Assessment Myths

I find assessment to be extremely interesting, especially since it is such an important component of the ESL classroom. Educators constantly need to be assessing and reassessing their students to make sure that they are understanding the material, however it seems that there is much controversy about standardized testing, and initial testing of the ESL learners. 

I feel bad for ESL learners who are forced to take the same standardized tests as their English native-speaking peers, however, they need to learn the skills to succeed in these tests because it is going to be a part of their learning in the future. It is a hard choice for the ESL teacher to make, because they want their students to achieve dominance in the language but at the same time they want to see their students succeed on the state standardized test. I would say that it is wrong to teach to the test so that the students succeed, however I believe that ESL teachers can implement activities that mirror practices used on the standardized tests. The students need to understand the format of the test, such as multiple choice, short essay, short reading comprehension, etc., so that they can get a good score. All of the listed formats can be implemented in the classroom as well. For example, the students can read a short story and answer multiple choice questions after the reading to check for comprehension. This is not teaching to the test, because the reading can go with the content material, it is the idea that they are practicing multiple choice questions since many of them are unlikely to be familiar with it in the beginning. 

I feel bad for the teacher, Margaret, who was given two new students in one week without any background information on them. I can not imagine how hard that would be. I feel that ESL teachers have it the hardest, because they TRULY need to know each and every one of their students so that they can understand their mannerisms and their process in education. What I think is even harder, is that ESL teachers often get students in the middle of the year-- this happened in my practicum hours when a young girl from Guatemala arrived half-way through the first semester. It's almost as if the teacher has to go back and review everything, and change the classroom dynamic and everything, including changing her classroom vocabulary to that which is simpler for the newly arrived student to understand. Learning a language is a bottom-up process in which one skill needs to be dominated to build onto the next skill. It is extremely difficult to come into the school year after the most basic skills have already been dominated and the new students peers are moving up, while they are stuck at ground zero. This is why it is so important to know as much at the student as possible so that they are provided with the most effective education that caters to their needs. Assessment is important for this reason so that the students can be evaluated, and placed at a level that is comfortable to them.

I never learned about BSM or LAS before, so if I was to be a new teacher who recieved a new student with a low score of LAS, I would just assume that they had extremely LEP. The reality of this myth states that it is important to constantly assess the student after the initial assessments, and I believe that this is a no-brainer, because if I ever recieved a new student- I would constantly be assessing their progress in the class and in the target language.

Assessment is as important in the classroom as teaching is. This means that the teacher is not only assessing her students, but self-assessing her methods as well. Just because we learn many different methods that are thought to be effective, does not mean that they will be effective for the language learner. For this reason, assessment is required to ensure the success of each student and the success of the teacher as well.

11/14

QUE MALA SUERTE! what bad luck! I lost my Myths book, so now I am sad!

But anyways, like I have discussed before I am focusing on strategies for my 345 research paper, however I am having a hard time narrowing it down! I am not sure how to do so, because I feel like all strategies are great for the students, although I feel like I am going to be focusing on strategies that build the students literacy and how this will effect them in their regular classes. This material, is hard to find since there is not much research on how strategies can be implemented by the students in their regular classes, however I am interested to see if there is any research that discusses the benefits of literacy strategies in general. Luckily, there is a big focus on reading skills and writing skills in my ESL clinical classroom, so I am able to get many observations to support my paper.

I need to find a focus for my observation hours, however I have already been focusing on the use of strategies in the classroom, using these notes to hopefully benefit how I teach in the future. One thing that I wish to do with my students is prepare them for mainstream classrooms but I feel that there is so much that I need to do to prepare them, and not enough time. It is unfortunate that students cannot stay in ESL throughout their entire schooling experience, because I feel that the time they spend in the classroom is not sufficient to provide them with the competence they need to survive in the academic communication that school requires, There is so much to teach about culture, about the language, and about how to become autonomous in their learning that I fear I will not be able to completely prepare them! My only hope is to provide them with useful information that they can use outside of the classroom, and I truly advocate that strategies are a great way to do so!

Translating at parent-teacher conferences

So as you know, this past week I went to Chicago to translate at the parent-teacher conferences. I was placed in a 2nd grade classroom, with Mrs. Casper an African-American teacher who has been teaching for over 30 years and is close to retirement. I believe that they specifically placed me with this teacher to translate because she spoke with a thick accent, and many times she used African American venicular. I can she why this was a good choice, because for all of the parents that I translated for, it seemed that they did not understand a single word she was saying. She was a very inspiring teacher and she had much to say about what school is like in CPS. She has been working in Mexican communities throughout much of her experience and she says that she truly enjoys it, although she described to me many of the struggles she faces due to low funding and lack of materials. Even with the limited resources that CPS educators face, her classroom was full of color, with products of the student's learning displayed on all of the walls. I translated for 30 conferences, only 3 parents felt comfortable speaking English the entire time.

