Oppressed

I liked reading Freire's article about oppression. I felt that it helped point out things that all teachers should be aware of when working with students because you will have some students who are being or feel oppressed. It is important to be aware of this so you can know how to approach teaching. Letting the students know their voice is worth being heard no matter who they are is very important. Sometimes oppression is something we just forget about or that goes to the back of our mind because we are not the ones being oppressed. After reading this, it helped me remember that it is a big issue and something that we should not just put on the back of our mind. There are some things we may not be able to ever make fair when it comes to money and schooling, but what we can do as teachers is allow our students to not feel oppressed in our classroom and give them a voice.

Assessment

Reading both Kuma chapter 13 and the Assessment article, lots of the information reminded me of things we have talked about and learned in our ENG 345 class which is about assessment in TESOL. The article I felt seemed to make it clear that authentic forms of assessment are necessary. This means having oral presentations, portfolios, writing assignments, discussions, observation as a form of assessing as opposed to multiple choice tests, fill in the blank tests, etc. We have been saying the same thing in my other class. It seems that students get more out of authentic assessment and it does a better job of assessing the student.

The Kuma chapter, discusses observing and assessing observations. This in it self is an authentic form of assessment. I felt Kuma discussed the importance of observation quite well. I really liked the M & M scheme and all of the ten steps for assessing observations. I have been doing my 100 observations for TESOL in an ESL classroom, reading this chapter has helped me think about things a bit differently. I almost wishes I had read this chapter before I started my observations.

Final Project Progress

My final project is coming along nicely. Each week I am observing every morning and all day on Fridays in the ESL classroom. I have been working a lot more one-on-one with the students. With the first year students I tend to work with them on family words and helping them do their worksheets. Sometimes they read to me as well. There is one boy in particular who we are working on very closely to just read basic words like can, my, by, and, etc. We have him read the words and get exposed to them frequently everyday. We also have him read very basic stories with these words in them along with doing worksheets. For the other students who are more advanced, they generally work in their binders. This work has them reading leveled stories and answering comprehension questions on them. I tend to just assist them when they ask or check their answers for the comprehension questions. Sometimes I have some of them read aloud to me. If there ever is anything in class that the teacher is teaching to all of them, I usually just observe while she teaches and then quietly walk around and help students who need it. I definitely have been learning a lot from being in this ESL classroom. The teacher I am working with shows me books she finds most useful along with activities and websites. I really enjoy going in and working with these children. I feel like I learn so much more from being in the classroom. So overall, my progress is going quite well!

Waiting For Superman

I enjoyed Waiting for Superman. I felt that it really made one think about a lot of different things. I could see how the unions or some teachers may get upset from this video. I was upset at some aspects of it too. I felt that it did make the unions looks a bit bad because they didn’t want to get rid of tenure and help make it easier to monitor teachers. This fact kind of upset me even. I don’t think teachers should be set for life after 4 years of teaching. It should not be impossible to get a teacher who is bad out of teaching, but it seems like that is how it is. The video did not show many examples of bad teachers and some were just cartoons. But I do know what they were talking about. I myself in high school came across or knew about these kinds of teachers who know they have tenure so they don’t care about what they are teaching. It truly is sad. I think the video made a good point that this is part of the reason why students are not learning in certain classes. One bad teacher can set a student off for a long time and one good teacher can make a huge difference in the success of a student. Another part of the movie that I found to be not so good was that it was basically saying public schools are bad and we can’t really fix them so the solution is to go to a charter school. Yes charter schools are good, but I think public schools can be and are as well. Not everyone can go to a charter school like the movie showed. And we shouldn’t have to just keep creating more and more charter schools. What needs to happen is we need to improve the schools we have. I am sure that is something that will take tons of different things, but I believe it is possible. If we can make good charter schools then we can make good public schools. The main thing we need is good teachers I believe and that is what I got from the video. The other part would be more funding for schools that need it, but that is always an issue. Those were my initial and overall thoughts of the movie.

