go off on a tangent to clear up anything that is confusing. I do understand that ESL teachers do have to do that on a regular basis, and Sue is very patient, but sometimes I just wonder if it can be taken care of more quickly than it does in her classes. She is great with helping them, but sometimes they can get very demanding and come off annoyed, but I am pretty sure that has to do with their fluency and their still-developing tone in their voice. Something I have noticed over the course of the semester is that they still do not understand hyphenated words in English, like "egg-laying" or "rubber-soled" even though Sue goes over it every time it comes up. I wonder if it is just something that does not translate for them and if they do not have it in their language, and I do understand that that can be a problem and hyphenated words are not easy to understand by any means. I think that is just something that comes with reading a lot in English and then being able to figure it out based on that exposure.
The students this week read "Ransom of Red Chief" which is a humorous story about two men who kidnap a boy in the 1800's, and they return him at the end because he is such a brat. It was supposed to be funny for them, but the story got mixed reviews from the morning class and the night class definitely enjoyed it more. A couple students did not even understand the gist of the story in the morning class and Sue had to give them a short summary of what had happened so that they could continue the discussion. Something that I liked about the lesson was that Sue talked about the fact that humor is the most difficult thing to acquire when learning a language, and that is so true. I read things in Spanish for my literature classes and I occasionally get the humor that happens in the story, but I'd say 80 percent of the time I go to class and my teacher laughs at something in the story and I am just blank. I think humor is just one of those things that is very culturally bound and I think it was great that the students were able to find humor in the story that they had to read and Sue was very pleased as well. I think it was great that she mentioned it to them because it definitely helps their self-esteem in their reading skills, which is important for the goals of this particular class. I think that the students are getting better every week in using Bloom's Taxonomy questions to understand the story, because everyone always has something to contribute to the discussion and offer up their questions. Sometimes they get a couple confused, but they are able to understand why they were incorrect and find ways to fix their answers. I think this story was probably just particularly difficult for them because the story was written in the 1800's and the language was very embellished and full of words that are not commonly used like "yeoman" or "reconnoiter". I could see why they got confused.
*Note: Sue is making a book of poetry that the students wrote, so I will have to bring it to practicum when I get a copy so you guys can see! I am interested in reading them!
At Bloomington Junior High this week, they are continuing their study of the Constitution and its Articles. This week was Article 1 and 2. The students receive modified worksheets from an addendum to a textbook, and the textbook is at a third grade reading level. It does bore some of them, but for a few it is very challenging to find the materials. This week I got to work closer to the girls who are the most recent immigrants, and it was certainly an interesting experience to see how much they understood from the reading. I think that Kathy definitely scaffolds their learning because she first highlights what they need to be highlighting in order to teach them organizational skills, and then she has them work on their worksheets from the chapter on their own for a while. I help the girls who do not understand English as well, mostly one of them because the girl who moved here in January has a personal translator to help her with her classes. The girl I work with does pretty well in class; she comprehends about 50-60 percent of what is going on in the class, and I can tell that when she does the worksheets. She has to look at the reading a lot to figure out what is happening on the worksheets, and she will occasionally ask me to translate a phrase or a word for her so she can better understand the reading and the material she has to complete. They took the Article 1 quiz yesterday and Kathy said overall she was pleased with results; the girls got a C and a D, but she said she is going to give them an opportunity to fix their mistakes and get slightly better grades so that their overall grade does not fall too low for them not to pass the unit. She said the hardest thing for them was filling in a table for the amount of years or age a Senator or representative has to be in office, and she said she was confused and switched them on the test. She said it was unfortunate because she would have done better if she had switched them, but she cannot go back and give her a different grade because it is unfair to the other students. It is too bad because I am sure the girl tries really hard, and it is great that she can find everything in the text and be able to find it on the paper, which shows that she is getting some basic skills in reading comprehension. She is at least able to match the words from the book to the words on the test.