I had many questions to ask her what she does to aid the students who have limited English proficiency, and she had much to say. First of all, I would say that 99% of the students spoke Spanish as their first language. Also, about 95% of the parents who came in also had limited English proficiency as well. This means that the learners are spending the majority, if not all, of their time outside of school speaking Spanish. I asked Mrs. Casper how the limited English of almost all of her students effected her implementing lessons in the classroom. What she explained to me was interesting: she said that they do very basic stuff with a focus on developing their literacy in reading and writing. She explained that her goal is to build their vocabulary in using the language, and wants the students to focus on phonetics as well. When I asked her what she does to differentiate instruction for the students who do not even speak English at all, she explained that she just has to use big motions, or that the students will have a peer explain it to them.

There was a very interesting case of one student, whos mother was concerned because her daughter had never taken ESL classes in the past, due to the fact that there was no room and they were full. The mother seeked to get her extra help in building her skills of using English, although there was only one program that she could attend after school, however she could not attend this tutoring session because she has other priorities after school. I felt so bad for this girl, her mother was so concerned that she did not understand anything that was going on. I asked the mother if she had any older relatives that speak English and she said unfortunately no. I then asked if her daughter listens to English music or watches English tv...she explained that pretty much everything is in Spanish. I then suggested that she lets her daughter watch English tv and listen to English music, because the more exposure she gets to the language, the easier it will be for her to start understanding what the teacher is saying.

One of the things that I wanted to focus on was the concern that the parents had for their students learning. Since this was a second grade classroom, of course the parents were concerned with how their students were doing, however if this had been a highschool parent-teacher conference, I feel that there would be a much greater difference in attendance and concern for their childs learning. The majority of the parents were not really concerned with if they were doing well, pretty much every single parent asked if their child was behaving and if they talked to much.

As I said before, I found Mrs. Casper to be very inspiring. She was a very wise and experienced teacher who showed great passion in her teaching. I asked her what made her decide to stick in Chicago. I then explained that many people view teaching in CPS as a challenge, especially due to the lack of resources and the bad rep of the behavior of the students. Her response was very sincere and she said that she herself, as well as all of her children and their children, attended CPS. She told me that she could get a job working in a suburban area, with plentiful resources, and with well-behaved driven school- but that she prefers to work in CPS because it is much more rewarding. She said that her job is not easy, not in any way shape or form, however she wants to give these students the education that they deserve because she wants to make sure they succeed.

Overall, it was a very rewarding experience, and even more so it was interesting to see what the conferences were going to be like in this 2nd grade classroom in Little Village.

Chapter 10

This chapter was interesting, however I find it extremely ignorant of those who think that in America you should 'speak English'. First of all there is not official language in this country. There are 28 million people in this country who speak Spanish as their mother tongue. There are 2 million who speak Chinese, and about 2 million who speak French. And there is over 20 languages that are spoken in this country, so why so much emphasis on English? According to the chapter that people believe that using other language posses a threat to the dominance of English language. No one is trying to dominant English, however the population of SPanish speakers in this country is growing rapidly. Some people are just so ignorant, all we want is for all the students to have an equal education, and this means that some need more help than others. Especially those who have LEP.

Looking at all the the movements that took place, and all the acts that were passed, it seems as if the federal government cannot get it exactly right. Rather they get a litttttle bit closer each and every time.Hopefully, they will realize that the needs of these students are not fully being met, and that there are still changes that need to be made in order to assure their success. Without education, the students can not move onto college. With out college, many of the students end up working at jobs with no outlet, or 'dead-end jobs' as they say. Its a vicious cycle.

Communicating with Parents

Another topic that I wish to discuss is the importance of communicating with parents. This is obviously a necessary factor that plays an important role in the students education. The parents need to be involved and informed about what is taking place in their child's education, and if they are not informed how can they help the student with homework or projects that need to be completed outside of the classroom, etc?

Although with ESL students who have low English proficiency, it is most likely that the parents as well do not have a high level of English proficiency either. This complicates the communication process, since one ESL teacher can not know and be fluent in all of the home language of each of his/her students.

