December 1 post

Who knew there is so much that can go into observation? After reading  Kuma’s Chapter 13 I think most would agree that a process-oriented model is preferred over a product-oriented one.  It is important to interpret observations and not simply describe them. I think one good way to do this would be to have one person go into a classroom and describe what goes on, and then have a group of people read that description and interpret it (however, if the person assigned to go into the classroom recorded based on their own biases, this would not work out correctly). The reading touched on the importance of having more than one perspective, and this was something that really stuck out in my mind. I absolutely hate that I write 20 page papers and only one person gets to read them. In high school, I used to get very sad when I would get a teacher who didn’t understand me and would give me a not-so-good grade, while knowing another teacher would give me a much better grade. That was always frustrating, and if my teaching were being evaluated, I know that I would want more than one opinion. One thing that I did not think of, however, was the observation of the teacher by the teacher, or a self-observation. This is something that I feel many teachers, especially as time goes on, feel is unnecessary. However, I think it is extremely vital to creating the best possible classroom environment. After all, getting multiple perspectives is good, but the teacher needs to be aware of what he/she is doing and feel comfortable before listening to these other perspectives.

I also found the M&M stages of observation very detailed and helpful. While I think ten steps is a little bit extreme, they all made sense and I can see how each would help a teacher assess their own teaching. Once again, I think that I would choose maybe five different things to do because ten seems too extreme (after a while I think I would get anxious and begin to repeat myself). Of course, each step in this process is beneficial, and it would be important to touch on each and every one throughout the year, just maybe not all at once.

November 17 post

The chapter on ensuring social relevance was very interesting. I personally liked the activity 11.1 “Tapping Human Resources” because this is something that I think I could potentially struggle with when I become a teacher. I believe that I am familiar enough with electronics, but actually making that bridge between by students L1 and L2 is a bit more intimidating to me (likely because I will not know their L1). I think that the ideas to make out lists using these questions is a good one and will not only create a bridge between L1 and L2, but create a bridge to using the media for classroom activities. I also really enjoyed the section about standardization. This made me think about my students at the ELI who work so incredibly hard on pronunciation and find it to be so important. If they do not say a word like me, they work and work until they do. I try and express to them that accents are okay, and if they went to another state they will pronounce words completely different. This would likely be very problematic for my students if they ever moved out of Illinois. I do not mean problematic as in no one would understand them, but I think they would be confused by others and likely think that they were saying different words. Obviously we need to teach our students pronunciation so they can be understood, but this is something to also consider and at the very least mention to more advanced students, or students who plan to travel. Lastly, and as a side note, I thought the statistics about English were very interesting. 80 percent of home pages on the World Wide Web use English? I had no idea!

Kuma’s Chapter 12 well also more interesting than I had expected based on the title “Raising Cultural Consciousness.” I thought the section on critical cultural consciousness was interesting because it put into perspective what globalization is actually changing in our world. It is shrinking our space, time, and helping borders disappear. I absolutely agree with this, and it got me thinking about how still, even with this always increasing closeness, we still are not really aware of other cultures. Even I, who studies language and culture and travel, am not nearly as conscious as I could be of this closeness between cultures. I think that we lose sight of just how powerful the Internet is. Furthermore, my favorite quote in this chapter was “in understanding other cultures, we understand our own better; in understanding our own, we understand other cultures better. Therein lies real and meaningful cultural growth” (273). Just as the chapter says, there is no one culture that is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. We need to take advantage of this closeness that the Internet gives us and begin to grow in this way. I think that simply by choosing to get our TESOL endorsements we are on the right track, but we need to spread the word and get others thinking in these terms as well.

Update on my final project

Here is what I did with my class last week. I always write a little refelction under "comments" and usually add specific names, but I omitted them for this blog posting. I have been documenting my progress exactly like this each week for each of my three classes (this is just one class), so sending an "update" on my progress would be so long! Please let me know if there is anything I should be doing differently.

Tutorial 1.51

Materials: movie (or any object), wrapping paper, rubber band, towel, shoe with laces

·         We began with the idiom from last week “to steal my/you/his/her thunder”

·         We then went over the homework which was to bring in five examples of requests heard throughout the week. They were to write these down as well as the setting and the relationship of the speakers.

·         We went around the room and each student read one of their requests. We then discussed if each one was direct or indirect. On a select few I asked the students to change the requests to the opposite (if they were direct, I said change them to indirect).

·         We then began the activity of describing “how to” do things. I had each student pick a number 1-6.

