Guiding Emergent Bilingual Students on a Path To Success (For 10/25/17)

Throughout the course of my experience in RIC's education program, I haven't had much exposure on how to effectively teach emergent bilingual students. Although I've gotten some good tidbits of information along the way about language development, I especially got sucked into the chapters by Fu because she actually had some strategies that I could try out during my practicum fieldwork and professional teaching. There are many points of interest that I could touch upon in this blog post, but my golden nugget for this week is definitely the power of code-switching for emergent bilingual students.

From my understanding of the definition, code switching is the ability to adapt one's use of language depending on the context and content of the situation. However, code switching also occurs when students are working through emloying conventions of a second language, while in the process, using their native tongue as a meanings of thought processes and planning. As I read through the student writing samples in the book, as well as the academic commentary that followed, I was in awe about how the students would use variations of both languages in order translate their thoughts through written word. Reading about this complex process of multiple language development also made it seem much simpler to understand that our brains utilize what is most readily accessible to through our knowledge of language. So say if I'm learning something new in school based on a subject that I learned in the English language, I am going to grapple with those new ideas in English in my head because that's the means in which I've been exposed to said content. The idea of being able to choose the language that you think in, dream in, day dream etc is ludicrous. So being able to see how students can work through their language development by using both languages kind of helps alleviate some of the pressure on me as a future teacher in terms of language barriers hindering the quality of education. However code switching had led me back to my bigger question about teaching emergent bilingual students in general.

As a student who thrives off of models, I want in many ways to be a role model to my students. And to me, a part of being a role model is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, particularly with learning new things. Now, I know some French, and a tiny bit if Spanish, but I am fluent in English. However it still baffles me to this day that I can get a certification to teach emergent bilingual students without being proficient in the native tongue of my students. This isn't to say that professionals who are not masters of another language can't teach emergent bilingual students, but for me and from my perspective, I feel like I'm doing my students a dis-service by not struggling to grapple their language too. Then on top of this, I want to give emergent bilingual students the same level of access that a student who speaks English would have to what I teach, or my humor, or my personality because a lot of that authenticity can get lost in translation. Moving forward, I'm excited to keep learning about strategies to reach my students whom are navigating more than one language through the Fu chapters. In addition, I'm eager to put these strategies into practice in my practicum placements.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Driving, Teaching Writing, and $$$ (For 11-8-17)

So, like usual, I get caught up on one specific reading, and then my brain takes over and I have to run off with the thoughts in my head. As for what reading I can't stop thinking about, I think it's pretty clear that it's the blog post based off of my title. For me and my experiences, I think that the analogy of driving and teaching writing (or teaching in general) is so spot, that it's kinda scary. But before I get into the questions swirling around in my head, let me start off by sharing my story of learning how to drive (and also, write). My mother is one of the smartest and most patient people that's been a part of my life. From circling our church parking lot, to first turning out onto the open road, she is the sole person who taught me how to drive. During my first on-road class in driver's ed, my instructor told me to give my mom a pat on the back because he had never seen someone drive so well for a first lesson (even though it wasn't really my fi...
Read more

Students Taking the Power Back (For 10/10/17)

Although I found the chapters from Gallagher and Christensen helpful, I am most inspired by Emdin's piece on co-teaching and student-led lessons. In addition to being inspired, the thoughts he expressed about learning from the students in this way push the boundaries of many of the things that make me nervous as an up-and-coming educator.  Firstly, before I get into the nitty, gritty of the reading, I was shocked to read that the students in Emdin's college-level course responded so negatively to him pretending to be a student at the start of the first class. When I put myself in the shoes of the students, I can understand that it must be really embarrassing to have to sit through a class after bashing the professor to his face for being late. However, I wonder if this "stunt" (so to speak) could have been turned around to be a larger lesson maybe about stereotypes, attitudes, expectations, or even first impressions. I'm all for making larger points through e...
Read more

Power Dynamics: Grades and Writing (For 11/22/17)

For this week, I explored two blog posts from different blogs of my own interest. The first is from  Cult of Pedagogy titled, "Could You Teach Without Grades?" I was actually expecting this to be a traditional written post, but the majority of its content came from a 53 minute podcast episode. This didn't bother me though, considering how much I enjoyed the last podcast we got to listen to earlier in the semester. In addition to that, I was too interested in this hot topic have hearing LC's little secret about not grading papers. Overall, the podcast is about one teachers journey from going grade-less. Starr Sackstein, a teacher of 13 years, made this move with her high school students in a public prep school in the Bronx. After listening to this podcast, I feel like I'm much less intimidating by considering this approach in my own way. There were a plethora of golden nuggets, so for the sake of attempting  a way of reflecting on my readings, I'm going to ta...
Read more