Chapter Nine
Second Language Acquisition can be difficult for learners at any age, especially when they are forced into an English Only setting. I liked how Dolores incorporated many of her students' home languages into the classroom in order to create a sense of inclusiveness that balanced both English an LOTE. I definitely agree with her idea to incorporate many different types of parent/college student aids, but I also question the feasibility of providing such support for my future students. The text said that Dolores usually had at least one aid to act as a resource for her students every day. I think that it is amazing she had so much help and involvement from parents and community members. Realistically though, I think it would be really difficult for me to find aids that would be able to support each of my ESL students at a high school level.
However, I still thought that Dolores' experiences could be relevant and helpful in my future classroom. For instance, I liked how she published a classroom newspaper that encouraged her students to engage in the material and experience an editing process. Along writing the jokes and articles for the newspaper, the students also had to review edit each other's submissions to choose the most acceptable or 'news-worthy' entries. This is a great idea for ESL learners because it allows them to get comfortable with the idea of having their English corrected in a low-anxiety setting. It also shows ESL students that native English speakers need help and editing too. The newspaper also creates a project that encourages more advanced writing and reading skills and acts as a visual representation of the students' progress.
I wish that the chapter would have covered more ways to relate to our ESL students whose native languages we are unfamiliar with. Dolores offered useful tips like the classroom aids and focusing on both first and second language development (not just support!), but it just seems impossible in certain school and community settings. How are we supposed to reach these students without access to so many aids or in a district that does not support a bilingual classroom? How do we encourage students that their first language is important and worth developing when we are working in communities that are typically English Only?
Chapter 10
This past weekend, I went to the Illinois Association of Teachers of English conference in Springfield. In one of the sessions, we talked about including games in the classroom and motivating students through some sort of reward. I was reminded of this reward concept when Toby offered art work exposure to his students which extrinsically motivated them to collaborate and produce high caliber projects.
Initially, I was a little shocked by the level of racism that Toby felt he was experiencing in his multilingual classrooms. Especially for the 5th grade, his students seemed to be expressing some pretty intense feelings of hatred or discontent with speakers of other languages. It was brilliant that Toby created a project that required students of various language and cultural backgrounds to collaborate in order to get the extrinsic rewards that were offered.
The real take-away message from this chapter is that in order to avoid conflict (or manage conflict when it occurs) teachers need to establish and encourage multi-cultural exploration and understanding. Toby attempted to gain multi-cultural understanding to stop the conflicts in his classroom by exposing students to the cultures they were mocking and requiring interaction with students of other cultures and language backgrounds.
These types of conflicts are prevalent in various educational settings, whether it is your classroom, the hallways, or an after-school program, and typically require immediate and comprehensive attention. Cary listed several different scenarios based on grade levels that could potentially cause conflict in the classroom. As a future teacher, I thought that this was really helpful because it allowed me to consider how I would handle situations that I haven't experienced yet. Personally, I think that encouraging a multi-cultural classroom that is open and inclusive is most effective in deterring peer conflict.
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