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.
