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.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
4/11 Reading
Reference: "Made in America", Chapter 8
1) "The program that serves immigrant students at Madison High is created by a complex interplay of formal policy, history, and tradition, and the passions and intentions of the adults charged with implementation" (pg. 174) - Similar to what I talked about in my chapter 7 blog last week, I think people outside the teaching field do not realize how political it can be. I talk to my parents and non-education-major friends and they are totally surprised by what I tell them, but I do have a narrow scope on the issue because I attend this university and it is highly rated in the teaching field. We have progressive professors here who teach us the reality of what we can expect in the teaching field and I do feel that some enter it very naive and blind to what it actually becomes: a bureaucracy game. It becomes what the school wants you to do, not what you want to do. You have to play to the wants and needs of the state legislature who generally do not have people with a background in education on their boards and therefore cannot express what actually goes on in a classroom or a school in general. We also do not have people who can stand up for these ESL kids and have a background in ESL, which was few and far-between maybe when the book was written, but it has no holding now in today's society where the information is much more readily available. Schools are beginning to require teachers to have ESL training and licensure before entering the classroom because it is such a pressing issue in certain areas of the country. I have friends who did not get hired out of college and had to go back for ESL training in order to get a first-year teaching job. It is the reality of the situation and it boggles my mind that the people in this book do not understand the implications of being naive and removed from what the students were going through. It is easy to get angry at the teachers in this book, but I had to stop myself and remember that this was over 10 years ago and the situation in this country was pretty different from what it is now. I think that is the main thing I have to get over when reading this text, but the fact is that those beliefs trickle down from these teachers. I'm sure most of them are still teaching and teaching at Madison High and carrying on with this system. I really hope that someone has come in and changed things for the school.
2) "...from both of these student perspectives, the social world is highly divided" (pg. 178) - In this section, Olsen talks about how the high school students are being put into this dichotomy of learners: 1) the students who are academics and involved in school and clearly want to succeed or pursue higher education and then 2) the students who are perceived to be slackers and the teachers write them off as that they are merely going to follow in their parent's footsteps or not pursue higher education. The immigrant students tend to fall under the second category because no one is willing to help them reach that academic level. Generally these students come in with the attitude that they are going to be in honors courses and be up to par with their peers, but then they are put into this ESL classes or lower-level classes because of their English abilities and then they are beaten down by the system. The system of the high school makes them believe that they cannot achieve what their American peers can and as a consequence they do not pursue higher education; some do that are really motivated and optimistic, but I can see why most students feel discouraged from doing what they intended to do. It is hard to learn a second language; I am taking college level Spanish courses and sometimes still feel like I speak like a grade school kid in Spanish. I get that students are scared to speak in class and that is why discussion classes are difficult for them. It is hard to say that the teacher should not do discussions in her class if she has ESL students because it does inhibit the expansion of knowledge in the classroom, so in an odd way I do sympathize a little with her. It is not her fault that the school placed them in her class without doing an accurate check on their English abilities. Or the teacher should just let it go and tell them that they can participate when they can; they can gain something from listening to students speak.
3) "So I don't want my students to discuss child-rearing practices in Iran, for example. It wouldn't be helpful." (pg. 181) - I am sorry, but I cannot abide this attitude. I do not understand why this would not be helpful in the classroom environment. I guess I just did not realize how culturally bound some of our classes are until this point in my educational career. It is hard not to see it unless you really pay attention, and it is even harder still because I am part of this culture and have no questions about what we do. I can see why a home economics or child development class would be culturally bound; our child-rearing practices are probably very different from some cultures and some may have elements that remain the same, but I can see why immigrant students would not know what to do with the information because they have been raised a certain way as well. Why would students not want another perspective in child-rearing? This teacher has the attitude that it is our way or the highway, which is very common in Americans. We generally tend to think that our way is the best way because everyone around us validates that belief. We believe that what we do is the right way and that our government is the best or our food is the best, whatever it may be. Most Americans are pretty blind to or do not care about other cultures in this country or what they believe since it does not relate to what we believe. I have to admit that I was like that up until I was in high school; I grew up pretty sheltered and did not understand other cultures, but my parents did not understand them, either. We understood our own ancestors' cultures, but even then, my parents never learned Polish and Italian. They were completely American from birth and so were most of my grandparents. I just think that some people here in the United States need to learn to be open and allow new ideas to come in, and even if they do not agree with them, at least allow the students to express their ideas. It can be beneficial for everyone.
4) "Even those with good intentions, and the recognition that the curriculum ought to be broadened, run into these barriers. Change is not supported and teachers are left on their own to do what they can." (pg. 185) - This is just another thing that irks me about our education system. I truly felt bad for these teachers at Madison High in this chapter. I know that some of them come off ignorant and naive, but they are still people and they are teachers. Teachers get the short end of the stick in most cases and when the administration does something wrong, they are quick to blame it on them. If students are not succeeding, it cannot possibly be the curriculum's fault or the textbook's fault. It is always the teacher who gets thrown under the bus for one thing that they may have done wrong in the classroom. I feel sympathy because I have been in many classrooms and have done clinical experiences, and I have talked to teachers who have expressed these concerns to me. This is all very real. Teachers are expected to change things very quickly if the administrations tells them to, and they are under fire in lawsuits. It does not matter that a teacher has put hours and hours into their lesson plans; it is time then to scrap them if the administration does not like it or it does not promote what the parents want. That is a whole other issue entirely: parents. In recent years, it has gotten worse and worse in the United States. Parents seem to think they know everything about education and if their child gets a failing grade, the blame is no longer placed on the child. It is placed on the teacher. It makes no sense. Yes, in some cases it may very well be that the teacher is just plain terrible at teaching, but generally that is not the case. If a student does not study, it is their fault that they fail. If they are dozing off or daydreaming in class, what is the teacher supposed to do? We cannot possibly cater to every single student's individual needs every single day. I came from a background where if I did not do well, my parents punished me. I tried to use the excuse that my teacher does not like me or she did not explain it, but I knew those were lies and so did my parents. Teachers are under so much pressure to be perfect, and it is pretty scary for a future educator like myself.
5) "Student failure is a result then of lack of effort" (pg.188) - Again, another very common misconception. I do not think student failure generally is a result of no effort on their part. I have seen it happen in my own high school with friends of mine and I totally get that teenagers can just be rule-avoidant and lazy. It happens every day. At the same time, student failure can be a combination of many factors that could be going on. For ESL students, it can be not knowing the language, trouble at home, financial issues, they could be going through the Silent Period of acquisition and no one understands, religious issues...the list is infinitely long. The same can go for regular mainsteamed students as well. If a student is not eating at home or is being beaten up by a parent every day, I would not exactly blame them for failing a test that day. Teenagers do not know how to handle issues like that; no one really does. I am 21 years old and I cannot even imagine having that kind of situation. I just think that teachers need to be a bit more sensitive and willing to talk to students about things that are going on in their personal lives and find out what could be happening to make them fail. If they just assume it is that the student does not want to try, that is not solving anything. I know that teachers have about a million roles in the classroom, and being an adviser or counselor can be one of them. It is uncomfortable, but we have to do it for the benefit of our students. Failure should not be taken lightly and teachers should take the necessary measures to find out why it is happening.
1) "The program that serves immigrant students at Madison High is created by a complex interplay of formal policy, history, and tradition, and the passions and intentions of the adults charged with implementation" (pg. 174) - Similar to what I talked about in my chapter 7 blog last week, I think people outside the teaching field do not realize how political it can be. I talk to my parents and non-education-major friends and they are totally surprised by what I tell them, but I do have a narrow scope on the issue because I attend this university and it is highly rated in the teaching field. We have progressive professors here who teach us the reality of what we can expect in the teaching field and I do feel that some enter it very naive and blind to what it actually becomes: a bureaucracy game. It becomes what the school wants you to do, not what you want to do. You have to play to the wants and needs of the state legislature who generally do not have people with a background in education on their boards and therefore cannot express what actually goes on in a classroom or a school in general. We also do not have people who can stand up for these ESL kids and have a background in ESL, which was few and far-between maybe when the book was written, but it has no holding now in today's society where the information is much more readily available. Schools are beginning to require teachers to have ESL training and licensure before entering the classroom because it is such a pressing issue in certain areas of the country. I have friends who did not get hired out of college and had to go back for ESL training in order to get a first-year teaching job. It is the reality of the situation and it boggles my mind that the people in this book do not understand the implications of being naive and removed from what the students were going through. It is easy to get angry at the teachers in this book, but I had to stop myself and remember that this was over 10 years ago and the situation in this country was pretty different from what it is now. I think that is the main thing I have to get over when reading this text, but the fact is that those beliefs trickle down from these teachers. I'm sure most of them are still teaching and teaching at Madison High and carrying on with this system. I really hope that someone has come in and changed things for the school.
