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.

Blog Entry #1: Self-Introduction