Language is a very important topic for me. As someone who would eventually like to teach ELL classes and spend a great deal of time with students who either come to the United States and do not speak the language at all, or are learning, I think it is the teachers’ duty to teach these children. But most of all, be respectful about this journey as well. From my time translating for the school system, I have been given the opportunity to learn from the parent teacher conferences that go on twice a year. Many of these ELL students have parents who desperately want their children to succeed, and will do anything they can to make a better life a reality for their kids. Do we as teachers to the same thing for these students who are learning English? Do we push them, or do we tend to write them off as SWD simply because it is difficult to teach a fourth grader how to understand multiplication in a language that they are uncomfortable with. It is frustrating. For so many of these students, the drive to learn is there. In a majority of these conferences, the parents inform the teachers how much their child loves to read at home, and loves to talk about what they are learning at school. So in the classroom, how to we continue to push these children in their studies? I want them to understand just as much as they do in class, and outside of class. These children are also useful tools for their parents as well because in many situations, I have seen them serve as a type of stand-in translator. So as we educate these students, we are also helping an entire family find change in the United States. It becomes much more difficult for other languages (I’m only sure of how things function for some Spanish-speaking families). But these kinds of things take time, and simple steps. So what other steps can we take to get the ball rolling?
Learning a new language really is a journey, I have been learning Spanish for over six years, and I am still not fluent in the language. The process of learning a lanugage is often frustrating and hard, especially for older students. I have tutored some very bright students who were really intelligent who were placed in low level classes because they were learning English.
ReplyDeleteI work with several Latino children at an after school program, and I can definitely relate to your frustrations. They really WANT to learn, and they are very bright children, but the language barrier holds them back so much! This is so clear to me when I can see them do so well with things like math and creativity, but then watch them struggle with every word when trying to read a simple book. And part of it has to do with the fact that their classroom teacher does not know how or just does not care to give them the support they need as fas as improving their English. And to make matters worse, most of these kids' parents speak even less English than the children, so parent-teacher contact is very very hard and everyone is just all confused. It's a hard situation for sure.
ReplyDeleteI think the saddest fact is that some children do want to learn, but language barriers make it either difficult or nearly impossible. As teachers, we have to teach every student and ensure they receive an education. However, it is the students who actually want to learn that would motivate me to do my best every day the most. For a student to have the motivation, but is unable to understand the language the material is presented in, is a highly frustrating and unfortunate situation.
ReplyDeleteI personally could not imagine going into an academic situation where I did not know the language. It must certainly be very frustrating for these kids. As future teachers, it's also very likely that we end up with an ESL student in our classrooms and I think it is important to be patient with them. To the best of our abilities, we need to provide the extra help they need to adjust them to an English teaching environment.
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