2) "...from both of these student perspectives, the social world is highly divided" (pg. 178) - In this section, Olsen talks about how the high school students are being put into this dichotomy of learners: 1) the students who are academics and involved in school and clearly want to succeed or pursue higher education and then 2) the students who are perceived to be slackers and the teachers write them off as that they are merely going to follow in their parent's footsteps or not pursue higher education. The immigrant students tend to fall under the second category because no one is willing to help them reach that academic level. Generally these students come in with the attitude that they are going to be in honors courses and be up to par with their peers, but then they are put into this ESL classes or lower-level classes because of their English abilities and then they are beaten down by the system. The system of the high school makes them believe that they cannot achieve what their American peers can and as a consequence they do not pursue higher education; some do that are really motivated and optimistic, but I can see why most students feel discouraged from doing what they intended to do. It is hard to learn a second language; I am taking college level Spanish courses and sometimes still feel like I speak like a grade school kid in Spanish. I get that students are scared to speak in class and that is why discussion classes are difficult for them. It is hard to say that the teacher should not do discussions in her class if she has ESL students because it does inhibit the expansion of knowledge in the classroom, so in an odd way I do sympathize a little with her. It is not her fault that the school placed them in her class without doing an accurate check on their English abilities. Or the teacher should just let it go and tell them that they can participate when they can; they can gain something from listening to students speak.
3) "So I don't want my students to discuss child-rearing practices in Iran, for example. It wouldn't be helpful." (pg. 181) - I am sorry, but I cannot abide this attitude. I do not understand why this would not be helpful in the classroom environment. I guess I just did not realize how culturally bound some of our classes are until this point in my educational career. It is hard not to see it unless you really pay attention, and it is even harder still because I am part of this culture and have no questions about what we do. I can see why a home economics or child development class would be culturally bound; our child-rearing practices are probably very different from some cultures and some may have elements that remain the same, but I can see why immigrant students would not know what to do with the information because they have been raised a certain way as well. Why would students not want another perspective in child-rearing? This teacher has the attitude that it is our way or the highway, which is very common in Americans. We generally tend to think that our way is the best way because everyone around us validates that belief. We believe that what we do is the right way and that our government is the best or our food is the best, whatever it may be. Most Americans are pretty blind to or do not care about other cultures in this country or what they believe since it does not relate to what we believe. I have to admit that I was like that up until I was in high school; I grew up pretty sheltered and did not understand other cultures, but my parents did not understand them, either. We understood our own ancestors' cultures, but even then, my parents never learned Polish and Italian. They were completely American from birth and so were most of my grandparents. I just think that some people here in the United States need to learn to be open and allow new ideas to come in, and even if they do not agree with them, at least allow the students to express their ideas. It can be beneficial for everyone.
4) "Even those with good intentions, and the recognition that the curriculum ought to be broadened, run into these barriers. Change is not supported and teachers are left on their own to do what they can." (pg. 185) - This is just another thing that irks me about our education system. I truly felt bad for these teachers at Madison High in this chapter. I know that some of them come off ignorant and naive, but they are still people and they are teachers. Teachers get the short end of the stick in most cases and when the administration does something wrong, they are quick to blame it on them. If students are not succeeding, it cannot possibly be the curriculum's fault or the textbook's fault. It is always the teacher who gets thrown under the bus for one thing that they may have done wrong in the classroom. I feel sympathy because I have been in many classrooms and have done clinical experiences, and I have talked to teachers who have expressed these concerns to me. This is all very real. Teachers are expected to change things very quickly if the administrations tells them to, and they are under fire in lawsuits. It does not matter that a teacher has put hours and hours into their lesson plans; it is time then to scrap them if the administration does not like it or it does not promote what the parents want. That is a whole other issue entirely: parents. In recent years, it has gotten worse and worse in the United States. Parents seem to think they know everything about education and if their child gets a failing grade, the blame is no longer placed on the child. It is placed on the teacher. It makes no sense. Yes, in some cases it may very well be that the teacher is just plain terrible at teaching, but generally that is not the case. If a student does not study, it is their fault that they fail. If they are dozing off or daydreaming in class, what is the teacher supposed to do? We cannot possibly cater to every single student's individual needs every single day. I came from a background where if I did not do well, my parents punished me. I tried to use the excuse that my teacher does not like me or she did not explain it, but I knew those were lies and so did my parents. Teachers are under so much pressure to be perfect, and it is pretty scary for a future educator like myself.
5) "Student failure is a result then of lack of effort" (pg.188) - Again, another very common misconception. I do not think student failure generally is a result of no effort on their part. I have seen it happen in my own high school with friends of mine and I totally get that teenagers can just be rule-avoidant and lazy. It happens every day. At the same time, student failure can be a combination of many factors that could be going on. For ESL students, it can be not knowing the language, trouble at home, financial issues, they could be going through the Silent Period of acquisition and no one understands, religious issues...the list is infinitely long. The same can go for regular mainsteamed students as well. If a student is not eating at home or is being beaten up by a parent every day, I would not exactly blame them for failing a test that day. Teenagers do not know how to handle issues like that; no one really does. I am 21 years old and I cannot even imagine having that kind of situation. I just think that teachers need to be a bit more sensitive and willing to talk to students about things that are going on in their personal lives and find out what could be happening to make them fail. If they just assume it is that the student does not want to try, that is not solving anything. I know that teachers have about a million roles in the classroom, and being an adviser or counselor can be one of them. It is uncomfortable, but we have to do it for the benefit of our students. Failure should not be taken lightly and teachers should take the necessary measures to find out why it is happening.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
4/4 Reading
Reference: Made in America, Chap. 7
1) "Whether or not courses are made available for LEP students is a product of decisions by individual teachers based on their interest and willingness to provide them. Where do the policies that shape these programs come from?" (pg. 152) - I read this and I was not exactly surprised, but it still makes me pretty angry. These policies I think come from the higher legislature like the state, and if the state is short-sighed, then the schools become short-sighed as a product of their inability to provide funds for these programs. I know that it is tough right now in education; it is my huge deterrent in entering the field. I absolutely dislike with a passion how much bureaucracy high schools and elementary schools have to go through to get what they need and want. The state legislature is run by people who do not understand education. It is ironic and makes no sense at all. There need to be people on these boards or legislature that have been teachers or principals that can advocate for the education system, because we are getting nowhere with what we currently have. We need someone to stand up for these kids and make sure that they get the help they deserve and so desperately desire. I think that Madison did a good job in starting up the Newcomer School for the immigrant students because it gives them someplace to go and be with people who understand their academic needs and understand their cultural background. I believe Olsen mentioned that the school hired people with ESL training and who speak two languages at least. That is amazing and was a great idea when they came up with it. All they had to do was maintain it. I know that the end said that Maria (the one who came up with the idea for the school) has left the district, and I was sad to read that. I hope we find out what happens to her later on, but the school was very wrong in letting her go. I know that it is difficult to maintain a newcomer school like that and I especially do not know just being a college student, but I imagine that what they had should have been a success. We watched that video about a similar school earlier in the semester, and I thought that was an excellent example of a successful newcomer program. Someone should show Madison High that video and see what they think!
2) "Immigrant students face more than simply the academic challenges in their lives." (pg. 154) - I have never read a truer statement than this. Students of immigrant families are facing much more emotional challenges than we as Americans face. The fact is, like Olsen said in the book, many students are from families who have come here illegally and face deportation if they are found out. This situation creates a lot of emotional pressure on the kids going to school to not say anything about their immigration status, and then they are expected to sit there and focus on their academics. It is no wonder that they are not as engaged in school as they should be; they have so many other social and familial pressures going on behind the scenes that school probably comes at a very distant 3rd or 4th on their priority list. Some students have to get jobs to support their families and many drop out of school at 16 in order to help at a family business or merely be there to take care of their younger siblings since they cannot afford any type of babysitter or nanny. Some of these students are basically forced into being parents to their siblings or another employee when all they should be doing is being at school, hanging out with friends, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. That, in my opinion, is what they came here for, so why should they not experience it? I think it must be very difficult because they probably have such high expectations about coming here and then it is not all sunshine and daisies. They have to work very hard to get accepted in school and then face their parents' 'old-fashioned' ways at home. It can be very confusing for them.