Another thing Kathy does to scaffold their learning of the material is to give them a study guide that has pretty much the same questions as the test, but she does not tell them it will be that way because she does not want them to skate by. She tells them it is going to be different so that they actually study the material. I think this is a good tactic for any teacher because I know if I was given the exact study guide I would just memorize the answers and not even really worry about the questions, but for some of the students it does not matter because they do not recognize that they are same questions. Another thing about the girls who speak Spanish is that it is difficult because they are extremely quiet and do not talk unless they really have to; I am sure they are just going through the Silent Period of acquisition and there is nothing I can do at this point but be there and help them through the assignments. After working with them a couple of times, they have gotten a little more comfortable with me and actually attempt to chat with me during the lesson. I do my best to reach out to them, compliment their shirt or nails or jewelery because then they are able to respond and it helps the relationship form so that they feel more comfortable with me later on. I hope that me being there for an extended period will make them perk up a little and boost their confidence.
Monday, April 9, 2012
4/17 Reading
Reference: "Made in America", Chapter 9
1) "I'm sorry you're stuck with the garbage kids. You'll be able to teach other students after a few years." (pg. 192) - This was pretty upsetting to read. The fact that a veteran teacher would call them 'garbage kids' shows that this teacher is completely bogged down by the school and years of dealing with problems in Madison High, and that they are taking it out on other teachers who are still young and ambitious. There is nothing like setting up a bad precedent for your students. Isn't a teacher supposed to be supportive of their students and of the school that they teach in? A part of being a teacher is being involved in a high school environment is being a role model and being a mentor for young teachers coming in who need advice. If you are going to say something negative, just do not say it at all. It is not productive to have a negative attitude about teaching and project it on everyone else in the school. It creates a negative mentality among the staff and then the school becomes a negative place entirely. It is no wonder the students feel like the teachers do not want to help them; it is because they actually do not want to help them! The teachers think that the students are not worth teaching because they do not understand English. Well, unfortunately, teachers do need to work very hard and they have to cater to the needs of 30 other students in their classroom so I get that it can be extremely difficult to control all of that at one time, and that can get teachers down, but they cannot walk around calling kids garbage. That is mean, hurtful, and should never be said about your own students.
2) "Lisa's proposal on detracking just focused the way other teachers were feeling about us. I mean, here's this topic being put out there by one of the young teachers, and...the faculty never really talk about this stuff. " (pg. 196) - Here exists the dichotomy between the veteran teachers and the young teachers. The young teachers come in, bright and excited to teach and think that they are going to make a difference in the school. I cannot say that I was not under the same impression for a long time, and I still feel that I can be a good teacher and influence my students to be reflective and be proactive in their lives, but I am realistic in the hope that that is all I can ask for from my students. I cannot say that I believe that I am going to change the world of teaching like some people say, but I do believe that I can make a difference in students' lives. If I can open their eyes to something new or teach them to see something in a new light, I will feel like my job has been done. I want my future ESL students to learn English in a practical and innovative way, and if I can just reach them and make sure that they can accomplish all of their goals, I will feel great about my teaching. I think that it is always effective to do checkpoints of your own teaching along the way, giving them evaluations of my teaching so that I know how I am doing versus always how they are doing, like the teacher in the chapter. I think that makes a lot of sense to do, and it helps the students feel like they can express their own thoughts and ideas and it will give me some ideas to better my own teaching and to better their experience in my classroom. It also gives them opportunity to critically assess in English and there is no better skill for them to learn than that.
3) "These four women are inspired by a vision of what they want to do as teachers, but exhausted and (outside of the support they give each other) feeling generally unacknowledged and unsupported by the school." (pg. 204) - Again, the veteran teachers do get a lot of say in what classes they get and what students they teach and the young teachers do not get anything that they want. Schools are very much like a hierarchy; the young and new are at the bottom of the heap because they presumably do not know anything yet about teaching. Yes, new teachers (including myself) understand theory, how to write lesson plans, and general classroom management skills, things we have learned from a textbook. However, at the same time we do not know how to handle students with behavior disorders, students who are constantly insubordinate, among many other things that crop up in the classroom. Teaching is largely a learn-as-you-go experience where you have to learn how to deal with issues as they appear. There is literally nothing a university can do to prepare you for the craziness of a classroom. The young teachers feel unsupported by schools because they do not appreciate the new knowledge they bring in, especially in a school like Madison who does not seem to listen to current policy and theory about ESL education. Who knows, they may have changed in recent years, but there is a certain benefit to listening to new teachers and new ideas. If new teachers could convince the veteran teachers that the ideas work, then maybe something could get done. I wonder if they have thought of it yet? I think that maybe the veteran teachers could then convince the principal to change the policies or support the ideas of these experienced teachers.