I personally agree with almost all of Ira Shor’s argument. I felt the same way that the movie was focusing on and glamorizing public/charter schools. What it really should have been doing was showing the public schools more and dealing with the main issues and what needs to be fixed. It is not a solution just to make everything privatized. And I also felt that there is no way the charter schools could be this much better. It seemed like they were focusing on certain aspects and not others. Like Ira said public schools are being underfunded and over regulated while charter ones are being overfunded and under regulated by the public policy. In having these charter schools with lotteries, it is making students go through an awful experience. They have to hope to be chosen and understand the fact that they won’t get a “good” education because they were selected so they won’t go to a “good” college or get a “good” job. I just don’t believe that one bit. Another aspect of Ira’s article was that the way the teachers were shown teaching in the movie, just simply giving facts and lecturing. When I watch videos of classrooms nowadays or go into schools and observe, I do not see much of this. Most teachers in public schools I observe are doing lessons that incorporate all different kinds of learning and are making the lessons more student-centered. This is what is being found to be most effective and this is what makes a classroom good and learning successful for students. So like I mentioned already, I do agree with Ira’s arguments in this article because I feel like he hit on all of the things I also noticed. The movie was good for raising awareness about public schools and getting people talking about it, but it definitely seemed to be lacking in other aspects.

Poetry Slam/Progess on Final Project

I unfortunately was unable to attend the poetry slam, but I did hear good things about it. Based on what I have read from other students on their blogs it seemed like it was a good experience. Since I could not blog about it, I decided that I would use this blog entry to talk a little about my progress on my final project.

I am observing at an ESL classroom at Oakdale Elementary School. I am in the class every morning Monday through Thursday and then I am there a full school day on Friday. I work one on one with students and just help out in the classroom where help is needed. I am learning a lot of great things from my teacher. She tells me about what books she likes to use and what ones not to use. She showed me readinga-z and how she uses it with her students, which I also have learned about in my Elementary Ed classes. Different groups of students come at different times of the day. They usually are in the class for 30 to 40 minutes when it is their reading or writing time in their mainstream class. The kids are from all different cultures. Some are from the Congo, India, China, Japan, and Korea. What mainly goes on in the classroom is they work on reading comprehension. Of course they also do other things, but reading comprehension is the main focus. They read stories aloud or on their own and answer questions about what they read. They also do other activities that include lots of hands on learning. Around Halloween they got to learn about the American culture and all about Halloween. They carved pumpkins in class and then wrote a how to about making jackolaterns. So far my time in the ESL class has been a great experience and I am learning a lot. I even got to experience parent teacher conferences. Hopefully it all keeps going well.

Shaping the way we teach English: Module 2

I also believe that building language awareness is very important. I liked how the video clip showed how it is important for students to reflect on their own learning. I especially liked how they learned about the mayflower by dressing as pilgrims and demonstrating what they were reading. I think it is great when teachers use different style of learning in their lessons. It seemed that this was working really well in the class shown in the video. They incorporated all different styles of learning into this lesson, which really helped address all different kinds of learners. It was nice how they related what they were learning to their own experiences. This reminds me a lot about what I do in my elementary lesson plans for literacy because we always after reading a passage or story do a retell, which has the students answer different levels of Bloom’s questions. To see that this is also what is going on in the video really helps emphasize the importance of this and how it works with students. I hope that I am able to make my lessons like this one in the video clip. Based on the lessons I have to write for my elementary classes, it seems this is what I will be doing. I hope to one day have a classroom that has lots of language support and awareness around the room on the walls and stuff for my students to look to for help. And I also hope to provide a well-rounded lesson that incorporates different learning styles and real life activities/things.

Group Lesson Plan

The people in my group were Adriene, Michelle, Gina, and myself.  Our group was given the article "Always Living in Spanish" by Majorie Agosin to form a lesson around.  We decided that this lesson would be geared toward high school ESL students.  What we decided was that first we would have the students do a warm up activity.  This activity would have them writing in their journals about their own personal feelings about being in a new country and language.  Then we would have them read the article individually.  After finishing the article, they would get into groups and discuss the article along with the questions at the end of the article.  Lastly we would get back together as a whole class and share what they had discussed in groups.