3) 'They liked the idea we were going to take the kids off their hands of the home-base high schools and we were going to teach them English. That was the beginning of the double-edged sword. They want the kids taken care of, somewhere other than in their own classroom or school." (pg. 160) - Well, that is certainly a very sad statement from Maria Rodriguez. I do, however, understand the belief of the school and I will explain why. I hope it does not come off the wrong way, but here it is. I do not exactly blame them for wanting to move the kids somewhere else. It is actually better for them to be in an environment that will support their academic and emotional needs, not to be in a school where no one gets what they are going through and they have to struggle every day. I am not exactly sure how Ms. Rodriguez meant the statement, but I have the optimistic hope that the school wanted to do right by these kids and give them somewhere that is more supportive and can provide the kind of help that the home-base school cannot. Perhaps it is the other way around and the school just wants to get rid of the students and not have to deal with them, which could very well be the case here. I just think that the home-based schools should allow for these newcomer schools to house the students until they are ready for the mainstream high school and then let them be in those classes. If they are never ready, that should be fine, too. They should at least have the goal of being proficient when they get out of high school and be able to get into a decent community college or university in the future. These students deserve the extra help and attention from people who have a background in ESL, not people who are only there for a paycheck.
4) [curriculum] "It is left up to each regular content area chairperson to respond to the academic course needs of the LEP student...the result is limited and uneven access to content courses." (pg. 166) - Another mistake on the school's part here in this quote. I believe that schools with high LEP populations coming in should at least have an ESL chairperson or at the very least, an English department chairperson who has experience or ESL training to schedule and provide these courses. It is ridiculous that someone who probably has no idea that the student is even in ESL is putting them in these classes and that the teacher of the course may not even find out until the first day of class that they have 2 or 3 ESL students in their classroom. Teachers need to prepare for that kind of student in their classroom and be able to edit their lesson plans accordingly. I am of the firm belief that all teachers should have to go through ESL training, but I know that will not be happening in the near future. Still, I think it is absolutely necessary considering the climate of the United States right now. They should at least be sympathetic and go out of their way to help their ESL students, not just allow them to fade into the background and end up not learning anything. It brings to mind something I talked about with my supervisor at BJHS about their own program. She said the mainstream teachers are using high-school level textbooks in their classroom with 7th and 8th graders which may be fine for them, but not for the ESL students! Some can barely read at a 3rd grade level, let alone a high school level! She said that she brought that to the attention of the principal and teachers, but they shot her down. They said that they just could afford to accommodate those students, so she went out and bought her own textbooks out of her pocket. Unfortunately this is the reality of the ESL situation in our schools. Until it gets better, we just have to be their advocates.
5) "The 'temporary' influx of new immigrants, which the district prepared to serve in the Newcomer Center thirteen years ago, has clearly lasted and there is no projected end to the immigration wave...there is no mechanism...for working out a more contemporary and permanent solution." (pg. 172) - Unfortunately, this is a problem that not only affects Madison High in this book, but rather most high schools in the United States that have a large immigrant population. The suburbs of Chicago (where I am from) has had these issues for the past few years, trying to account for the huge influx of Arabic populations from abroad and locally. What happened in our town was that they built a new, beautiful mosque about 10 minutes away from where I live. Since mosques are few and far between in the suburbs, many Muslims have since moved to our area to be closer to their place of worship, and this has affected the people in our town greatly. Many people are not happy with the situation, and they have a very racist attitude about it, including my own parents which I am sad to admit. I think people are hard-pressed to find anywhere that is still primarily "white" and I have told my parents that again and again. My school has been affected by the changes as well, and they have since had to hire another ESL teacher because the one they had could not accommodate the amount of students coming in. I think it is great that my school was not short-sighted like other schools and took the time and effort to hire someone else to take the load off the other teacher, but other schools are not so lucky. They throw 30 or so kids into a class and it becomes chaotic. There is no way a teacher can handle that amount of bodies in a classroom and expect to get anything sufficient done. I have learned this time and time again in my education and methods courses, but school districts are not spending money on expanding schools and making more classrooms. There is no money for that nowadays. I think schools should at least have a more permanent plan for the influx of immigrant students since it does not seem to be slowing down by any means. They need to stop dallying around and talk to their teachers and coordinators and find some way to accommodate the new students they have coming in. There is no way around it. They cannot just deny the students an education. I think that every school in the United States needs to start working on this issue and at least try to hire some people with ESL training and have them start planning a program, especially in areas like Bayview in the book where the immigrant population is quite high.
1) "Whether or not courses are made available for LEP students is a product of decisions by individual teachers based on their interest and willingness to provide them. Where do the policies that shape these programs come from?" (pg. 152) - I read this and I was not exactly surprised, but it still makes me pretty angry. These policies I think come from the higher legislature like the state, and if the state is short-sighed, then the schools become short-sighed as a product of their inability to provide funds for these programs. I know that it is tough right now in education; it is my huge deterrent in entering the field. I absolutely dislike with a passion how much bureaucracy high schools and elementary schools have to go through to get what they need and want. The state legislature is run by people who do not understand education. It is ironic and makes no sense at all. There need to be people on these boards or legislature that have been teachers or principals that can advocate for the education system, because we are getting nowhere with what we currently have. We need someone to stand up for these kids and make sure that they get the help they deserve and so desperately desire. I think that Madison did a good job in starting up the Newcomer School for the immigrant students because it gives them someplace to go and be with people who understand their academic needs and understand their cultural background. I believe Olsen mentioned that the school hired people with ESL training and who speak two languages at least. That is amazing and was a great idea when they came up with it. All they had to do was maintain it. I know that the end said that Maria (the one who came up with the idea for the school) has left the district, and I was sad to read that. I hope we find out what happens to her later on, but the school was very wrong in letting her go. I know that it is difficult to maintain a newcomer school like that and I especially do not know just being a college student, but I imagine that what they had should have been a success. We watched that video about a similar school earlier in the semester, and I thought that was an excellent example of a successful newcomer program. Someone should show Madison High that video and see what they think!
2) "Immigrant students face more than simply the academic challenges in their lives." (pg. 154) - I have never read a truer statement than this. Students of immigrant families are facing much more emotional challenges than we as Americans face. The fact is, like Olsen said in the book, many students are from families who have come here illegally and face deportation if they are found out. This situation creates a lot of emotional pressure on the kids going to school to not say anything about their immigration status, and then they are expected to sit there and focus on their academics. It is no wonder that they are not as engaged in school as they should be; they have so many other social and familial pressures going on behind the scenes that school probably comes at a very distant 3rd or 4th on their priority list. Some students have to get jobs to support their families and many drop out of school at 16 in order to help at a family business or merely be there to take care of their younger siblings since they cannot afford any type of babysitter or nanny. Some of these students are basically forced into being parents to their siblings or another employee when all they should be doing is being at school, hanging out with friends, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. That, in my opinion, is what they came here for, so why should they not experience it? I think it must be very difficult because they probably have such high expectations about coming here and then it is not all sunshine and daisies. They have to work very hard to get accepted in school and then face their parents' 'old-fashioned' ways at home. It can be very confusing for them.
3) 'They liked the idea we were going to take the kids off their hands of the home-base high schools and we were going to teach them English. That was the beginning of the double-edged sword. They want the kids taken care of, somewhere other than in their own classroom or school." (pg. 160) - Well, that is certainly a very sad statement from Maria Rodriguez. I do, however, understand the belief of the school and I will explain why. I hope it does not come off the wrong way, but here it is. I do not exactly blame them for wanting to move the kids somewhere else. It is actually better for them to be in an environment that will support their academic and emotional needs, not to be in a school where no one gets what they are going through and they have to struggle every day. I am not exactly sure how Ms. Rodriguez meant the statement, but I have the optimistic hope that the school wanted to do right by these kids and give them somewhere that is more supportive and can provide the kind of help that the home-base school cannot. Perhaps it is the other way around and the school just wants to get rid of the students and not have to deal with them, which could very well be the case here. I just think that the home-based schools should allow for these newcomer schools to house the students until they are ready for the mainstream high school and then let them be in those classes. If they are never ready, that should be fine, too. They should at least have the goal of being proficient when they get out of high school and be able to get into a decent community college or university in the future. These students deserve the extra help and attention from people who have a background in ESL, not people who are only there for a paycheck.
