I loved chapter 1 and 2 from The Inner World of the Immigrant Child. It is no secret that my passion lies with working with immigrants and English Language Learners. These articles game me practical ideas on how to set up my ESL classroom and activities to help them learn. THe film strip, the rug or island, group rooms and an ART TABLE! I haven't gotten this excited about my possible own classroom all semester! It also showed how a teacher that is forced to use the "pull-out", whereas the kids are removed from the classroom for a period or more a day, can work. I liked that she allowed the kids to choose if they needed more or less and that she set up her room like a sanctuary.
However, there are some quintessential parts to the set-up that are IDEAL, and therefore will not always work. First her obvious support of the administration and the school as a whole. She was able to allow kids to virtually come and go when they needed with a maximum of 3 visits. This is wonderful for the needs of the immigrant student, but how difficult would that be to manage as a school or a classroom? You can't let every kid decide so how do you explain that THESE kids get to? How do you convince a mainstream teacher that an immigrant child gets to decide if they stay in their classroom? Is it fair to the teacher or their other students?
Which brings me to my next point. I loved that the first student Dennis wasn't graded until he asked to be graded. This makes sense. While a student is dealing with the emotional distress of their recent immigration and the stress of learning a new language it doesn't makes sense to grade them. However, is that realistic in this standards and test driven curriculum that we are working with? Is it fair not to test Dennis but test other students that are going through difficult time? Are they even allowed NOT to test them?
I hope I am as lucky to get that kind of support and freedom.
Amy, this is why I appreciate the value of blogging. It is great to hear other people's perspectives of the same article I read. Unlike me, I'm glad that you were able to focus and SHARE the teaching implications you got from the immigrant article.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to know about Your desire to help the children of immigrants and/or ELL students. We all know how rough the work day is, and it is important to remember our passion and goals.
Is it fair TO test a student who has no clue what's going on? If the grade is supposed to represent learning, is it fair to test a student who couldn't possibly learn the content because they don't speak the language or understand the classroom routine? I would say that if a student is unable to learn temporarily for any reason, adjustments must be made. The rest of the class doesn't have to know. My ideas on how to accomplish this are only half-baked, so hopefully we get some discussion going to balance my ramblings out.
ReplyDeleteThe ENL student in our classroom this semester gets grades like everyone else. How meaningful is that? What, exactly, are those grades measuring? And how do those really low grades make the student feel?
As usual, I love your enthusiasm! I thought about you alot while reading "The Silent Stage" and knew that you'd enjoy it. Yes, Dennis's experience definitely seem idealistic; hence, unrealistic, but I think it would be great to share this information with a school principal or maybe a current ENL teacher to get his/her opinion about the amount of time the students were allowed to spend in the ENL room and the optional testing requirements.
ReplyDeleteAmy, I think you make a great point about the value of Dennis' experience while recognizing that this may not be the most realistic of situations. I think it was important that you alluded to the "pull-out" method because we often see this method as a negative thing because students are missing out on other class discussions and peer involvement. However, in Dennis' case it was necessary for the teacher to work one-on-one with him to figure out and assess his needs and consequently assign a learning system that he was engaged in, excited about, and showed him that his cultural background was valuable.
ReplyDeleteAmy, I found it very interesting that the article brought up some of the main points that we talked about in our presentation last week. I wish I had answers, but I don't. Nonetheless, I also enjoyed reading all the insights that the article presented.
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