·         Then the student had to describe one of the actions below in great detail and I did the actions by listening only to what they said (despite my prior knowledge)

-          Tying a shoe

-          Wrapping a present

-          Brushing your teeth

-          Putting your hair in a pony tail

-          Folding a towel

-          Flinging a rubber band

·         For homework students are to come back ready to go with a “how to” description

·         Their idiom for next week is “once in a blue moon”

Comments:

This class did a solid job with this activity once again. I felt that (name) had a difficult time, but she did her best. She often struggled with the vocabulary needed to explain how to tie a shoe, but she took notes when I would tell her and write it on the board. (name) did wonderful. Even his prepositions were all correct and I remember telling him that he really had zero grammatical problems. He was clear and I was very impressed. (name) was in between. He had a lot of vocabulary needed but still struggled with how to form his thoughts. I will be interested to see how he does when he has a chance to go home and really think about it.

I feel very prepared for my other two classes for next week, but not this one! I am not entirely sure where this class needs the most work. I spent a while on pronunciation this week with my Friday class, and I think (name) and definitely (name) would benefit from some of that, but (name) would be bored. As of right now, I feel like I may go to another role play in a certain context (perhaps talking with an advisor from ISU) because I think role plays work for this group. However, I am very open to other ideas.

November 10 Post (Week 12 but Week 11 readings)

All of the contexts in Kuma’s Chapter 9 got a bit confusing and overwhelming. However, I thought that the examples in the text were great. I think it is important that we realize that there is an immediate linguistic environment (extralinguistic) that our students will have to deal with. This particular section stuck out to me because it reminded me of a student in a class that I am observing at Bloomington Junior High School. His intonation is terrible and he puts stress in all the wrong places. Yet, this is only one of his many problems, and it seems like the teacher finds this to be the lesser of the many. Regardless, I think this immediate contextual situation should be addressed because it is true—it’s hard for me to understand him when he speaks. He does better in his everyday English, but when he is reading is the real problem. He at times in completely incomprehensible and comprehension is obviously a huge part of teaching a student English. As far as situational contexts are concerned, I have not seen this to be much of a problem in my experience. However, I am hardly experienced! I can see how this would matter because of the example given, and this could be frustrating. All of the factors discussed in the chapter need to come together because it seems that all of these different contexts can happen extremely close to one another. Therefore, it is vital that a teacher is ready to address all of these issues.

I found Kuma’s Chapter 10 extremely interesting. I have never given much of a thought to why language is split up into reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and it never occurred to me that there was once a very strict order. Since I have been studying TESOL, I have only been exposed to the idea that language skills need to be integrated. The first half of the chapter discussed some ideas about reading and writing before speaking and so forth, and to me this sounds crazy! Being a language learner myself, I know that these skills are intertwined and practicing one skill can trigger another. I liked the micro-strategies mentioned, and will be sure to keep these in mind. I particularly liked micro-strategy 10.1 simply because they all use humor. It seems as though they would be effective in bringing in real world examples which helps them to be fun and engaging.

Waiting for Superman Post

Yes, there were some problems with the film, but I loved it! I think that any movie that gets people thinking about education and caring and arguing and informing is a good one. The mere fact that this movie has gotten so much praise (and criticism) in my eyes is a very big accomplishment. There were things in this movie that I had no idea were going on in our own country. For example, the system of the lottery came to me as a complete shock. Worse, I really was unsure as to the many positives and negatives of charter schools versus public schools versus private schools. I am embarrassed to admit this being that I will be in the education field in less than one year. I found many of the statistics in the film eye-opening and it inspired me. This film gave me the sense that education can be changed and that we can end these “drop-out factories” and “lemon” teachers. I was hopeful when leaving the theater, not angry. This could be my inexperience talking, but I still think a film that leaves someone inspired to do good in the world (especially in the field of education) is one worth seeing.

Now, in regards to the Ira Shor argument, I have to say I agree on many points. I liked her article because she started by creating an ethos for herself, and I felt like I could trust her points. She is experienced, and once again she brought out points that I had not initially thought about when watching the film. I like that she agreed that the stories of the families in the movie have nothing to do with her views of the film, and I like that she said “organizing such disappointment for kids is a form of child abuse” when discussing the lottery. This, I completely agree with and this was something I felt while watching the film. Shor explains that the movie “represents mostly one model of ‘good teaching’—the talking teacher at the front of the room.” This reminded me of Freire (whom she brings up), and I completely agreed with her. The film did not focus on good teaching whatsoever, and the central focus was more about what is wrong than what is right. I did not see any different kinds of teaching going on in these charter schools, I only saw the statistics. I feel the problem could be bad teachers, yet the movie did not focus on that as much as they did the type of school. I also liked in Shor’s article the fact that she pointed out that the film did not mention the budget cuts that public schools have to deal with. This is a huge issue, and it is interesting that it was not mentioned.