4) [curriculum] "It is left up to each regular content area chairperson to respond to the academic course needs of the LEP student...the result is limited and uneven access to content courses." (pg. 166) - Another mistake on the school's part here in this quote. I believe that schools with high LEP populations coming in should at least have an ESL chairperson or at the very least, an English department chairperson who has experience or ESL training to schedule and provide these courses. It is ridiculous that someone who probably has no idea that the student is even in ESL is putting them in these classes and that the teacher of the course may not even find out until the first day of class that they have 2 or 3 ESL students in their classroom. Teachers need to prepare for that kind of student in their classroom and be able to edit their lesson plans accordingly. I am of the firm belief that all teachers should have to go through ESL training, but I know that will not be happening in the near future. Still, I think it is absolutely necessary considering the climate of the United States right now. They should at least be sympathetic and go out of their way to help their ESL students, not just allow them to fade into the background and end up not learning anything. It brings to mind something I talked about with my supervisor at BJHS about their own program. She said the mainstream teachers are using high-school level textbooks in their classroom with 7th and 8th graders which may be fine for them, but not for the ESL students! Some can barely read at a 3rd grade level, let alone a high school level! She said that she brought that to the attention of the principal and teachers, but they shot her down. They said that they just could afford to accommodate those students, so she went out and bought her own textbooks out of her pocket. Unfortunately this is the reality of the ESL situation in our schools. Until it gets better, we just have to be their advocates.
5) "The 'temporary' influx of new immigrants, which the district prepared to serve in the Newcomer Center thirteen years ago, has clearly lasted and there is no projected end to the immigration wave...there is no mechanism...for working out a more contemporary and permanent solution." (pg. 172) - Unfortunately, this is a problem that not only affects Madison High in this book, but rather most high schools in the United States that have a large immigrant population. The suburbs of Chicago (where I am from) has had these issues for the past few years, trying to account for the huge influx of Arabic populations from abroad and locally. What happened in our town was that they built a new, beautiful mosque about 10 minutes away from where I live. Since mosques are few and far between in the suburbs, many Muslims have since moved to our area to be closer to their place of worship, and this has affected the people in our town greatly. Many people are not happy with the situation, and they have a very racist attitude about it, including my own parents which I am sad to admit. I think people are hard-pressed to find anywhere that is still primarily "white" and I have told my parents that again and again. My school has been affected by the changes as well, and they have since had to hire another ESL teacher because the one they had could not accommodate the amount of students coming in. I think it is great that my school was not short-sighted like other schools and took the time and effort to hire someone else to take the load off the other teacher, but other schools are not so lucky. They throw 30 or so kids into a class and it becomes chaotic. There is no way a teacher can handle that amount of bodies in a classroom and expect to get anything sufficient done. I have learned this time and time again in my education and methods courses, but school districts are not spending money on expanding schools and making more classrooms. There is no money for that nowadays. I think schools should at least have a more permanent plan for the influx of immigrant students since it does not seem to be slowing down by any means. They need to stop dallying around and talk to their teachers and coordinators and find some way to accommodate the new students they have coming in. There is no way around it. They cannot just deny the students an education. I think that every school in the United States needs to start working on this issue and at least try to hire some people with ESL training and have them start planning a program, especially in areas like Bayview in the book where the immigrant population is quite high.
Observation Week 5: March 27
Note: This week I was only able to observe one day because the students are taking an exam today and it was optional to come in and observe. Also, BJHS is on spring break this week, so I am only commenting on what I observed at Heartland on Tuesday, March 27.
This week, I was looking for some "student talk"; in other words, how the students talk to each other, to their teacher, and what strategies they use when they are speaking. I think that students in both of the classes have intermediate to advanced speaking skills, and it definitely depends on how long they have been here in the United States and how exposure they have had to English. I think for the adults it might be a little easier to become immersed in the language because they immediately have to get jobs to support their families or children that they bring with them. A lot of them work in restaurants and in the hospitality business, so obviously they have to interact frequently with English-speaking customers in the community and therefore have to learn strategic competence very quickly. A few of the students are not as confident in their speaking abilities; I can tell because they do not speak up a lot in class and tend to just sit back and watch the situation. I can tell that they work it through in their heads before they answer any questions, because they probably have that fear of being wrong and that is totally understandable. When they answer questions, their answers are a bit halted at times and they hesitate a lot before saying words that they do not totally understand or cannot pronounce properly. When Sue is doing their syllable stress activities at the beginning of class, the students tend to repeat the words after her to make sure that they pronounce them like a native speaker would. One good thing about Sue is that she uses realistic language and lets them know that some pronunciations are easily accepted in certain areas and that they are not wrong if they pronounce it that way. I think it is great that she lets them know that there are variations in English, because I feel like some English teachers think it is their way or the highway, so to speak, and so there is only one correct pronunciation.
When they are doing their error correction activities, too, I see the students mouthing the words to themselves in order to understand what is wrong in the sentences. The students are really good at the grammar like tenses and punctuation, but they seem to have a lot of issues with slang or uncommonly used words in English, as well as if the error correction activity has spelling mistakes. If you are exposed to the word enough, like we are, we would know if it is spelled wrong, but if they are not reading or writing that word a lot, they would probably not notice a spelling mistake. I know I would not notice words that are spelled wrong in Spanish entirely because I have not read the word in context and I tend to just believe what my teachers tell me is right in Spanish. I feel like that is a similar effect. I know both the classes I observed had trouble with the word "guzzled" because they have never heard it in context. I understand why they did not comprehend the word because I do not feel like a lot of people use it. I know I do not use it, so maybe this book of activities might need to be updated to use more real language. So I definitely think that their grammatical competence is great, but their strategic and discourse competence are still in progress. None of them can communicate in paragraph discourse; they can only saw 1 or 2 sentences before they trail off or get frustrated.
Conversation between students is very different depending on the class; of course, we expect that every class is going to have a different dynamic so Sue has told me how she feels about the different classes. The morning class is very animated and it is a little smaller and tighter-knit group; a lot of them work together outside of class and have personal friendships so they talk to each other a lot about their families or their kids or something that happened at work the night before, etc. One thing I noticed that was different between the two classes was that the morning class very, very rarely speak in another language to each other, but the night class has a tendency to lapse back into their first language. I cannot seem to figure out what the difference is between the classes. I think the night class is a slightly older group, like 30's and 40's while the morning class is in their 20's mostly. I think the younger group might have an easier time learning English and they feel less tempted to use their first language while the older group is struggling more and gets frustrated so they lapse back into using their first language instead. I think it is just a comfort-ability factor because they also work with the people in their class, and they have a lot to talk about with them, but it is in their first language rather than English.
This week, I was looking for some "student talk"; in other words, how the students talk to each other, to their teacher, and what strategies they use when they are speaking. I think that students in both of the classes have intermediate to advanced speaking skills, and it definitely depends on how long they have been here in the United States and how exposure they have had to English. I think for the adults it might be a little easier to become immersed in the language because they immediately have to get jobs to support their families or children that they bring with them. A lot of them work in restaurants and in the hospitality business, so obviously they have to interact frequently with English-speaking customers in the community and therefore have to learn strategic competence very quickly. A few of the students are not as confident in their speaking abilities; I can tell because they do not speak up a lot in class and tend to just sit back and watch the situation. I can tell that they work it through in their heads before they answer any questions, because they probably have that fear of being wrong and that is totally understandable. When they answer questions, their answers are a bit halted at times and they hesitate a lot before saying words that they do not totally understand or cannot pronounce properly. When Sue is doing their syllable stress activities at the beginning of class, the students tend to repeat the words after her to make sure that they pronounce them like a native speaker would. One good thing about Sue is that she uses realistic language and lets them know that some pronunciations are easily accepted in certain areas and that they are not wrong if they pronounce it that way. I think it is great that she lets them know that there are variations in English, because I feel like some English teachers think it is their way or the highway, so to speak, and so there is only one correct pronunciation.