4) "...the WASC visiting committee sufficiently picked up on the situation to recommend in its report to the school the establishment of an ESL/sheltered department. The principal's response...was 'over my dead body'." (pg. 210) - That is certainly a strong response from the principal. I noticed that this principal seems to be a recurring problem in the school. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in schools all over the country. The administration does not agree with what teachers are doing, so they squash the new ideas and want to stick with what they know has worked, even if the times are changing and it is no longer working in the new school environment. The principal seems very stubborn and does not want to change unless he absolutely has to; you can see by his strong response to the WASC committee's suggestion. I guess that I would think that the principal would at least listen to a higher government power, but even then he did not seem convinced which is appalling. Many schools have the same issues and still do not have separate ESL departments. Usually it is just part of the English department and has a head of department that does not have ESL background or training, which again is an administration problem. I personally think that in a school like Madison with a large immigrant population they would deeply consider establishing a specific department, but I remember now, that costs money. Money means everything to schools and it is just something that will never change. The education system now has the same issues and they do not receive the funding to do these things even if they wanted to. It really is too bad because high schools really need this funding but it just is not happening.
5) "You don't get to pick and choose which students you're going to teach math on the basis of who is easy to teach." (pg. 216) - I think this quote sort of goes along with my first quote I picked for this blog post. The students who are not easy to teach are these 'garbage' kids, the ESL and the sheltered kids, and they can be difficult to teach, of course. Teachers know what they are getting into ahead of time, and if they do not know, they should take the initiative to at least research ESL lesson plans or ESL methods and theories. I know that teachers have enough to do, but they have all summer to at least sit down for an hour or two a week and write some ideas down about how to better the educational experience for the ESL students. Those students are trying very hard to understand their basic subjects and they do not get enough individualized attention as it is, so if all you need to do is research their situation, it can make an infinite difference. Veteran teachers have the upper hand in the case that they can pick and choose the classes they feel comfortable with teaching, so they will choose the honors or AP classes because the students are willing and eager to learn and they are extremely easy to teach; even some academic classes are the same way. Or, at least they want to pick classes where there are no special needs cases so that their job is not too hard. Maybe some very veteran teachers deserve to relax after 20-25 years of teaching, but that does not mean that they should turn down teaching the ESL students. They should at least offer to try, but I know that is unrealistic. Teachers want to take it easy when they can, and I do not necessarily blame them, but they need to expect to have ESL students in their classes. At this point in our country, it is inevitable.
6) "Was it right to help her when clearly birth control is not something her parents were about to help her with. Was I mucking with her culture?" (pg. 222) - I think that this is a dilemma that a lot of teachers face that is not talked about very often. High school and even middle school teachers can face this problem, and it is especially propagated by the fact that they are from different cultures that have extremely conservative views on birth control. Even most Caucasian families have a conservative view on this, and what this teacher did could have gotten her in huge trouble so I can see why she left Madison High. She probably did not want them to find out. For me, being someone is very liberal about these kind of issues, I think that these students need this information. Was Padma supposed to enter her marriage without knowing anything about what marriage and physical intimacy entails? I suppose that might be a very American way of looking at it, but most teenagers in the United States have sex in high school and many schools do not offer sex education, so you end up with people on TV shows, like in Teen Mom or 16 and Pregnant, lost and confused, poor and having to quit school. In this case, Padma was going to be married so it was socially acceptable when she got pregnant, but the girl wanted to go to college and have a career before she had children. She did mention hoping that her husband would be more modern and allow her to continue her education before having children, but she may not be that lucky. Many immigrant girls are burdened down by these arranged marriages and not allowed to achieve their full potential in life because they have to settle down at 17 or 18 and then have children, and then they are pretty much stuck. I think that the teacher did the right thing in educating them about sex and what it means, and being very honest with them. There are not enough teachers who have the courage and compassion to do this with their students. It is completely necessary to have these talks with teenagers because they may have already had sex and do not understand the implications of what they are doing. They need an honest and realistic view about sex, and where else are they going to get it besides school if their parents are not willing to talk about it? Maybe taking her to Planned Parenthood was not a good choice, but I feel like the teacher had to get involved in this case.
