I feel like I have grown so much this year - my first year of teaching.
It has been challenging. With 60% of my students beginning and intermediate English learners, I was perplexed at how I would be able to teach a class where a significant population could not understand what I was saying. As many had also be educated in Mexico or African countries, I could not rely on them having been educated in any particular subject that I was addressing.
I did wonder at times what good I was really doing. Should I teach to the top tier of the students, and hope that the others learn English? Do I abandon science altogether and focus on teaching English? How would I grade? Does an English learner get an "F" for not being able to read or understand me? These and many other questions were going through my head.
Throughout the year, I learned a lot about my students. I found that they were capable of so much, but they needed the right scaffolding to bring the content to where they could reach it. At the same time, it is tricky because students are like water: they will always take the path of least resistance. Several of my students had been in the school district for up to five years and had not progressed even one level in English proficiency. Spanish was the primary language spoken by the students in my class. Even the ones that were English proficient, Spanish was easier for them to speak. The problem with this is they were not being prepared to be competitive after high school, and were not able to pass the California High School Exit Exam
A good example of this was a project that I started toward the end of the year. Their task was to write a persuasive essay on a bio ethical subject. I broke their task into very digestible pieces. Their essay would consist of the following components:
1. Hook the reader (with a question)
2. Target audience
3. State claim
I believe... / I think... / It seems to me that...
4. Supporting evidence
5. Counter argument
Some people may say that...
I would argue however, ...
6. Conclusion
The results of this project are being analyzed and are part of my teacher inquiry project. So far the results have been very promising. I have been amazed to see some of the essays from beginning and intermediate English Language Learners. I think the strength was for them to have something concrete to to go by. Six solid steps to follow in writing an essay, and starting sentences for each paragraphs. When that block was out of their way, their own creativity and ingenuity manifested itself on the page.
Since I first heard about your challenging teaching placement earlier on this year while taking EDS classes, I have been very intrigued by what you as a teacher could do in order to help your students learn to their full potential. In my advisory classes I had two students who could speak practically no English and it was a huge struggle for me to communicate with them, much less to get them to do assignments in class. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to have a class full of students like these. Being an English teacher, I really commend you on your idea of having them write an essay in math class. I think that one of the best things that you could do as a teacher is to help the students gain more confidence in themselves, their writing and in their thoughts and ideas. If you can help them build themselves up through writing, it is likely that you will see a change in their participation in your class, at least that is what I would like to see happen. I am really interested to see the results of your inquiry project!
ReplyDeleteSara
Hey Hyrum,
ReplyDeleteI also feel like I have grown so much this year teaching and taking over in 2 elementary classrooms. During my first placement, I was placed in a classroom school setting where there was about over 90% Spanish English language learners. Two of my students moved from Mexico a few months before they were placed in my classroom so it was extremely difficult to teach them while teaching all the other students. I really enjoyed reading your sentence frames. It's great to see the impact it has on ELL's and how it can facilitate creativity and academic language.
Scott Luong