Blog Entry #4: Self-Reflection

After a semester of this course and a nearly a full school year of working with ELL students, my understanding of learning a second or additional language has grown from what it was last semester with Second Language Acquisition and my own learning experiences as a former ELL student. Learning a second or additional language is more than memorization or vocabulary; in fact, there is a multitude of factors that affect an individual’s learning experience that we teachers must take into account, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, lexicon, spelling, and variations in the English language (Wright, 2010). One of the topics that I have found an interest in are the influences that affect how teachers make instructional decisions and teach. From my other methods classes and this class, I have learned that much of how educators decide to instruct are shaped by personal influences and beliefs, their school’s and/or district’s beliefs, and of course, policy such as standardized testing. In spite of some have said about education, I believe that there is politics in teaching. Curriculum is political. Standards are political. Testing is political. Politics is closely related to morality, and I believe that many teachers choose to teach due to whatever morals have led them to education. For example, many teachers want to help children and teach the change they want to see. From what I have seen as a student teacher, policy and standardized such as STAAR holds a strong influence over Texas districts and schools, which holds a strong influence over many teachers and how they make instruction decisions and teach. Consequently, many measure student success by test scores, including ELL students. I often wonder how many more meaningful and effective learning experiences for ELL students could come to fruition if success was defined by personal and academic growth seen on a day to day basis. However, as a teacher, I hope to teach with no regrets and how I would with or without the STAAR test over my head.

For this course and Second Language Acquisition, I found the blogs particularly beneficial to me because I was able to interact and learn from individuals from the education field, including other teacher candidates, teachers who have worked with ELLs, and former and current ELLs. In fact, I believe that they were my favorite part of this course since they gave me the opportunity to go talk to people and ask questions I would have probably never asked on my own. From this course, I was able to learn from different experiences and perspectives. My own perspective on teaching ELLs was broadened and the blogs helped me see the relationship between theory and practice. I found that sometimes SLA theory was reflected in practice and sometimes, was not. However, my findings are just a reminder that everyone’s language learning and language teaching experience is different and dependent on so many variables. I particularly enjoyed being able to interview and observe different ESL teachers and gain insight from experienced teachers. The blogs were also a great opportunity to gather strategies and ideas from my classmates and future teachers. I enjoyed being able to see my peers’ work, commenting, and asking them questions.

Blog Entry #3: Interview with Mrs. Dunn

For this blog, I asked my Reading and Writing partner teacher, Mrs. Dunn, for an interview. After conducting the interview, there were some things that surprised me and did not surprise me. For example, she mentioned that she uses a lot of visuals in the classroom and has a dictionary readily available for her ELLs. She takes her ELL students’ first language into consideration and acknowledges that using pictures as an aid will help them make the connection between the picture and the word since her ELL students tend to have difficulty with abstract concepts, partially content related vocabulary and topics relating to language arts. She typically also uses cognates, or “words that are similar in English and a student’s native language because they come from the same root”, with her Spanish speaking ELL students (Wright, 2010, p. 29). Because I work with the same ELL students she has, I was most familiar with the type of approach she uses with them, however, it was interesting to hear her thoughts on standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act.

Mrs. Dunn is a fairly new teacher of nine years. Therefore, she has always taught under the No Child Left Behind Act and could only compare the learning conditions children undergo today with the education she has a child. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is the “a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act” that “places heavy emphasis on accountability through standards and high-stakes testing” (Wright, 2010, p. 314). When I asked her whether or not she believes that NCLB’s focus on standards and high-stakes testing, she said that for her personally, it is neither beneficial or detrimental since regardless of whether there was such a high emphasis on STAAR, she would still teach the way she teaches now. However, she did mention that because of high-stakes testing, teachers such as herself are more accountable and keep better track of the data on student success and progress. On the other hand, she feels as a teacher the curriculum is unofficially designed to have teachers teach to the test. I will confess that as a student teacher and an upcoming certified teacher, the thought that whether or not our students will do well on standardized testing such as the STAAR and benchmark tests tend to always be in the back of our minds.

Blog Entry #2: Interview with Genesis Amador

After interviewing my friend Genesis, I found that her story was very similar to other former English Language Learners in my life. Genesis was born in the United States to two Honduran parents who spoke only Spanish to her when she was a very young child. When she was in kindergarten, she was enrolled in a bilingual class and moved to a general education class in first-grade. She would be a part of the ESL program from then on to fourth-grade. When I asked her if she thought the age at which she started learning English affected her fluency, she said that because she started learning English at such an early age, she was able to achieve the native speaker level of proficiency she has now. The Critical Period Hypothesis would agree that language learner at a young age reaps many benefits. According to Wright (2010), younger students tend to receive “a much greater amount of instructional time in K-12 educational systems” to learn a language than adults learning a new language and tend to “feel more comfortable using their new language” (p. 37). However, I also found it interesting that her parents encouraged her and pushed her to learn English at a young age, despite not being fluent themselves. It is probably because they saw the need to speak English well in order to survive in the United States and therefore, had high expectations for their children. “Young-school age children often have greater motivation, pressure, needs, and opportunities to develop second language proficiency than adults” (Wright, 2010, p. 37). Genesis mentioned that her parents often read books to her and her siblings as children and was able to practice and use her English with her peers in school. It is not surprising that her fluency is that of a native-speaker in the present.