1) "I'm sorry you're stuck with the garbage kids. You'll be able to teach other students after a few years." (pg. 192) - This was pretty upsetting to read. The fact that a veteran teacher would call them 'garbage kids' shows that this teacher is completely bogged down by the school and years of dealing with problems in Madison High, and that they are taking it out on other teachers who are still young and ambitious. There is nothing like setting up a bad precedent for your students. Isn't a teacher supposed to be supportive of their students and of the school that they teach in? A part of being a teacher is being involved in a high school environment is being a role model and being a mentor for young teachers coming in who need advice. If you are going to say something negative, just do not say it at all. It is not productive to have a negative attitude about teaching and project it on everyone else in the school. It creates a negative mentality among the staff and then the school becomes a negative place entirely. It is no wonder the students feel like the teachers do not want to help them; it is because they actually do not want to help them! The teachers think that the students are not worth teaching because they do not understand English. Well, unfortunately, teachers do need to work very hard and they have to cater to the needs of 30 other students in their classroom so I get that it can be extremely difficult to control all of that at one time, and that can get teachers down, but they cannot walk around calling kids garbage. That is mean, hurtful, and should never be said about your own students.
2) "Lisa's proposal on detracking just focused the way other teachers were feeling about us. I mean, here's this topic being put out there by one of the young teachers, and...the faculty never really talk about this stuff. " (pg. 196) - Here exists the dichotomy between the veteran teachers and the young teachers. The young teachers come in, bright and excited to teach and think that they are going to make a difference in the school. I cannot say that I was not under the same impression for a long time, and I still feel that I can be a good teacher and influence my students to be reflective and be proactive in their lives, but I am realistic in the hope that that is all I can ask for from my students. I cannot say that I believe that I am going to change the world of teaching like some people say, but I do believe that I can make a difference in students' lives. If I can open their eyes to something new or teach them to see something in a new light, I will feel like my job has been done. I want my future ESL students to learn English in a practical and innovative way, and if I can just reach them and make sure that they can accomplish all of their goals, I will feel great about my teaching. I think that it is always effective to do checkpoints of your own teaching along the way, giving them evaluations of my teaching so that I know how I am doing versus always how they are doing, like the teacher in the chapter. I think that makes a lot of sense to do, and it helps the students feel like they can express their own thoughts and ideas and it will give me some ideas to better my own teaching and to better their experience in my classroom. It also gives them opportunity to critically assess in English and there is no better skill for them to learn than that.
3) "These four women are inspired by a vision of what they want to do as teachers, but exhausted and (outside of the support they give each other) feeling generally unacknowledged and unsupported by the school." (pg. 204) - Again, the veteran teachers do get a lot of say in what classes they get and what students they teach and the young teachers do not get anything that they want. Schools are very much like a hierarchy; the young and new are at the bottom of the heap because they presumably do not know anything yet about teaching. Yes, new teachers (including myself) understand theory, how to write lesson plans, and general classroom management skills, things we have learned from a textbook. However, at the same time we do not know how to handle students with behavior disorders, students who are constantly insubordinate, among many other things that crop up in the classroom. Teaching is largely a learn-as-you-go experience where you have to learn how to deal with issues as they appear. There is literally nothing a university can do to prepare you for the craziness of a classroom. The young teachers feel unsupported by schools because they do not appreciate the new knowledge they bring in, especially in a school like Madison who does not seem to listen to current policy and theory about ESL education. Who knows, they may have changed in recent years, but there is a certain benefit to listening to new teachers and new ideas. If new teachers could convince the veteran teachers that the ideas work, then maybe something could get done. I wonder if they have thought of it yet? I think that maybe the veteran teachers could then convince the principal to change the policies or support the ideas of these experienced teachers.
