Category Archives: Participants

An Oppressive Environment for ELL Students

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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.

Project Update: Isabella and Amanda

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Isabella and I were both surprised when we found out that we were paired together because we had met previously: I participated in the Vassar After School Tutoring (VAST) program during freshman and sophomore years and she was one of the students in my knitting clinic. It was exciting to have an established bond with the student that I am working with in this class and I look forward to learning even more about her.

Because Isabella and I already knew the basics about each other, we jumped right into project brainstorming. Isabella had some really creative ideas that involved her interests, such as making a presentation that combines her athletic pursuits, swimming, crew, and outdoor activities, with poetry. Isabella is also interested in American History, such as the Salem Witch Trials, and loves to babysit, so these are also potential project choices – maybe we will make a digital story that combines historical fiction with babysitting, which sounds like a stretch but could be challenging and really entertaining. Clearly, we need to narrow our focus and attempt to come up with some more concrete ideas.

I hope that in our next meeting, Isabella and I will work together to determine the nature of a project that will be engaging for the entire semester. I hope that, in our future meetings, I will get to see some of her writing because I think that her voice as a reader and writer will play a significant role in the trajectory of the our work together – maybe she can even create a little piece of writing to post on the blog!

Two Birds, One Stone

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I found Harvey Daniels’s chapter on letter exchanges between teachers and students to be extremely and surprisingly thought-provoking. It’s really such a simple idea, yet as Daniels cautions, it requires a lot of time and dedication. Nevertheless, Daniels provides a number of examples and explanations that demonstrate just how powerful a strategy letter writing and correspondence could really be.
From what I gathered from Daniels’s argument, the benefits of letter exchange for both teachers and students is twofold.
This form of communication between student and teacher is important for several academic-related reasons. First, it has the potential to teach what strong writing should look like. While it’s important that teachers use less formal, and therefore less distant, language to effectively communicate to their students through their notes, their writing style will ultimately convey to the students what forms of writing are appropriate within an academic setting/correspondence. Second, letter exchanges provide a means by which students could discuss what they understand, don’t understand, like or dislike about the content they are learning. While this shouldn’t replace extra face-to-face help from the teacher, this strategy would certainly illuminate the problems that individual students–or perhaps a group of them–may have in the classroom, thus making it possible for teachers to take further measures to ensure that their students are fully grasping what they need to know.
I guess that in high school, some of my teachers presented me with opportunities for written communication with them via weekly journals. But the emphasis was based primarily on the week’s content and not so much on open-ended musings. Furthermore, the teachers would clearly read through my entries–as I could tell from their markings–but would not provide constructive or particularly valuable comments. I didn’t find this particularly noteworthy then, but I can now see how my teachers may have missed an opportunity to develop a more academically and personally fulfilling relationship with my peers and myself.
That being said, what I found to be Daniels’s most compelling argument for the note-exchanging process is the more personal implication of letter correspondence: the connection that is allowed to develop between a teacher and his/her students. This form of communication allows for personal attention that can enhance a student’s–particularly a shy student’s–level of comfort and confidence. This would be especially important for ELL students who find it difficult to find a voice in the classroom!
Of course, this whole process requires a ton of time and dedication on the part of the teacher. And reading and writing letters will be especially hard when you’re teaching up to five classes a day. Unless an efficient system could be worked out, letter-writing could become extremely taxing. But it is of the utmost importance for teachers to know who they are teaching, what strengths and weaknesses could be focused upon, and what personal issues may require further attention. Daniels concludes with a powerful thought: “Could any teaching act ever be more important” than connecting with a kid who’s in trouble?

Epistolary Bonds with Students

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Harvey Daniels’s article on exchanging weekly letters with his students really resonated with me.  Although the concept of reading and writing letters to 50 – 100 students is daunting, I was able to imagine myself undertaking this task even before I had finished reading the article. As I work towards my teaching certification, I frequently encounter new concerns about engaging my future students, but it is not often that I read about a strategy that I immediately want to try. Because my educational background and funds of knowledge derive from a white upper-middle class upbringing and private schools, one of my primary concerns as a future teacher is that I will not be able to connect with students from a variety of different backgrounds. The idea of forging bounds through writing letters seems like a viable solution to this concern because I can connect with my students by demonstrating genuine and sustained interest in their lives rather than through superficial similarities that may not exist.

