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.
