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.

Learner Autonomy

I personally really liked chapter 6 which was about promoting learner autonomy.  In my curriculum and instruction classes I have learned a decent amount about learner autonomy and how promoting it is essential.  I felt this chapter really just emphasized the importance of learner autonomy and how it is not just on the student.  Teachers are also responsible for a learner's autonomy, which is not what most people think.  They assume it usually is just on the learner, but the teacher does play a role in it.  I feel that is something that needs to be noted because it obviously influences the success of learner autonomy.  I also liked how this chapter gave a break down between a narrow view and broad view of learner autonomy.  What I got from that was just that a narrow view focuses on how one learns and the broad view focuses on how one can take their learning to another level.  Obviously both of these views are important to keep in mind when dealing with learner autonomy because they both come into play.  I think one of the most important thinks to remember about learner autonomy is that it is up to the student mainly along with the help of the teacher.  A teacher can only help so much with learner autonomy, but a student needs to want to be autonomous.

Curriculum Design and Materials Development

What I personally liked and got out of this article was the overall explanation of curriculum.  I felt like it really defined curriculum and the different kinds there are.  I was able to understand the differences between content based curriculum, process based curriculum, and product based curriculum.  All three of these curriculums seemed to have their own pros and cons, however the one I liked the best was the process based curriculum.  I liked this curriculum the best because it seemed to cater to the needs of the learner the most.  It was not as concerned with meeting expectations set out by other outside people.  Process based curriculum focused on the learner's needs and what they needed to get out of the curriculum.  It not only applied classroom content, but what was taught also applied to the real world.  It seemed like this curriculum would be more practical for a second language learner.

To me it seems that process based curriculum would work more with a person who is trying to learn English as a second language because it gives practical applications of the language.  They are not only learning content information, but what they are learning can be applied out in the real world.  I feel that product based curriculum might be better for someone who is learning English as a foreign language.  This reminds me more of when I learned Spanish is school and it seems to be taught more so that you are expected to learn a certain amount by the end of each class year.  This focuses more on learning the material and structure of the language as opposed to skills one could use out in their daily world.  Those just are the distinguishes I see between the two curriculums and who they would suit best.

When working with ESL students, I most likely would want to implement the process based curriculum. I feel it is important to cater more to the students needs than to focus real hard on making sure they meet some standard set out by others.  This curriculum probably though will be the hardest to implement because one has to make sure they know their students and know their students needs.  Although this curriculum may be more difficult to implement and may take more time to, I feel that it will be the most practical for ESL students.

Sleeter Article

When reading the article "Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools" by Sleeter, I found myself getting quite frustrated.  I understood a lot that was being addressed and could see the point she was trying to make that teachers need to be prepared when they are going to be teaching in culturally diverse schools.  And that teachers also need to be able to bring in a multicultural curriculum to the classroom.  I also understood that people who are culturally diverse and come from certain backgrounds may have an easier time teaching in culturally diverse schools because they can relate, however I disagreed with that fact that they will be better teachers in general over a White preservice teacher (like the article was saying).  I do believe that someone's background can help them in certain ways, but I do not think that the race of someone will make them better at teaching verse another person.  The article talked about the need to recruit and select preservice teachers who are of color because they will be able to relate and teach culture in classrooms better than white preservice teachers, but truthfully I believe it is more than that.  People need to recruit and select preservice teachers who have a love for culture and want to embrace it and teach it, it should not matter the color they are.  I believe that it is the experiences that one has and the competence they have which helps shape them into being a good teacher.  If a White preservice teacher is given the opportunity to learn about multicultural diversity through schooling, observation, and even hands on learning, they are capable of being prepared to teach in a culturally diverse setting.  And hey, no one can ever be fully prepared no matter where you are going to teach.  I think what really matters is the drive and passion a teacher has towards cultural diversity.  We all are TESOLers for a reason and I think we all can agree we want to embrace cultural diversity and bring it into our classrooms.  It offends me that someone thinks just because of the color of my skin, I will not be as prepared to do that as someone who is of another color.  I know I do not have some experiences that others have had dealing with cultural diversity, but I have had some.  I have a drive for teaching and I want to be put in a very culturally diverse classroom and be able to embrace the culture into my curriculum.  I know I will be able to do that just from things I have learned in my classes here at ISU and from observations I have done.