When they are doing their error correction activities, too, I see the students mouthing the words to themselves in order to understand what is wrong in the sentences. The students are really good at the grammar like tenses and punctuation, but they seem to have a lot of issues with slang or uncommonly used words in English, as well as if the error correction activity has spelling mistakes. If you are exposed to the word enough, like we are, we would know if it is spelled wrong, but if they are not reading or writing that word a lot, they would probably not notice a spelling mistake. I know I would not notice words that are spelled wrong in Spanish entirely because I have not read the word in context and I tend to just believe what my teachers tell me is right in Spanish. I feel like that is a similar effect. I know both the classes I observed had trouble with the word "guzzled" because they have never heard it in context. I understand why they did not comprehend the word because I do not feel like a lot of people use it. I know I do not use it, so maybe this book of activities might need to be updated to use more real language. So I definitely think that their grammatical competence is great, but their strategic and discourse competence are still in progress. None of them can communicate in paragraph discourse; they can only saw 1 or 2 sentences before they trail off or get frustrated.
Conversation between students is very different depending on the class; of course, we expect that every class is going to have a different dynamic so Sue has told me how she feels about the different classes. The morning class is very animated and it is a little smaller and tighter-knit group; a lot of them work together outside of class and have personal friendships so they talk to each other a lot about their families or their kids or something that happened at work the night before, etc. One thing I noticed that was different between the two classes was that the morning class very, very rarely speak in another language to each other, but the night class has a tendency to lapse back into their first language. I cannot seem to figure out what the difference is between the classes. I think the night class is a slightly older group, like 30's and 40's while the morning class is in their 20's mostly. I think the younger group might have an easier time learning English and they feel less tempted to use their first language while the older group is struggling more and gets frustrated so they lapse back into using their first language instead. I think it is just a comfort-ability factor because they also work with the people in their class, and they have a lot to talk about with them, but it is in their first language rather than English.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
3/28 Reading
Reference: Made in America, Chapter 6
1) "Her schooling is over. Her adult life as a wife is about to begin." (pg. 122) - I was excited to read this chapter on Love and Marriage and what the difference was for the immigrants. I read this quote and it immediately reminded me of something that happened to a friend of mine. I had a couple of girl friends in junior high and high school whose families were staunchly Arabic. One girl's family had been here for 3 or 4 generations, in the other's family, she was the first generation born here in the United States. It was amazing to see the difference in their family lives; one had to wear the hijab (I think that's how you spell it?) and one did not. One could not come over to my house and hang out with me, the other could. One could hang out with boys and go to the mall, but the other only could with a chaperone. It was really interesting to see how that played out in their family relationships, and I always asked my friend if it bothered her that her family was so traditional and old-fashioned, but to her, that was just a way of life. She never questioned what her parents said or asked her to do, because that is just the way things were. This same girl left right after high school to get married in Palestine, and I have not seen her since. Her parents were not even totally willing for her to graduate, but she convinced them to let her graduate at least and then she was gone. The other girl married a couple years ago right out of high school and now she has a baby. I guess it's my perspective of being American and that it boggles my mind. I think it is strange enough that people from my own culture get married so young, but I feel like it's more understandable when you know their culture. We have totally different expectations of young people here in the United States; no one expects us to get married right out of high school and have children right away. To us, it's like being back in 1950's, or at least to me, it is!
2) "Schooling is viewed as a place to engage in social activities that are constricted outside of school." (pg. 125) - I found this to be an interesting quote because I completely agree with it. School to us is kind of like a free zone where we can be with our friends, say whatever we want to our friends, and just be ourselves away from our parents. School is where we forge social relationships, especially where we learn to forge intimate or dating relationships. I think that having a restriction on dating, in my opinion, can go one of two ways for a teenager. They can rebel and go behind their parents' back (not a good option), or they can obey their parents and be made fun of by their peers by not dating (another not so good option). In high school, nothing is ever a win-win situation. If you do not have a date to a dance or a boyfriend for a long time, you are looked down on as being a loser. I know because I have experienced it myself. I was so desperate just to go to a dance with a guy to be socially accepted and I was just so happy when I finally met my ex-boyfriend because I had someone to show off to my peers. I know it is all very silly and juvenile, but it is how high schoolers think. When you are at home, dating and sex are not things that get talked about often, even in American culture. I have friends that did not even understand anything about it until they were in health class at 16 years old. I was very fortunate that my parents are open and willing to talk about things like that with me, and that's because they remember their parents being very restrictive and unwilling to help them in that area. However, being in a different culture is a whole other concept. It seems that parents are fine with them forging friendships with their peers, maybe even fine with them having friends that are from another race, but when it comes to dating, it is either date inside your race or not at all. It is so unfortunate that they cannot even think to marry someone outside their ethnic background for fear of being cast out by their parents.
3) "For many of the immigrant girls, the hopes of their own futures are set aside as the struggle for family survival in the United States demands their time, energy, and focus." (pg. 129) - This whole section on having to work outside the home totally boggled my mind. I guess I was always under the impression that a lot of immigrant children did not work, but that was maybe because the immigrant kids in my area did not do so. After reading it, I definitely understood the reasoning for the older kids working; it is like any other family in times of economic uncertainty, even in American culture. I got my first job when I was 18, which was a lot older than some of my own group of friends whose families were not as economically solid as mine. In American culture, having a job when you are a teenager is rarely about the money. It is about learning to use your money independently and teaching you some values about working, and a good side effect is that your parents are not constantly footing you money for food or the movies. However, for some teenagers especially as described in this chapter, the money is about helping to feed your own money so obviously they feel obligated to be helping their parents out and taking care of the littler siblings who are not old enough to get out and start working. I think it would be so difficult for the older kids to watch their younger siblings get to go home and relax and have time for homework, but yet they have to be under pressure and be like another parent. It is a hard concept to rationalize. Teenagers are already stuck in this transition period between being a kid and being an adult, and working to support their money just makes it even harder to figure out that distinction.
4) "If you have education, you can get a better job. If you're married, it's difficult if you don't have an education, because you have to stay home and look after kids and you never can say anything." [Shani] (pg. 136) - I feel like this chapter is full of contradicting or opposing opinions, and this is a perfect example of one of them. Shani, a girl described in this chapter, really wants to continue on in higher education and be a doctor for two reasons: 1) because she actually wants to become a doctor and 2) because she is trying to postpone having to marry someone so young. I think Shani wants to please her parents by being successful and being a doctor is the picture-perfect example of an enviable career, but at the same time, her parents are not pleased because they want to see her get married and have kids. What Shani wants them to understand is that getting married means that is then up to the husband to decide if he wants her to go to school or not, and that brings forth a great deal of other issues, like where would she go to school? They could not possibly move far away unless his job allowed him to, so she would have to limit herself to finding something close by. Secondly, if they end up having children, when is she going to find the time to go to school at all if she is taking care of them all day? In the end, she will likely end up quitting and just being a full-time mother, which obviously there is nothing wrong with doing so in any cultural sense, but she would be giving up her dream of being successful and independent and making her parents proud of her. I cannot even imagine (being a college student and being American) my parents telling me that they chose a husband for me and that I need to just go get married and give up everything that for which I have worked so hard. It seems completely unfair, but I am culturally and gender biased in this sense. I want all women, no matter what background, to have equal treatment in the workplace and to have husbands that support them. I know that I would never marry someone who did not support my career but this could just be an American thing.
5) "For the immigrant girls, there were two strongly opposing peer group concepts of appropriate future gender roles: the romantic lover where attractiveness is key, and the respectful, dutiful wife/daughter." (pg. 142) - I think this is another dichotomy that can be very confusing to immigrant girls who are watching American girls interact. American girls do not have as many expectations as other cultures do, and we can essentially just go date, do what we want, dress how we want without any real consequences unless you have some very strict parents. The newcomer girls are then jealous and confused as to why American girls can act like that and why they cannot be like them. I am absolutely sure that some of them do not want to be like us at all and would prefer their own culture's way of doing things, though. It amazes me every day how silly teenage girls are and how they act to get boys' attention; I know because I live with a 16-year-old sister. Sometimes I just kind of wonder what it would be like to have an arranged marriage, have family pick out someone for you. I just think that it is always portrayed negatively in movies or television shows, any sort of media speaks out against it, but do we ever really think to ask people who are in arranged marriages what it is like? I wish I could ask my Arabic friend about it but I rarely see her anymore. I do have a friend here who is American but from a very conservative Christian religion who was arranged to marry her husband. They have been married for a little over a year now, and she tells me all the time that she is so happy that she trusted their families to set them up. She said it was never a question for her whether or not she should marry him, she just knew that she trusted the people around them and her faith to get her through, which honestly I find pretty admirable. It takes a lot of courage to just pick up and get married without really knowing someone, and she says that their relationship gets stronger every day that she is with him. Anyway, back to the point of the quote, there exists a kind of strange dichotomy of what a wife is expected to be; this just goes back to gender roles in general. I find it fascinating that we, at the same time, have to be sexual and romantic partners and then be the housewife and mother that men seem to expect us to be and that is even more true of other cultures. I just wonder how they must feel entering into a marriage with no prior dating or intimate experiences and then somehow are expected to be perfect in all areas of marriage and that they have to please their husband. I am really not trying to criticize how people do things, but I guess I am not in that place and do not really understand because of my own background. I have a strong, independent mother who is pretty much the head of our household and that is what I am used to; I am not used to traditional gender roles and I guess that is what I expect of other relationships at times, but I know I have to learn to be more open to other ways of living and being in a marriage or relationship.
