Reading all of the pieces regarding English Language Learners I began to reflect on an experience I had with such students this summer that seems to contradict all of the positive strategies that the readings espoused.  This past summer I worked on the residential staff at a summer boarding school with a student body of roughly 200.  A large number of these students were ELL.  I had three ELL students under my direct supervision, one from China and two from South Korea.  Additionally there were massive Arabic and Spanish speaking populations among the students at this school.  Looking back on that experience what really strikes me is how oppressive the school was of these students using their first language among themselves in conversation.  As a member of the residential staff I was told to both monitor and stop any and all conversations taking place in any language other than English.  The idea was that these students were here to learn English and speaking their native language was nothing but detrimental.  It seems that the school felt a greater responsibility to the parents’ paid tuitions than to the students themselves.

Unlike what was suggested in the readings, these students were not able to use their primary language as a scaffold for learning English.  They were discouraged from speaking in a language that made them comfortable when many of them were thousands of miles from home in a strange place.  How alienated they must have felt and the school’s policy of oppressing primary language use did nothing but enforce this alienation.  Following these readings I am frankly disgusted and very concerned by the oppressive policies I was tasked with enforcing.  Why not allow a student to use any tool at their disposal when trying to learn an unfamiliar language?  This response may have become more of a rant but I believe it gets to the point that there is absolutely no reason to discourage primary language use by ELL students, as literacy arises from any language not only from English.

I love the idea of using graphic novels in the classroom.  It seems to me that students, due to increasing technologies and the widespread availability of multimedia, have become incredibly visual learners.  Even looking at myself and my parents it’s easy to see that even I am a much more visual learner than they were.  I agree with Lesesne when she explains that graphic novels provide readers with “complex characters and multilayered plots” (Beers, 63), in addition to important literary elements such as mood and tone.  What’s really important about graphic novels is that they are able to use sometimes complicated elements such as mood in a way that a younger reader can easily understand (i.e. when the shades in the frame are darker perhaps the mood of the scene has changed).  Complex and complicated concepts can be unpacked through graphic novels and visual media in ways that allow students to easily grasp these notions of style.  On top of that, for generations of students raised on video games and television, a graphic novel is simply more engaging.  I think back to reading Maus in 7th grade Hebrew school and being captivated by Art Spiegelman’s portrayal of the Holocaust.

To this day I have read few other novels focusing on the Holocaust that are more memorable or more poignant than Maus.  I don’t suggest that teachers should completely adopt graphic novels or other visual media as their main source of literature for students, but instead that graphic novels provide a spectacular tool for teaching complex literary concepts as well as engaging students who would be bored and uninvolved if reading a traditional text.

Joe