4) "...the WASC visiting committee sufficiently picked up on the situation to recommend in its report to the school the establishment of an ESL/sheltered department. The principal's response...was 'over my dead body'." (pg. 210) - That is certainly a strong response from the principal. I noticed that this principal seems to be a recurring problem in the school. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in schools all over the country. The administration does not agree with what teachers are doing, so they squash the new ideas and want to stick with what they know has worked, even if the times are changing and it is no longer working in the new school environment. The principal seems very stubborn and does not want to change unless he absolutely has to; you can see by his strong response to the WASC committee's suggestion. I guess that I would think that the principal would at least listen to a higher government power, but even then he did not seem convinced which is appalling. Many schools have the same issues and still do not have separate ESL departments. Usually it is just part of the English department and has a head of department that does not have ESL background or training, which again is an administration problem. I personally think that in a school like Madison with a large immigrant population they would deeply consider establishing a specific department, but I remember now, that costs money. Money means everything to schools and it is just something that will never change. The education system now has the same issues and they do not receive the funding to do these things even if they wanted to. It really is too bad because high schools really need this funding but it just is not happening.
5) "You don't get to pick and choose which students you're going to teach math on the basis of who is easy to teach." (pg. 216) - I think this quote sort of goes along with my first quote I picked for this blog post. The students who are not easy to teach are these 'garbage' kids, the ESL and the sheltered kids, and they can be difficult to teach, of course. Teachers know what they are getting into ahead of time, and if they do not know, they should take the initiative to at least research ESL lesson plans or ESL methods and theories. I know that teachers have enough to do, but they have all summer to at least sit down for an hour or two a week and write some ideas down about how to better the educational experience for the ESL students. Those students are trying very hard to understand their basic subjects and they do not get enough individualized attention as it is, so if all you need to do is research their situation, it can make an infinite difference. Veteran teachers have the upper hand in the case that they can pick and choose the classes they feel comfortable with teaching, so they will choose the honors or AP classes because the students are willing and eager to learn and they are extremely easy to teach; even some academic classes are the same way. Or, at least they want to pick classes where there are no special needs cases so that their job is not too hard. Maybe some very veteran teachers deserve to relax after 20-25 years of teaching, but that does not mean that they should turn down teaching the ESL students. They should at least offer to try, but I know that is unrealistic. Teachers want to take it easy when they can, and I do not necessarily blame them, but they need to expect to have ESL students in their classes. At this point in our country, it is inevitable.
6) "Was it right to help her when clearly birth control is not something her parents were about to help her with. Was I mucking with her culture?" (pg. 222) - I think that this is a dilemma that a lot of teachers face that is not talked about very often. High school and even middle school teachers can face this problem, and it is especially propagated by the fact that they are from different cultures that have extremely conservative views on birth control. Even most Caucasian families have a conservative view on this, and what this teacher did could have gotten her in huge trouble so I can see why she left Madison High. She probably did not want them to find out. For me, being someone is very liberal about these kind of issues, I think that these students need this information. Was Padma supposed to enter her marriage without knowing anything about what marriage and physical intimacy entails? I suppose that might be a very American way of looking at it, but most teenagers in the United States have sex in high school and many schools do not offer sex education, so you end up with people on TV shows, like in Teen Mom or 16 and Pregnant, lost and confused, poor and having to quit school. In this case, Padma was going to be married so it was socially acceptable when she got pregnant, but the girl wanted to go to college and have a career before she had children. She did mention hoping that her husband would be more modern and allow her to continue her education before having children, but she may not be that lucky. Many immigrant girls are burdened down by these arranged marriages and not allowed to achieve their full potential in life because they have to settle down at 17 or 18 and then have children, and then they are pretty much stuck. I think that the teacher did the right thing in educating them about sex and what it means, and being very honest with them. There are not enough teachers who have the courage and compassion to do this with their students. It is completely necessary to have these talks with teenagers because they may have already had sex and do not understand the implications of what they are doing. They need an honest and realistic view about sex, and where else are they going to get it besides school if their parents are not willing to talk about it? Maybe taking her to Planned Parenthood was not a good choice, but I feel like the teacher had to get involved in this case.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Observation Week 6: April 3 and 5
This week I was mostly doing some more general observations at Bloomington Junior High School as well as observing reading strategies for both of my placement sites. I may have mentioned before in my blog posts that Sue's classes do a lot of error correction in their class; they begin every day with a few different activities. First, they do 4 words with syllable stress, then error correction in sentences made by Sue and made by previous TOEFL exams. On Tuesdays, Sue's students do something called editor-in-chief where they have to pick out 15 errors in a reading from a newspaper or photocopied from a textbook and they go through it together. Sue highlights the errors in the article before they begin, and then they have to figure out what the errors were and how to fix them. Generally the students are very nit-picky about their editor-in-chief and they tend to look for things that are wrong where there are none. I think it is a good thing that they are overanalyzing because it shows that they really understand the task and they know what they are supposed to be looking for in the assignment. Sometimes tricking the students into thinking that there is something to find that is wrong makes them much more critical and it shows what they really have gained from explicit grammar instruction. The students tend to ask a lot of questions about the assignment, especially with idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs; they seem to have the most trouble with those. I noticed that both the morning and night classes have asked the same questions about the material, which I find interesting, because it shows that their information gap is the same no matter how long they have been studying English. This week they were most confused about what "plastered to the wall" meant, so Sue thought on her feet and demonstrated it by acting it out, using facial expressions and gestures, and then generally she gets that 'ohhh' of recognition and the students scribble the words down quickly. They are really good about taking notes on what they learn and what words they are picking up from the lesson. I have benefited from that activity myself with Spanish.