1) "Her schooling is over. Her adult life as a wife is about to begin." (pg. 122) - I was excited to read this chapter on Love and Marriage and what the difference was for the immigrants. I read this quote and it immediately reminded me of something that happened to a friend of mine. I had a couple of girl friends in junior high and high school whose families were staunchly Arabic. One girl's family had been here for 3 or 4 generations, in the other's family, she was the first generation born here in the United States. It was amazing to see the difference in their family lives; one had to wear the hijab (I think that's how you spell it?) and one did not. One could not come over to my house and hang out with me, the other could. One could hang out with boys and go to the mall, but the other only could with a chaperone. It was really interesting to see how that played out in their family relationships, and I always asked my friend if it bothered her that her family was so traditional and old-fashioned, but to her, that was just a way of life. She never questioned what her parents said or asked her to do, because that is just the way things were. This same girl left right after high school to get married in Palestine, and I have not seen her since. Her parents were not even totally willing for her to graduate, but she convinced them to let her graduate at least and then she was gone. The other girl married a couple years ago right out of high school and now she has a baby. I guess it's my perspective of being American and that it boggles my mind. I think it is strange enough that people from my own culture get married so young, but I feel like it's more understandable when you know their culture. We have totally different expectations of young people here in the United States; no one expects us to get married right out of high school and have children right away. To us, it's like being back in 1950's, or at least to me, it is!
2) "Schooling is viewed as a place to engage in social activities that are constricted outside of school." (pg. 125) - I found this to be an interesting quote because I completely agree with it. School to us is kind of like a free zone where we can be with our friends, say whatever we want to our friends, and just be ourselves away from our parents. School is where we forge social relationships, especially where we learn to forge intimate or dating relationships. I think that having a restriction on dating, in my opinion, can go one of two ways for a teenager. They can rebel and go behind their parents' back (not a good option), or they can obey their parents and be made fun of by their peers by not dating (another not so good option). In high school, nothing is ever a win-win situation. If you do not have a date to a dance or a boyfriend for a long time, you are looked down on as being a loser. I know because I have experienced it myself. I was so desperate just to go to a dance with a guy to be socially accepted and I was just so happy when I finally met my ex-boyfriend because I had someone to show off to my peers. I know it is all very silly and juvenile, but it is how high schoolers think. When you are at home, dating and sex are not things that get talked about often, even in American culture. I have friends that did not even understand anything about it until they were in health class at 16 years old. I was very fortunate that my parents are open and willing to talk about things like that with me, and that's because they remember their parents being very restrictive and unwilling to help them in that area. However, being in a different culture is a whole other concept. It seems that parents are fine with them forging friendships with their peers, maybe even fine with them having friends that are from another race, but when it comes to dating, it is either date inside your race or not at all. It is so unfortunate that they cannot even think to marry someone outside their ethnic background for fear of being cast out by their parents.
3) "For many of the immigrant girls, the hopes of their own futures are set aside as the struggle for family survival in the United States demands their time, energy, and focus." (pg. 129) - This whole section on having to work outside the home totally boggled my mind. I guess I was always under the impression that a lot of immigrant children did not work, but that was maybe because the immigrant kids in my area did not do so. After reading it, I definitely understood the reasoning for the older kids working; it is like any other family in times of economic uncertainty, even in American culture. I got my first job when I was 18, which was a lot older than some of my own group of friends whose families were not as economically solid as mine. In American culture, having a job when you are a teenager is rarely about the money. It is about learning to use your money independently and teaching you some values about working, and a good side effect is that your parents are not constantly footing you money for food or the movies. However, for some teenagers especially as described in this chapter, the money is about helping to feed your own money so obviously they feel obligated to be helping their parents out and taking care of the littler siblings who are not old enough to get out and start working. I think it would be so difficult for the older kids to watch their younger siblings get to go home and relax and have time for homework, but yet they have to be under pressure and be like another parent. It is a hard concept to rationalize. Teenagers are already stuck in this transition period between being a kid and being an adult, and working to support their money just makes it even harder to figure out that distinction.
4) "If you have education, you can get a better job. If you're married, it's difficult if you don't have an education, because you have to stay home and look after kids and you never can say anything." [Shani] (pg. 136) - I feel like this chapter is full of contradicting or opposing opinions, and this is a perfect example of one of them. Shani, a girl described in this chapter, really wants to continue on in higher education and be a doctor for two reasons: 1) because she actually wants to become a doctor and 2) because she is trying to postpone having to marry someone so young. I think Shani wants to please her parents by being successful and being a doctor is the picture-perfect example of an enviable career, but at the same time, her parents are not pleased because they want to see her get married and have kids. What Shani wants them to understand is that getting married means that is then up to the husband to decide if he wants her to go to school or not, and that brings forth a great deal of other issues, like where would she go to school? They could not possibly move far away unless his job allowed him to, so she would have to limit herself to finding something close by. Secondly, if they end up having children, when is she going to find the time to go to school at all if she is taking care of them all day? In the end, she will likely end up quitting and just being a full-time mother, which obviously there is nothing wrong with doing so in any cultural sense, but she would be giving up her dream of being successful and independent and making her parents proud of her. I cannot even imagine (being a college student and being American) my parents telling me that they chose a husband for me and that I need to just go get married and give up everything that for which I have worked so hard. It seems completely unfair, but I am culturally and gender biased in this sense. I want all women, no matter what background, to have equal treatment in the workplace and to have husbands that support them. I know that I would never marry someone who did not support my career but this could just be an American thing.
5) "For the immigrant girls, there were two strongly opposing peer group concepts of appropriate future gender roles: the romantic lover where attractiveness is key, and the respectful, dutiful wife/daughter." (pg. 142) - I think this is another dichotomy that can be very confusing to immigrant girls who are watching American girls interact. American girls do not have as many expectations as other cultures do, and we can essentially just go date, do what we want, dress how we want without any real consequences unless you have some very strict parents. The newcomer girls are then jealous and confused as to why American girls can act like that and why they cannot be like them. I am absolutely sure that some of them do not want to be like us at all and would prefer their own culture's way of doing things, though. It amazes me every day how silly teenage girls are and how they act to get boys' attention; I know because I live with a 16-year-old sister. Sometimes I just kind of wonder what it would be like to have an arranged marriage, have family pick out someone for you. I just think that it is always portrayed negatively in movies or television shows, any sort of media speaks out against it, but do we ever really think to ask people who are in arranged marriages what it is like? I wish I could ask my Arabic friend about it but I rarely see her anymore. I do have a friend here who is American but from a very conservative Christian religion who was arranged to marry her husband. They have been married for a little over a year now, and she tells me all the time that she is so happy that she trusted their families to set them up. She said it was never a question for her whether or not she should marry him, she just knew that she trusted the people around them and her faith to get her through, which honestly I find pretty admirable. It takes a lot of courage to just pick up and get married without really knowing someone, and she says that their relationship gets stronger every day that she is with him. Anyway, back to the point of the quote, there exists a kind of strange dichotomy of what a wife is expected to be; this just goes back to gender roles in general. I find it fascinating that we, at the same time, have to be sexual and romantic partners and then be the housewife and mother that men seem to expect us to be and that is even more true of other cultures. I just wonder how they must feel entering into a marriage with no prior dating or intimate experiences and then somehow are expected to be perfect in all areas of marriage and that they have to please their husband. I am really not trying to criticize how people do things, but I guess I am not in that place and do not really understand because of my own background. I have a strong, independent mother who is pretty much the head of our household and that is what I am used to; I am not used to traditional gender roles and I guess that is what I expect of other relationships at times, but I know I have to learn to be more open to other ways of living and being in a marriage or relationship.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Observation Week 4: March 20 and 22
This week I will mostly be talking about my observations at Bloomington Junior High School with Kathy (my cooperating teacher). BJHS's ESL program is pretty small; there are only 6 in her class and the rest have been mainstreamed into regular classes. The class I observe is a combination Social Studies/Reading ESL class and lasts for an hour and a half which is a very long time for these students in my opinion. But then again, Kathy says that the kids really love being in ESL class because everything is a little slowed down for them, and she works with them very closely on the material. Their textbooks are at a 3rd and 4th grade reading level so that they can fully comprehend the material, but even then some have some difficulty. The class make-up is 5 students who are Spanish speakers and 1 students whose first language is Hindi. I sort of feel bad because he ends up getting a little lost in the shuffle because all the other students speak the same language, but they are very nice to him and are able to talk to him in English most of the time. One girl has just moved here from Honduras (in January) and has been living with her aunt ever since; her mother just arrived yesterday and even from Tuesday to Thursday I saw a huge difference in her personality. When I first met her, she was very shy and did not even want to talk to me in Spanish but today she was quite talkative and wanted to participate more, and came in with a smile on her face which elated Kathy. Hopefully her mother being here will really help her be motivated in class.