This Wednesday I am traveling to Little Village to be a translator for parent-teacher conferences. To me this is interesting and I am excited to see what it is going to be like, what the teachers are going to discuss with the parents, what the parents have to ask about their students learning, etc. I am really excited to use my Spanish as well obviously. The reason that I bring up this upcoming event, is because it is making me think about what it will be like if I have parent-teacher conferences with my ESL student's parents who have difficulties communicating in English. Very lucky are the students who's home language is Spanish because there is an abundance of ESL teachers who speak Spanish themselves. But what about the students who have parents that only speak Korean, or French, or Arabic, etc? It must be intimidating for the parents to come and talk with the teacher who does not know their language, whereas the Spanish  speaking parents are comforted because there is a translator present, or the ESL teacher speaks is already an native speaker of the language.

Stay tuned to see what I discover on Wednesday when I make my trip....

Strategies: What I notice in the field-

Sorry for the late blogging! I've been really sick as of late, and it has taken a toll on me and drained me from my studies. But anyways:

I've been thinking about my practicum hours a lot lately, and I've really been focusing on all of the strategies that are being implemented in the classroom. I truly believe that all of these strategies are excellent and that the students will be able to apply them in the ESL class, but more importantly they will be able to really apply them when they get into their 'regular' classes. The only thing that I noticed is that the students have to do so on their own and they are not guided on how to use them in their other classes. Because obviously in the 'regular' classes, the teachers do not place the emphasis on using any given strategy to achieve the learning material, but rather they present the material and expect the children to find their own independent ways/strategies to contextualize it, learn it and apply it. I observe in the classroom of a "co-taught" science class, in which my co-op is present in the classroom and catering to the 6 ESL student's needs. To describe what I mean by 'catering to the ESL students needs', I mean that she is walking around the room making sure that they understand the task at hand, or making sure that they are caught up on their project that is due. However, I do not see the teacher making extra handouts with much needed vocabulary for them, or differentiating the worksheets/homework to make them more understandable to the students' low English proficiency. More importantly, and focusing on strategies, I do not see the ESL teacher providing examples of how to take the strategies which they learn in their ESL classroom  and apply them to the science class. Therefore I question the effectiveness of the students learning such strategies, since they only learn how to apply them in their ESL classroom readings and activities. This means that the students need to take an independent role of deciding how to apply the strategies they learn to the material in their 'regular' classrooms.

   Also, as we have discussed in class, just because a student is presented how to use a certain strategy, does not mean that the strategy works best for them. Rather, I believe the goal of implemented strategies is to expose the students to different ways of learning and understanding material. This means that the student has to make an independent decision on which strategies that they wish to use in their regular classrooms. For this reason, I believe that content-to-strategy is really effective because it provides the students with different content, new vocabulary, and an opportunity to choose which strategy they wish to apply to achieve the learning goal. Wherease strategy-to-content, they are forced to use the strategy that they are learned and apply it to the content. I believe that in the beginning, it is okay to teach using the strategy-to-content approach because you can make sure that the student understands completely how to apply the strategy correctly. However, I believe that once the students have established a solid base of knowledge about numerous strategies that the teaching approach should change to content-to-strategy so that the students can take a more independent role in deciding which strategy works best for the task at hand. I really liked the article that talked about the ESL class where they did science experiments and constructed paper planes, but they were constantly asked which strategy they thought was needed to be used while learning the material. I think that this is important because the students need to learn how to be independent in making choices about which strategy they should use, since they are not told which strategies to use in their 'regular' classroom. This is what I see in my clinical observations. The teacher teaches the strategy in the ESL classroom, but outside the classroom the students need to know how to use the strategies and which works best in x situation, etc on their own.

Chapter Eight

DISCLAIMER: there is a lot of things that I want to say, and it is all just pouring out in my blog because this Chapter made me ANGRY!

As I started to read this chapter during the half time of the Chicago Bears game, I found myself being more and more drawn into the reading than paying attention to the game! There is so much that I want to talk about this chapter, it really drove me kind of crazy. I found myself writing WRONG! next to many of the things that teachers said or thought about culture, continuing education in terms of learning new approaches, their ideas on differentiating or changing their approaches, and AHH just a million more things that they said that were completely WRONG!