Something else I really enjoyed about my observations this week with Sue at Heartland were that the students read the short story "The Lottery" and had a reading discussion about it. I love the discussions the students have because I like to hear their opinions about the story and how their own cultural stories played into their reading of the story. I get the impression at times that they usually understand the general gist of the story, but if it is not an explicit ending or detail, they get a little lost, which is pretty common in reading comprehension. A lot of them were confused about the ending of the book because it was not explicit in telling them what they happened to the characters, and Sue acted little bits out to help them with comprehension. I think that reading aloud with Sue really helps them too, because then they can get the full picture. Something cool that Sue does is give them the historical context of the short story that they have read, like the fact that the "Lottery" was written during the 1930's South where there were a lot of racial strife and political issues, and students were able to relate that to their own experiences in the Congo with that Big Brother sort of aspect in their government system. It led a bit to discussion about how much they love the government here and how it is so much better because they have freedom to do what they want, and in their countries they are very restricted to what the government wants. They also talked about fighting injustice and social problems and how it starts with young people, about college protests and other similar events, and I learned that the catalyst to the independence of the Congo began with a soccer game. It is really cool to learn all this cultural information and where they come from! I do not know anything about the Congo and I have learned so much so far!
What I have really liked is seeing them analyze the stories they read using the literary devices that Sue has given. They are able to identify now what kind of analysis questions to ask when reading the story, and Sue said that their journals improve every week in that regard. I plan on asking her if I can see some of the journals and how they have progressed.
At Bloomington Junior High School this week, they started their unit on the U.S. Constitution since they need to take the test in May. I will be observing their progress in that area for the next 4 weeks. Kathy has set it up for them so that they go through it slowly and thoroughly so that they really comprehend the material being presented to them. She uses a lot of worksheets, the SmartBoard, and videos in order to help the students understand. I think the SmartBoard is an excellent tool for classrooms because it can be used for everything, except that I have to be critical in the fact that there is so much reliance on technology and I do not know what they would do without computers. They have watched a few videos so far, like Schoolhouse Rock and the Painless Guide to... series on Discovery channel. I think it is great that she understands that these kids will not benefit from lecture alone, so they do a lot of varied activities, like fill-in-the-blank, games, crossword puzzles, etc using the vocabulary and concepts they have learned. I have noticed that they need a lot of repetition in order to remember a concept, but even then the next day they seem to lost it unless Kathy repeats it again and again. I am not sure how some are doing with it, because they are very quiet and do not ask questions. However, Kathy does a good job of noticing who is not responding and getting them to answer questions so that they she can see where they stand. It is important to call out students once in a while because otherwise you are just letting them sit there and risk the fact that they are not understanding the material from the lesson.
Side note about the videos: the videos are all educational, and I thought it was great because it provides differentiated instruction and allows for different learning styles. It also can provide visual representation for the students with weaker speaking and reading skills. I am so glad I got to watch the videos because they are really enjoyable.