Two of the students in the class are very advanced in English; they are both A students and Kathy lamented that they were still in ESL but unfortunately they passed every section of their ACCESS exam other than the English section which still placed them in ESL. They will be taking it again at the end of the school year and hopefully they will pass then because then they will end up in the ESL program at Bloomington High School, which she does not want for them. I did not ask her much about the program there, but I will find out more details as I go along. Kathy is an excellent teacher; she actually taught at the ELI for 9 years before she went to the junior high level, so she has a lot of experience with ESL students. She is really compassionate and helpful, but she gets frustrated a little easily with the students at times. She said she feels bad for getting irate with them, but she does not speak much Spanish so she never really knows if they are staying on task with the lesson, and that would be frustrating to a lot of people.
Thankfully for me, I do not need to worry much about the language barrier with Spanish and I was able to help the two girls who have been here for a short period of time with their assignments. I am really excited that I can get some translating experience along with the practicum experience because I always need to speak more Spanish! I actually helped one of the girls with her exam today; she did pretty good for the most part but needed a few words and phrases explained to her in Spanish, so I felt really good about helping her out. She seemed a little awkward with me, which I understand completely because this was only my second day in the class. Hopefully that will get better as we go along. The other students are very welcoming and really willing to talk to me and listen to me, since Kathy wanted them to believe I have some authority in the classroom, so I will need to work on that.
I wanted to tell an interesting story I heard at Heartland today: one of the women in our class (she is from Ecuador) has been here for a few years. Somehow one of their error correction activities got them on the topic of passports and green cards, and the woman told us something disturbing that happened to her here in Bloomington-Normal. She said one night during her first week here, she was walking down Main Street to go to Walgreen's, and a cop stopped her on her way there. He promptly asked her if she had a green card and passport with her, and she said of course she did, so she handed them over. He checked them and asked her a couple of questions about why she walking and why she was out so late, etc which she answered politely. She said he seemed skeptical but left. She said a similar thing happened to her a few months ago, but not with the same cop. Sue and I were pretty appalled by her story. The woman seemed fine about it, even laughing, but Sue explained to her that what they did was wrong and is illegal and the woman was very surprised. I just find it very irritating that just because they see an ethnic woman walking down the street, they immediately think she is up to no good. It's just so racist! These people come here and expect to be treated the way they should be treated, and stopping her on the street for basically no reason is completely disrespectful.
I thought that it went along nicely with what we were talking about in class and in the Made in America chapter. We put people into these racial categories and associate the stereotypes we see in movies or on television and we then assume that all people of that background are like that, which I have learned over time is definitely not the case.
Two of the students in the class are very advanced in English; they are both A students and Kathy lamented that they were still in ESL but unfortunately they passed every section of their ACCESS exam other than the English section which still placed them in ESL. They will be taking it again at the end of the school year and hopefully they will pass then because then they will end up in the ESL program at Bloomington High School, which she does not want for them. I did not ask her much about the program there, but I will find out more details as I go along. Kathy is an excellent teacher; she actually taught at the ELI for 9 years before she went to the junior high level, so she has a lot of experience with ESL students. She is really compassionate and helpful, but she gets frustrated a little easily with the students at times. She said she feels bad for getting irate with them, but she does not speak much Spanish so she never really knows if they are staying on task with the lesson, and that would be frustrating to a lot of people.
Thankfully for me, I do not need to worry much about the language barrier with Spanish and I was able to help the two girls who have been here for a short period of time with their assignments. I am really excited that I can get some translating experience along with the practicum experience because I always need to speak more Spanish! I actually helped one of the girls with her exam today; she did pretty good for the most part but needed a few words and phrases explained to her in Spanish, so I felt really good about helping her out. She seemed a little awkward with me, which I understand completely because this was only my second day in the class. Hopefully that will get better as we go along. The other students are very welcoming and really willing to talk to me and listen to me, since Kathy wanted them to believe I have some authority in the classroom, so I will need to work on that.
I wanted to tell an interesting story I heard at Heartland today: one of the women in our class (she is from Ecuador) has been here for a few years. Somehow one of their error correction activities got them on the topic of passports and green cards, and the woman told us something disturbing that happened to her here in Bloomington-Normal. She said one night during her first week here, she was walking down Main Street to go to Walgreen's, and a cop stopped her on her way there. He promptly asked her if she had a green card and passport with her, and she said of course she did, so she handed them over. He checked them and asked her a couple of questions about why she walking and why she was out so late, etc which she answered politely. She said he seemed skeptical but left. She said a similar thing happened to her a few months ago, but not with the same cop. Sue and I were pretty appalled by her story. The woman seemed fine about it, even laughing, but Sue explained to her that what they did was wrong and is illegal and the woman was very surprised. I just find it very irritating that just because they see an ethnic woman walking down the street, they immediately think she is up to no good. It's just so racist! These people come here and expect to be treated the way they should be treated, and stopping her on the street for basically no reason is completely disrespectful.
I thought that it went along nicely with what we were talking about in class and in the Made in America chapter. We put people into these racial categories and associate the stereotypes we see in movies or on television and we then assume that all people of that background are like that, which I have learned over time is definitely not the case.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
3/21 Reading
Reference: Made in America Chapter 5
I will be following the similar pattern as my previous blog posts of this book.
1) "I love my country. I dream about it every night. I hope to see it again. I have no place I belong here. I do not belong with Latins; I am not at home here. The whites do not accept me. I am the only speaker of my language. I am Brazilian!" (pg. 107) - As we talked about a little today in class, it is hard enough being an immigrant in the United States and be expected to learn the language; among other things, students also need to find a way to fit in within their racial category within the country or more specifically, the school system. Sandra, who is Brazilian, obviously does not identify with the Latino community and does not identify with the white community, so where does she belong? There is no other ethnic group that she can be with, so what can Sandra do? I have to wonder what we as their teachers can do to help them belong and fit in; I guess that we can help them by presenting about their culture, having a cultural day dedicated to Brazilians or something like that, but then again, that might be too superficial. It's very surface culture and we want them to identify with themselves at a deeper level. I think she probably thought that being with the cholas would help her fit in better at the school since that is the goal of most teenagers, but it will never fully satisfy her. It is important to make friends and be involved at the school, and in that case, Sandra did have her bases covered in that sense, but it just makes me feel bad for these students who do not have everywhere to go essentially. I think as teachers we just need to be there, support them, and be a helping hand whenever they need us.
2) "Many immigrant students at Madison have a stronger sense of connection to teachers and gratitude to the school than do their U.S.-born Latino peers...they hold on to their belief that school is their route to success in this new land" (pg. 114) - I know I experienced this in the high school I observed in; even being there for 2 days, I saw how the students viewed their teacher and their ESL experience. Seeing the difference between her junior American Literature students and her ESL students was eye-opening. The native English speakers were rowdy, did not pay attention to anything the teacher said, and generally just acted like they did not want to be there at all. They continually complained, saying, "Why do I have to do this?" and "I hate English, this class is so boring", but the ESL students did not complain at all, listened very attentively to the teacher, and asked a lot of deep questions about their reading material. I think the difference might be the fact that the class is a lot smaller and there is more individualized attention with the ESL students versus the juniors who are English speakers, but I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, these students are so privileged. They have absolutely no idea what these ESL kids go through." I mean, you cannot necessarily blame them for being privileged; they do not know that they are privileged! They take it for granted that they know the language and that they do not have to go through what the ESL kids go through every day. Being in a foreign country has a similar effect, but it's not the same. When they learn Spanish or French at school, they are not expected to go out in the halls and speak it with their peers, as much as we foreign language teachers would like them to! The only way that they would ever know sort of what the ESL kids experience would be to study abroad in a country where they do not know any of the language. I wish we could do that to get through to them, but that's almost impossible in this economy.