Final Project Progress

Currently my progress is not going well for my final project. I am waiting still to be placed with a teacher so I can start my ESL observations.  I have been waiting for 4 weeks now for my placement. So hopefully, I will be placed this or next week and can get to work.  I plan on observing and assisting in an ESL classroom.  Once that happens I can start journaling for this project.  Hopefully depending on my teacher, maybe I'll be able to even teach a mini lesson.  So that is the status of my final project right now.

Minimizing Perceptual Mismatches

I never really realized that when a topic being taught in class that I found highly irrelevant or over taught could have been due to a mismatch between me, the student, and the teacher.  After reading Chapter 4 in Kuma, I understood a lot more about some of my classroom experiences.  I found that I encountered some mismatches before in my classrooms and that mismatches were what had me getting so frustrated with my teachers at times.  Now knowing that what really was happening were mismatches, I look back at situations with some of my teachers differently.  I can easily see how mismatches can occur.  Kuma explains how there are ten different kinds of mismatches, which makes it even more likely that teachers and students will encounter mismatches in their learning.  I feel mismatches are even more likely to happen when working with learning other languages.  As Kuma mentioned it is important to note that mismatches will always happen, they are always identifiable, and they are also always manageable.  By knowing these three things, teachers and students can work through their mismatches and even turn them into a learning opportunity.  I feel it is very important for teachers to identify mismatches that are happening so they can manage them for their students.

Being able to minimize perceptual mismatches I felt related well to what Kuma had to say in his article "Toward A Postmethod Pedagogy".  In his article, Kuma talked about postmethod teachers and postmethod learners.  Postmethod teachers need to know about their students and be aware of their needs.  They need to be able to know the context of their classroom.  The teachers job is to constantly be working towards helping create learning opportunities for their students.  They have a very active role.  The postmethod learners need to take control of their learning by being autonomous.  They have to be willing to learn and be effective learners.  It seems that in order to help minimize perceptual mismatches there need to be postmethod teachers and postmethod learners.  A postmethod teacher would be working towards knowing their students and their perceptions and the postmethod learners would be working to take control of their learning.  If teachers postmethod and the learners are postmethod it seems they would be most aware of mismatches that may happen and have an easier time of turning the mismatches into learning opportunities.

Learning Opportunities

For this week's reading, I really was drawn in by chapter 3 of Kuma which was maximizing learning opportunities.  I found myself completely agreeing with a lot of what Kuma had wrote.  I do believe that it is both the teacher and the learner's responsibility to create learning opportunities.  Teachers need to be able to create an open atmosphere in their classroom and promote communication.  One of the things I found most important was the difference between display and referential questioning.  I personally have come across teachers who have used both, and I always got more out of the classes where teachers used referential questioning.  It is important that there be open ended questions and that they can lead to other discussions.  It also is important for teachers to allow their class to discuss other topics that they may have not planned for because, like Kuma mentioned, it could be an opportunity for the students to learn something they don't know.  One shouldn't just shut down a topic or discussion when it is an opportunity to learn something new.

Another aspect that one needs to keep in mind is that learning is also on the student.  A teacher can do a lot to create opportunities, but if a student does not have any learner investment or put forth any effort the opportunities may not be taken advantage of.  A teacher can only do so much, and it is also up to the student to participate and be an active member of the class in order to get something out of it.  I have observed classes where some students just simple do not care and do not want to learn, and it is very difficult to get them to.  If a student simply shuts down and doesn't want to have learning opportunities, a teacher can not force it upon them.  Teachers can only go so far in helping create learning opportunities and it is good to remember that it is a two way street with the teacher and learner.

