RE_5539

Lisa,

You sound like a wonderful teacher. The help you are giving Dee will stay with her for the rest of her life. It may all click for her one day soon. When I was working with an ESL child many years ago, it seemed like one day she could read a word and the next day she could not. She would become frustrated and sometimes shut down. One day I decided to try putting her on the computer to try a game related to the words she was trying learn. She loved working with the computer. I was mad at myself for not trying it earlier. You may stumble across something that clicks with Dee.

In my experience working with ESL children, often the youngest in the family struggles more. It may be that they are more sheltered or people speak for them more often. I really do not know.

It is interesting that the parents of your students influence their kids with their own negative experiences in school. I wish there was something that could be done about this influence. Kids should begin feeling positive and that this experience is their own. I wonder if there is any kind of program for the parents that may address this issue. Programs in the home language would be most effective.

lisa,

it is so wonderful that you did not let dee choose to fail. as teachers i believe that we all want what is best for our students. sometimes it takes that little extra to save them from self-destructing. i agree that it is never a good practice to let children choose their own failure.

i too have hispanic/esl students in my kindergarten classroom. each year i have a cluster so that they are not all spread apart...how frightening it would be to not speak any english, take a bus to a new school and be unable to communicate with adults. i cant stand the thought. so i have opened my door to hispanics and all other cultures. this year i have six hispanic children. some can speak better english than others. there are times during the day that they just have to get together to share their thoughts through their natural home language and it is wonderful to hear them. their expressions are fantastic and i watch them light up with laughter. ive heard that when children who spend all day in an environment without a language they understand actually begin to shut down. when one of my hispanic children begins to get frustrated i quickly bring another hispanic child over to talk with him/her. at the beginning of the year i let all of them sit close together so they are not afraid.

if there is another esl kindergarten child in a classroom nearby, would it be possible for him/her to get together during the academic times in the day that tend to frustrate dee? i find that the best resource for esl children is another esl chld.

i also agree that we use different speech patterns...at home...speaking with parents and speaking with administration. my question is do other cultures have these same patterns...less professional at home...

donna byrd-wyatt

Lisa,

I too teach kindergarten. I enjoyed the part about the lessons on hairdressing. I believe we would see a change in our students if we centered more of the curriculum around their interests. This reminds me of a workshop that I went to in December. The presenter was talking about PBL's (Project Based Learning). She said that her class opened a restaurant one evening. They talked about what they would need in order to open a restaurant. The process they went through was a wonderful learning experience. They were involved with so many people;therefore, several languages were present. Math, writing, reading, science, and communication was integrated into this project. A banker actually gave them a small loan. The night of the restaurant opening parents, teachers, friends and school board members came. Think of all the language that was heard in this elementary classroom and not to mention the students' interests and motivation soared!

I agree. I wonder how our teaching would change if our students came to school prepared to learn instead of being prepare for a bad experience or even prepared to fail?

I think all teachers have to use trilingalism in their lives. We all want our students to have the opportunity to learn SE and to communicate freely. Our home language is far less sophisticated and rigid. It is also interesting that when my own personal children are in the room at home, my language can be different. Children learn by example and need SE modeled.

Lisa you make a good point about children coming to school and already being programmed to watch out for bad experiences. However, I believe that as the student grows they learn from their own experiences in the classroom. As long as we make it as comfortable and challenging for them as they need, then they will make their own minds up about it. At first it might be a battle, but eventually it is up to them. We as teachers need to make sure they stay interested it school and are not bored or over challenged at the same time. It all goes back to individualizing the education for each student.

At the high school level, the education becomes a little more individualized since the students can begin to choose some of their classes based on their interests. So I agree with you. Why can’t we start this process a little earlier? Maybe we should try to start it in middle school so that they still get their basics, but also they choose what electives they want to take. I know that Wilkes County where I teach now offers the choice between band and choral music but what type of choice is that? Why not offer even more options?

I have the triangular speech patterns as well. I speak completely different at home with my family than I do with my principal at work or with parents during IEP meetings. I think where it comes out the most is during the IEP meetings when so much “political jargon” can get in the way. Who came up with these different languages anyway? Is it possible to speak the same everywhere, or is it absolutely necessary that we have these three types of speech? I would like to think it is a choice, but I don’t think that I could walk up to a parent and say the same thing I would to a colleague about a student because it wouldn’t be proper etiquette. But who made the rules of proper etiquette and why do we follow them?

Yes, I agree that we as the teachers fail the children, the children don’t fail us. I recently had an IEP meeting with a parent of a student who had just taken English I for the second time and failed the class again. Not only will he be in the same teacher’s class next time around but he will be significantly behind in order to graduate with his peers. During the IEP meeting the teacher said, and I quote “Maybe John Doe would be better off just to quit and go get his GED.” I stopped the meeting and said that we would reconvene at a later date to make these decisions. After the parents left I spoke with the teacher and asked her how she could even suggest that, and her reply was that it would be the same next year because she would be his teacher again and he couldn’t pass her class. I didn’t know what else to say. Why do you become a teacher if you’re just going to give up on the kids that need you the most? I will never understand it.

I really found your comment/question about "being the enemy" interesting, but i know exactly what you mean by it. I feel like sometimes us teachers get a bad rap. I feel like sometimes kids come into school thinking that we automatically will not accept them for who they are. I don't know if their parents had bad experiences or if they are just scared as well, but it's our job to show them the total opposite. I think that it's important to connect with your students and a way to do this, would be to start the year with a lesson about the different "englishes" and how one is not better than the other. If we show our kids that we respect all cultures, hopefully they would see that we respect all the children in the class, equally, as well. Maybe if we could do this, all would be open to learn and share.

It takes one bad experience to spoil the enjoyment of school. That experience can be a personal one, or it can be one shared by a sibling or parent. We've all had that one experience (sadly some of us have had more) that made school challenging and hurtful at some time. I can't imagine how it would feel to experience this in a country and language that are both foreign to me. When I think of how my first grade ESL students feel in my classroom, it makes me want to hug them everytime they walk through my door!

Magnificent goods from you, man. I've understand your stuff previous to and you're just extremely wonderful. I actually like what you have acquired here, certainly like what you are stating and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it wise. I can't wait to read much more from you. This is really a tremendous web site.

Thank you for the good writeup. It in fact was a amusement account it. Look advanced to far added agreeable from you! However, how can we communicate?

I am not sure where you're getting your info, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more. Thanks for fantastic information I was looking for this info for my mission.

You have noted very interesting details ! ps decent web site .

I am pleased that I found this site , exactly the right info that I was searching for! .

You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually a thing that I believe I would never understand.

I would appreciate more visual materials, to make your blog more attractive, but your writing style really unique.

I am happy to find this post very useful for me, as it contains lot of information. I always prefer to read the quality content and this thing I found in you post. Thanks for sharing.

You actually make it seem very easy with your presentation but I've found this topic to be actually something which I think I'd never understand.

This is interesting cartoonist story, because there are a lot of unique information for our children, I will recommend to my little colleagues to visit this site.