3) "Racial paths" [in regards to belonging or not belonging] (pg. 117) - This concept is particularly upsetting. Students, on top of being in ESL, are placed into these racial categories and then are expected to behave with their peers and at school according to these categories. They are brought down by the stereotypes of society and how the teachers perceive them; it is why they are put in lower-track courses and then they are expected to not go to college and not pursue more white-collar jobs. It is because society believes that they will not succeed in their education. I am honestly not sure where that stereotype has come from, maybe movies or television, but it is really negative and really hurts their self-esteem and it breaks their spirit. It calls attention again to the student who got into Berkeley but could not go because her family could not afford it; the girl was originally placed in lower-track classes and then the teachers were shocked to see that she was performing way above what they expected her to. We cannot place kids into these categories. I know that sometimes our own backgrounds come into play and we do not always notice it, but as teachers we have to pay attention to these issues, and as ESL teachers the kids look up to us to be the voice of reason so to speak. They want us to be there for them emotionally, and to stand up for their rights because they do not have the words to do so. Like Tiffany talked about in class today, they are put into these paths where they honestly believe they will not succeed because they are illegal immigrants and therefore do not want to be in school. They would rather just quit school and start what society expects them to do, follow the paths of their parents and grandparents and perhaps even further back. I do not think we should stop them from doing what they think they should do because sometimes it is an issue of pride and what their family needs or wants them to do, but we should at least let them know that they can rise above what is expected and do what they want to do. We should support them at every step as their teachers; help them apply to colleges and write essays, things that will get them ahead in life.
4) "...what do you get for working harder? A diploma is a diploma. It's good for a job at Pizza Hut." (pg. 118) - This sort of goes along with the third quote I chose. I feel though that this is an issue of what every high school student in America is facing, not just the students in this book. Times may have been a little different in the early 90's, but the message is still clear; a diploma is just a piece of paper that gets you out of high school but means nothing in the real world. The students are absolutely right about that. When my parents were graduating high school, that was a very big deal. That meant you were now an adult and could go get a real job. Now it is just another step in the road toward becoming an adult. Getting your college degree is now the marker of being an adult and even then it does not always mean securing a job. Times are tough, and kids realize this more than we think they do. They know the truth of the matter, and there is no point in keeping them in the dark. As I said, being their teacher means being a role model and being someone who can help them through high school and beyond. We need to help them believe in themselves and believe they can succeed in college, giving them the tools to do so. We need to tell them that a diploma is a big deal for them, that it means that they have learned enough English and can survive in the real English-speaking world. It is an achievement and they should know that. I know I am scared of graduating and that my diploma is just a piece of paper, as well, but I obviously know that I am privileged and the ESL students are not. This statement just really hit me deep because I know how that feels and I have had friends that have felt the same way, white and Latino alike.
I will be following the similar pattern as my previous blog posts of this book.
1) "I love my country. I dream about it every night. I hope to see it again. I have no place I belong here. I do not belong with Latins; I am not at home here. The whites do not accept me. I am the only speaker of my language. I am Brazilian!" (pg. 107) - As we talked about a little today in class, it is hard enough being an immigrant in the United States and be expected to learn the language; among other things, students also need to find a way to fit in within their racial category within the country or more specifically, the school system. Sandra, who is Brazilian, obviously does not identify with the Latino community and does not identify with the white community, so where does she belong? There is no other ethnic group that she can be with, so what can Sandra do? I have to wonder what we as their teachers can do to help them belong and fit in; I guess that we can help them by presenting about their culture, having a cultural day dedicated to Brazilians or something like that, but then again, that might be too superficial. It's very surface culture and we want them to identify with themselves at a deeper level. I think she probably thought that being with the cholas would help her fit in better at the school since that is the goal of most teenagers, but it will never fully satisfy her. It is important to make friends and be involved at the school, and in that case, Sandra did have her bases covered in that sense, but it just makes me feel bad for these students who do not have everywhere to go essentially. I think as teachers we just need to be there, support them, and be a helping hand whenever they need us.
2) "Many immigrant students at Madison have a stronger sense of connection to teachers and gratitude to the school than do their U.S.-born Latino peers...they hold on to their belief that school is their route to success in this new land" (pg. 114) - I know I experienced this in the high school I observed in; even being there for 2 days, I saw how the students viewed their teacher and their ESL experience. Seeing the difference between her junior American Literature students and her ESL students was eye-opening. The native English speakers were rowdy, did not pay attention to anything the teacher said, and generally just acted like they did not want to be there at all. They continually complained, saying, "Why do I have to do this?" and "I hate English, this class is so boring", but the ESL students did not complain at all, listened very attentively to the teacher, and asked a lot of deep questions about their reading material. I think the difference might be the fact that the class is a lot smaller and there is more individualized attention with the ESL students versus the juniors who are English speakers, but I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, these students are so privileged. They have absolutely no idea what these ESL kids go through." I mean, you cannot necessarily blame them for being privileged; they do not know that they are privileged! They take it for granted that they know the language and that they do not have to go through what the ESL kids go through every day. Being in a foreign country has a similar effect, but it's not the same. When they learn Spanish or French at school, they are not expected to go out in the halls and speak it with their peers, as much as we foreign language teachers would like them to! The only way that they would ever know sort of what the ESL kids experience would be to study abroad in a country where they do not know any of the language. I wish we could do that to get through to them, but that's almost impossible in this economy.
3) "Racial paths" [in regards to belonging or not belonging] (pg. 117) - This concept is particularly upsetting. Students, on top of being in ESL, are placed into these racial categories and then are expected to behave with their peers and at school according to these categories. They are brought down by the stereotypes of society and how the teachers perceive them; it is why they are put in lower-track courses and then they are expected to not go to college and not pursue more white-collar jobs. It is because society believes that they will not succeed in their education. I am honestly not sure where that stereotype has come from, maybe movies or television, but it is really negative and really hurts their self-esteem and it breaks their spirit. It calls attention again to the student who got into Berkeley but could not go because her family could not afford it; the girl was originally placed in lower-track classes and then the teachers were shocked to see that she was performing way above what they expected her to. We cannot place kids into these categories. I know that sometimes our own backgrounds come into play and we do not always notice it, but as teachers we have to pay attention to these issues, and as ESL teachers the kids look up to us to be the voice of reason so to speak. They want us to be there for them emotionally, and to stand up for their rights because they do not have the words to do so. Like Tiffany talked about in class today, they are put into these paths where they honestly believe they will not succeed because they are illegal immigrants and therefore do not want to be in school. They would rather just quit school and start what society expects them to do, follow the paths of their parents and grandparents and perhaps even further back. I do not think we should stop them from doing what they think they should do because sometimes it is an issue of pride and what their family needs or wants them to do, but we should at least let them know that they can rise above what is expected and do what they want to do. We should support them at every step as their teachers; help them apply to colleges and write essays, things that will get them ahead in life.
4) "...what do you get for working harder? A diploma is a diploma. It's good for a job at Pizza Hut." (pg. 118) - This sort of goes along with the third quote I chose. I feel though that this is an issue of what every high school student in America is facing, not just the students in this book. Times may have been a little different in the early 90's, but the message is still clear; a diploma is just a piece of paper that gets you out of high school but means nothing in the real world. The students are absolutely right about that. When my parents were graduating high school, that was a very big deal. That meant you were now an adult and could go get a real job. Now it is just another step in the road toward becoming an adult. Getting your college degree is now the marker of being an adult and even then it does not always mean securing a job. Times are tough, and kids realize this more than we think they do. They know the truth of the matter, and there is no point in keeping them in the dark. As I said, being their teacher means being a role model and being someone who can help them through high school and beyond. We need to help them believe in themselves and believe they can succeed in college, giving them the tools to do so. We need to tell them that a diploma is a big deal for them, that it means that they have learned enough English and can survive in the real English-speaking world. It is an achievement and they should know that. I know I am scared of graduating and that my diploma is just a piece of paper, as well, but I obviously know that I am privileged and the ESL students are not. This statement just really hit me deep because I know how that feels and I have had friends that have felt the same way, white and Latino alike.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)