First of all, I would just like to say that the majority of teachers at this school as well as the principal are BLIND and IN-DENIAL. I really like how Stern explains it is like sweeping it under the rug. First of all, the principal does not even know the accurate statistics that represents the population of LEP students in his own school, that he supposedly is in charge of. All of the teachers at this school believe that the school is fully integrated, and what is causing separation  and division in the students is the students academic abilities and school activities. Do these teachers even know their students? I mean, when I become a teacher I plan to know whats going on in their lives, and if they can not bluntly see that the school is not functioning as "one big melting-pot" how teachers romanticize it to be, then they really must be blind. The teacher says, "No on even really notices color" (186). Uhhhh, hello! ya they do. The teachers say they dont, but I agree that it is just because they choose not to address it. Where as the students ABSOLUTELY DO NOTICE COLOR, it affects everything they do and feel and think at school, and if you can not realize that, then you should not be the principal. If you do not make it necessary that the teachers take training classes on how to differentiate instruction to make it understandable to the 1/4 LEP students  in your school, then you should not be a principal.

It really bothers me that some of the teachers at this school do not believe that they need to receive training in order to serve better the new diversity at the high school for some of the following reasons:
-they have been teaching for a while and are offended that someone might tell them their techniques are not benefitting their students
-or they "feel it insults their years of experience" (182)
-they believe their "formulas and approaches they have used all along should be sufficient and appropriate fore all students now" (180)
-They believe that if some "students are not doing well now, something must be wrong with the students' attitudes, values or culture" (180)
-they believe that in should be voluntary to take such classes
-they believe that "they have to change what they are doing for those students" (182)

ALL of these reasons are completely wrong, and the teachers who said them are stuck up and have no passion for the education of their students. I don't know, but I feel like all of the people who are in classes with me that are going to be teachers share the same passion as I do to make a difference in each of my students education. If I notice that a students is not understanding something, then I would absolutely try my best to make the material understandable to them. I wouldn't just ignore them or stick them in the back of the class, just so they can "get by".  If they had LEP then I would make sure that the material was understandable to them by making vocabulary handouts for them as an aid, or creating other aid, etc. Many of these teachers view adopting LEP approaches in their classroom as "extra work", but they need to get over it! Being a teacher is a non-stop job. Even in the summer you are working, even in the evenings when you should be relaxing you are working, even during the 20 minutes during the day when you have a lunch break you are working. This is what being a teacher is.

The teachers who believe that their methods and approaches that they have used during the "years of their experience" are failing to do one very important thing: EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THEIR TEACHING. Obviously something they are doing is not working for the student. Teachers should constantly be evaluating and reevaluating how they are teaching and how the students are taking the input they give them. If a student is not understanding something, then there may be something wrong with how the teacher presents the material, etc. Many of the teachers at Madison High seem to blame the reason for students failing as lack of motivation. Well part of being a teacher is making sure that you are captivating your students. There are many ways to change the material to make it appeal to the students identity and issues that are important to their lives. One of the parents of a students complained about the lack of an inclusive curriculum. Well, I do not blame the students for not being interested in the material of some old British guy who babbles on and on and uses very proper English. Although I am sure that the material in this class served some educational purpose, the students has a very good point that there should be material that the students can relate to.

Maybe the reason that the students are seperated by their academic abilities, is because many teachers look at the students who have LEP and say "If they cant read English well enough, they can't make it. I dont feel the least bit guilty about that. I think it's important we set standards and insist kids read well enough. (183)" Well part of this is that teachers at this school need to learn and be trained in how to help students learn literacy in a second language. It takes anywhere from 5-8 years to only become proficient in that language, and even longer to develop the skills to use that language academically. The principal at this school is resisting the creation of an ESL Department in the school, because he thinks that it will further create "seperation" and "labeling" of LEP students (186), yet he claims that the school is one big melting pot where everyone is equal. He even said, "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure there ought to be any classes taught in any language besides English, because after all this is America and we ought to speak English" (182) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is my biggest pet peeve! I absolutely hate when people say this it is so ignorant. Obviously this teacher does not understand that the use of the students' first language can help them develop the academic skills they need to succeed in the class. And that instead of being pushed to the back of the class and ignored, they can gain knowledge in necessary subject matter, that can help them in other aspects of their life, even if they do not go onto college.

What these teachers should realize is that maybe their students are not doing well in class, or continuing to college not due to their culture, motivation, or whatever other excuse they say, but rather due to what the teachers are doing. Obviously, all the teachers praise the students who are getting straight A's and are college bound. But in my eyes, it's the students who are struggling in school who need the most attention. I do not understand why the "older/experienced" teachers do not want to "deal" with those students, those are the students that I have the most compassion for and feel that I can make a difference in. I think the "old" teachers have lost their passion for teaching, such as the one that I have. I really hope that my passion "fire" never goes out as theirs did, because that would be horrible and my students would suffer horribly.  I just cant wait to get out there and start making a difference, because these are the students that I feel I can motivate and have an impact in their education!