November 3 post (poetry SLAM)

Last weeks poetry SLAM was absolutely worth seeing and it got me thinking about diversity and just how important writing poetry can be for so many students. Poetry can be an outlet, and I know from my personal experiences, a lot of people shy away from poetry. Yet, I know that once you get over the idea that poetry is scary, it can be quite fun, and not when there are rules and structures, but when you can write free-verse, like the people did at the event. This made me realize that poetry is something that I should bring into my future classroom because I am sure that international students would have so many thoughts and emotions going through their heads. I want to hear about these, and what better way than through poetry. I also think it may help for my students to see a poetry SLAM, in person, so they can understand how powerful it can really be.

In terms of the actual poems we saw in class, I would have to say the very first poem read was my favorite. I found it so beautiful and passionate, and I loved it. Now, this poem probably had the least to do with being different or feeling out of place, something I imagine my students may feel in the future, but then again I have never really experienced those feelings. While I loved hearing about them, I can only assume that my favorite piece was the first one because I found it the most relatable. But again, this is great. If I brought my students to a poetry SLAM and they found themselves relating to some of the poems, that woudl be exactly what I would want. Even if my future students do not understand everything that is said, emotion in reading poetry can still evoke emotion.

As for the last piece, I have little to say. I couldn't read the screens, I did not know what was going on, and I was not interested. I tried as much as I could, and it could very well be that I have not had experiences that would allow me to understand, but regardless that just was not a "poem" for me.

October 27 post

I thought the section about Hispanics in the Johns article was quite interesting, because of course there are tons of different cultures that are all lumped in that category. I think it is good that someone has made the distinction. I particularly liked the section about the difficulties that many “Hispanics” may face, particularly “Generation 1.5” because I think this is important to realize as language teachers. If your students are young enough and have a pretty good grasp on the language, chances are they are the ones with the driver’s license and they are the ones going around with their families translating. This can be tiring and could cause students to start to resent the language and learning the language. Knowing this can help teachers to be more patient and create lessons that sound less like translation and more like a student’s own creation.  The same can be said for the distinctions the article made about those who check “Asian” on the census. I have seen from my experience working at the ELI that there are huge linguistic differences and different forms of social interaction amongst students from the different Asian countries. Because of all of these differences, I loved the idea of drawing in these differences so that students can enhance their learning. I think that creating a list of questions, like the one in the article, is a good way to think about the different ways to create lessons based on the individual students. While this may be difficult in a mainstream classroom, I feel like ESL classrooms often have fewer students (at least that is the case at Bloomington Junior High where I am observing). Therefore, this would be completely possible.

The article “Teaching to Transgress” was very negative, and sad in my opinion, but it was interesting the way the author talked about cultural diversity, and how the excitement about cultural diversity has changed over the years and how “to create a culturally diverse academy we must commit ourselves fully” (7). This is interesting because it implies that it is very difficult to change your ways for the comfort of someone else. To me, this seems like it would be easy, but I suppose in many situations it would be problematic. However, what I really enjoyed about this article was the author’s perspective on Freire and his ideas. Hooks says “Freire’s work affirmed my right as a subject in resistance to define my reality” (13). This quote was powerful to me because I found it to be applicable to anyone, including myself, despite the fact that he was talking about himself. I have read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and also found it fascinating, making it easy to enjoy this article. His ideas truly sparked some of mine. How can I teach those of a different culture when I know nothing of it? As discussed in the article above, I do think it’s a great idea to bring in linguistic and social aspects of the students culture in order to enhance learning. It sounds like a great idea on paper, but how?

Finally, I watched the youtube video “Shaping the Way We Teach English: Module 02, Building Language Awareness.” It states that we must pay attention to form, but practicing these through rules and memorization is not the best way to teach grammar rules and structures. Rather, we need to teach form in a given context, or language awareness—the focus on the pragmatic uses of language. The video first talked about using meta-language, having learners do the work, using a balance of inductive and deductive techniques, use of situational and culture language use, and use authentic material sources. I would have to say that all of these ideas will work in my classroom someday. When I look at my experiences at the ELI, I realize that for these students learning English in a context and in a certain situation is so important. While these ideas seemed like good ones, once I got more into the video and saw some of these put into practice, I became more hesitant. I thought creating a connection between students and the pilgrims was a good idea, but I wondered if this would be appropriate for high school students, or adults. I do not plan to teach such young children, so I do not expect my students to enjoy sitting down after pretending like they are rowing down the river in a boat, and then answering questions on a card. However, I did think this was a great exercise for younger children. While this example may not work in my future classroom, I think I could adapt it to make it work. I could still give my students roles to play, and I could be less of a part of the conversation like the teachers are in this clip. I think older students would prefer to walk around and talk to each other, maybe try and solve some sort of mystery, as opposed to sitting and waiting for me to ask a question. I did like the activity where students had to create their own brochure. The video mentioned that it helps students with their organization and vocabulary, and I think that would transfer over just as well with older students.