As I may have mentioned before, Kathy has created her own Constitution materials at a sheltered level so that the students can fully understand the material. They use material from a third grade textbook instead of a high school level one, like the 8th graders. I think it is ridiculous that the school would allow them to use something that is way above their reading level, considering some struggle at the 3rd grade level. Something BJHS does is silent reading; students are required to silent read once a week in their classes (usually Fridays) and have a book on them at all times. I think that is the school's way of making sure they are reaching all the kids and emphasizing the importance of reading, which I support entirely. My junior high and high school had a similar program and I loved it. I knew people who did not like it at all, but at least it got them to read. I just do not think people realize how important reading can be and how influential it is on your comprehension and word retention and grammar skills. I know I would not be a good writer without reading constantly as a child and adolescent. I just think with the internet, people read less and it is right of the school to instate that kind of program.
Something else I really enjoyed about my observations this week with Sue at Heartland were that the students read the short story "The Lottery" and had a reading discussion about it. I love the discussions the students have because I like to hear their opinions about the story and how their own cultural stories played into their reading of the story. I get the impression at times that they usually understand the general gist of the story, but if it is not an explicit ending or detail, they get a little lost, which is pretty common in reading comprehension. A lot of them were confused about the ending of the book because it was not explicit in telling them what they happened to the characters, and Sue acted little bits out to help them with comprehension. I think that reading aloud with Sue really helps them too, because then they can get the full picture. Something cool that Sue does is give them the historical context of the short story that they have read, like the fact that the "Lottery" was written during the 1930's South where there were a lot of racial strife and political issues, and students were able to relate that to their own experiences in the Congo with that Big Brother sort of aspect in their government system. It led a bit to discussion about how much they love the government here and how it is so much better because they have freedom to do what they want, and in their countries they are very restricted to what the government wants. They also talked about fighting injustice and social problems and how it starts with young people, about college protests and other similar events, and I learned that the catalyst to the independence of the Congo began with a soccer game. It is really cool to learn all this cultural information and where they come from! I do not know anything about the Congo and I have learned so much so far!
What I have really liked is seeing them analyze the stories they read using the literary devices that Sue has given. They are able to identify now what kind of analysis questions to ask when reading the story, and Sue said that their journals improve every week in that regard. I plan on asking her if I can see some of the journals and how they have progressed.
At Bloomington Junior High School this week, they started their unit on the U.S. Constitution since they need to take the test in May. I will be observing their progress in that area for the next 4 weeks. Kathy has set it up for them so that they go through it slowly and thoroughly so that they really comprehend the material being presented to them. She uses a lot of worksheets, the SmartBoard, and videos in order to help the students understand. I think the SmartBoard is an excellent tool for classrooms because it can be used for everything, except that I have to be critical in the fact that there is so much reliance on technology and I do not know what they would do without computers. They have watched a few videos so far, like Schoolhouse Rock and the Painless Guide to... series on Discovery channel. I think it is great that she understands that these kids will not benefit from lecture alone, so they do a lot of varied activities, like fill-in-the-blank, games, crossword puzzles, etc using the vocabulary and concepts they have learned. I have noticed that they need a lot of repetition in order to remember a concept, but even then the next day they seem to lost it unless Kathy repeats it again and again. I am not sure how some are doing with it, because they are very quiet and do not ask questions. However, Kathy does a good job of noticing who is not responding and getting them to answer questions so that they she can see where they stand. It is important to call out students once in a while because otherwise you are just letting them sit there and risk the fact that they are not understanding the material from the lesson.
Side note about the videos: the videos are all educational, and I thought it was great because it provides differentiated instruction and allows for different learning styles. It also can provide visual representation for the students with weaker speaking and reading skills. I am so glad I got to watch the videos because they are really enjoyable.
As I may have mentioned before, Kathy has created her own Constitution materials at a sheltered level so that the students can fully understand the material. They use material from a third grade textbook instead of a high school level one, like the 8th graders. I think it is ridiculous that the school would allow them to use something that is way above their reading level, considering some struggle at the 3rd grade level. Something BJHS does is silent reading; students are required to silent read once a week in their classes (usually Fridays) and have a book on them at all times. I think that is the school's way of making sure they are reaching all the kids and emphasizing the importance of reading, which I support entirely. My junior high and high school had a similar program and I loved it. I knew people who did not like it at all, but at least it got them to read. I just do not think people realize how important reading can be and how influential it is on your comprehension and word retention and grammar skills. I know I would not be a good writer without reading constantly as a child and adolescent. I just think with the internet, people read less and it is right of the school to instate that kind of program.
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