As put forth by Daniels, other positive outcomes of this student-teacher correspondence are it “allows the teacher to model good writing, to create a just-right text for each child to read, [and] to see and assess each student’s writing skills” (Daniels 128). I imagine myself as a teacher being a stickler for grammar, so I see these letters as an opportunity to demonstrate proper grammar and punctuation while not having to edit the students writing. I also appreciated Daniels’s advice to “write informally” and allow students to see crossed out and misspelled words. I think that allowing the student to see the teacher’s thought process makes the teacher seem more human and less like a knowledge dispenser.

The final aspect of Daniels’s article that I appreciated was the strategies for giving students both positive and critical feedback within the letters. He makes the point that when students receive feedback in this private manner, “it is less likely the kid will react defensively or feel a need to act defiant in front of peers” (Daniels 140).  This also allows the student to reflect on his or her behavior and devise a strategy for improvement. In this way, the teacher gives a student agency over his or her classroom conduct; an individual’s behavior can consequently improve as a result of his or her own choices, not the reprimands of the teacher. I realize that implementing this program on a large scale may overwhelm teachers, but I definitely want to try it when I teach because I think that the rewarding relationships that emerge from these letters far exceeds the effort.

Shemona’s Biography

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Hi, my name is Shemona-Gay Nicola Ann Lawrence. I love listening to music, playing with my friends, and just basically having a good time. In my free-time I enjoying relaxing and reading a good book( especially) vampire books. My friends and my teacher are mostly my motivation they let me know that  I can do anything I set my mind too as long as  I try my hardest and not let people get to me. My life as a student in Poughkeepsie Middle School is not exactly easy. I try my best to put my mind to my work and so far its kind of going uphill and most of the time it is going downhill. I want to be a straight A student and that is still my goal.My favorite subject by far is E.L.A. In E.L.A. I learn mostly about the history of people back in the day that went through harder things in life than our parents went through when they were kids. This is the first time i have actually thought of being in another circle of group  except  from my friends and i really think it is going to be a great experience.

Isabella’s Biography

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My name is Isabella. I was born in Poughkeepsie, New York almost 15 years ago. I have two brothers, but a couple of years ago my three cousins lived with my family too – we always had people to play with. I am a freshman at Poughkeepsie High School and my main focuses are academics and sports. My favorites subjects in school are English and History and I hope to take a journalism and psychology class before I graduate from high school. Another of my favorite classes is art because I love sketching. Crew and swimming are the most important things I do everyday. I am competitive and driven in athletics and I don’t like to lose. When I’m not in school, I like to read and write and I hope to be a journalist, or  if that doesn’t work out, to be able to join the Marines.

Sam

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Hi my name is samantha, i am an 8th grader a poughkeepsie middle school. i guess i could consider music one of my hobbies because its such a big part of my life. i’ve been playing the violin for about a year and a half now and i would never even consider quitting. I also like indie rock music. im not a big fan of hip hop. i am very athletic. i do sports like cheerleading and crew. im kind of an excersice fanatic. even though i like living in the present my future goals would probably be to become a better violinist than my teacher and also one day maybe go into the olympics with my freinds by my side. 😀

Here is my favorite song:

Looking for a More Creative Vocabulary…

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I was honestly underwhelmed by the chapter we read on building vocabulary. Allen made a lot of great points, especially those about helping kids learn new words by drawing on their prior knowledge with her example of the word-of-the-day activity and strategies for committing words to permanent memory with the word walls. What struck me was how worksheet and text-based the learning remained, particularly since this chapter came after one about very creative forms of YA Lit. Written words need only be decoded in books and on assignments for a relatively small amount of a student’s day. The rest of the time they’re talking and listening (in school and out).

I think one of the best ways to make new vocabulary words more meaningful to kids is to have them speak them. That way the words can literally jump off the page and acquire meaning and value outside of academic settings. Most importantly, they are more readily experimented with when spoken. I remember a teacher I had in elementary school who literally transformed a dull vocab workbook into an amazingly fun and interactive word-meaning experiment. After the usual copying definitions, we did a section of the workbook that involved matching each vocab word to a list of potential synonyms and other words that had to do with its meaning or connotation. But the best part was that the teacher didn’t ask us to do this part on paper, she asked us to argue (amongst ourselves and with her) for why each of the possible words was or wasn’t related to the meaning of the vocab word. It was great because it gave us a chance to use the new words in several spoken sentences (not just one on a worksheet) and really clarify their exact meanings for our whole class. I also remember that when I was a kid I learned the most new words from listening to adults say them and trying my best to mimic their usage of them. It just seemed like my teacher’s approach mirrored real life–using the words by trial and error until their meanings in multiple contexts became clear. My tutoring at VAST has greatly reinforced this belief because I so often hit stumbling blocks with kids who don’t want to change vocab sentences that don’t make sense once they’ve written them down. To them the assignment is done, immutable.

I am positive there is still a need for written vocab building work, but I’m also positive there is a much bigger place for spoken vocabulary improvements and innovations besides just listening to audiobooks.

Learning: A Verb

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To me, rushing an assignment seems to come very naturally.  Every night, I (along with everyone else) have hundreds of pages of reading, and I’m expected to internalize the themes and ideas being explored by these texts.  Fortunately, I like reading, so I am capable of doing so—but I’m almost always held back by an anxiety (physical and abstract) about having to rush myself through the process.  I feel this anxiety every time I crack open even the most seemingly dull or antiquated text; it’s not that I don’t want to read Chaucer, it’s just that I want to be able to take my time and process his words.  At the end of the day, I’m unwilling—or unable—to compromise, so I end up staying up late to get my work done, reaffirming for myself that I am a person, not a scanner.

Janet Allen’s chapter on effective vocabulary instruction was refreshing, due to the fact that it undertook the task of re-approaching an  area of school that even she herself considered challenging.  One of the most irritating things about a policy like NCLB is that it fails to appreciate that learning is a process, not a product: that in order to be able to read, a person has to understand the words.  In the section that asks, “How can we use vocabulary instruction to increase content knowledge?” Allen outlines a process for approaching complicated texts through the vocabulary words themselves, understanding that knowledge cannot be imposed onto students, that it has to be built.  Particularly for students today, who apparently have difficulty with print literacy, the words themselves are the place to begin.  She notes that, after reading an introductory text that uses some of the difficult language and then assigning a fill-in-the-blank activity, students can “bring enough background knowledge to do a Possible Sentences activity” (99).  Knowledge isn’t imposed onto the students; it is built, stacked, layered, and also connected to new and different ideas.  The Possible Sentences activity takes a small, but well-built, foundation of understanding, and then allows the students to exercise some agency in continuing to create connections between the words and concepts at hand.  Only then do they undergo the process of reading the actual textbook.

This chapter in particular directed my attention towards something that I try to keep in mind any time I am helping someone who wants to learn: the only way to do it is to be patient.  Each page in each textbook is made of individual words, each of which are paths to knowledge in and of themselves.  There’s no good reason to ignore the fact that someone may not understand one, or any, of them.

Textual Lineages

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The part of this week’s readings that resonated with me the most was the “Interlude” between chapters 6 and 7 by Alfred Tatum, “Building the Textual Lineages of African American Male Adolescents.” I love the idea of building your own “textual lineage” of books that you have strongly identified with that give you a direction for your future. It reminded me about how literacy is both profoundly personal and also very empowering. When I was in middle school, I loved reading novels and I built up a handful of favorite books that I read over and over again. The books in my arsenal were usually about strong female characters that I identified with and that I wanted to become. I was very lucky because, as a middle class white girl (who is able-bodied and heterosexual), it was very easy to find books with characters that reminded me of myself.

I never thought about how much harder it must be for more marginalized people to find books that address problems in their own lives. For example, African American male students face so many unfair stereotypes (as impoverished criminals who don’t have academic potential) that they are usually not targeted as “readers,” so there are much fewer novels available that might appeal to them. That makes it even more necessary that teachers provide them with texts that teach them the history of racial inequality and inspire them to understand it and rise above it, like the texts in the example that Tatum provides.  This also would apply to students with different sexual orientations or gender identities. Overall, the Tatum “Interlude” reminded me about how passionate I was about reading as a middle schooler and prompted me to think about which books I identified with and why. Teachers need to find these “hooks” that get students interested in reading to make literacy an empowering skill for all students.

-Rachel