Lastly, I also agree it is always good to connect with the classroom community, campus community, local community, and global community in order to create more learning opportunities.  I feel that all this information really applies to not only language learners, but to all learners.  Many opportunities can be made from using multiple perspectives.  Kuma does a great job of providing microstrategies for the learning opportunities that exist in all different types of communities.  Overall, I felt that Kuma did a great job in this chapter emphasizing the importance of learning opportunities and how they can be created and utilized.  This chapter especially spoke to me because it not only applied to language learners, but to all learners.  It also helped me reinforce some of the beliefs I had on learning opportunities.

Week 3 Readings

Chapter 1 of the Beyond Methods book discussed the role of teachers.  The role of teachers is something that tends to be discussed in many of my education classes.  Therefore to hear the different roles a teacher can have and how they are used at different times really was not anything new for me.  This chapter mainly just helped emphasize the importance of the roles a teacher could have and how there is always critical mind engagement happening.

Chapter 2 on the other hand was about understanding postmethod pedagogy, and had a lot of new information for me to learn. The chapter first introduced the different methods there are such as the language centered method, the learner centered method, and the learning centered method.  These methods I have been introduced to before, but only briefly.  I found it very useful to know the difference amongst the methods and when it is best to use which method.  This chapter also discussed a little about the dissatisfaction with methods, which I found to be interesting because some people do not usually give you that perspective on method.  Lastly, I learned the most about the postmethod pedagogy and how it is a three dimensional system that is broken up into three parameters.  There is the parameter of particularity, the parameter of practicality, and the parameter of possibility.  These three parameters overlap with eachother to create a functioning system.  The three parameters of postmethod pedagogy work along with the roles of teaching.  From reading it is easy to grasp the concept that teachers need to know the roles they play in the classroom and with the roles they play using their theory and practice, the teachers are able to use methods and the three parameters of postmethod pedagogy.

Language Approaches

I believe throughout my language learning I have experienced the Grammar Translation Approach, the Cognitive Approach, and the Communicative Approach.  There is a chance I have experienced some other approaches as well, but for now these are the only ones that I seem to remember.  I started taking Spanish in 6th grade and took it all the way through high school.  As I progressed through the years in my Spanish classes, the approaches seemed to change.  My earlier Spanish classes mainly used the Grammar Translation Approach.  As I got into high school the cognitive approach and communicative approach ended up being used.  Out of these three approaches, I do not really feel more comfortable with one than the other.  I think I am more successful with the Grammar Translation Approach because I work well with vocabulary and grammar.  Sometimes I would struggle a little more with speaking in a second language to the whole class.  This mainly was because I did not want to be incorrect in things I said even though errors were accepted.  So I may have been more successful with one approach than another, but comfort wise I felt the same with all of the approaches.

When it comes to language approaches, I do not believe there is ever "one best method" that will fit all students' needs.  I believe in order to reach all students' needs teachers need to incorporate multiple language approaches into their classroom.  One approach may work really well with some students and not so well with others which is why there is no such thing as "one best method".

Teaching Goals

I am an elementary education major with a TESOL minor.  I hope to teach a first grade classroom somewhere in the northwest suburbs, just outside of Chicago. I grew up in that area and have always wanted to teach in some of the towns around there.  I hope to be in one of the towns that is diverse for the suburbs.  Each year they tend to be getting more and more diverse.  I hope to have a community that is involved in the school. 

I believe it is very important to be conscious about TESOL because it is something as a teacher you will encounter frequently in your classrooms.  I believe one should know how to approach and handle teaching all different types of students.  And it is also important to make sure ESL students are understanding what is being taught to them and what is useful for them and why.  I personally decided to make TESOL as my minor because I felt it would help me know how to teach ESL students that I will have in my classroom.  I also feel that general classroom teachers should be more conscious of the fact that there are ESL students in their classrooms and they should know how to aide them appropriately.

As a language teacher, my goals are to facilitate and aid to the best of my ability for my students.  I hope to make their classroom experience less stressful and easier.  I want to be able to help them and to direct them to useful resources.  I also want to encourage learning English as a Second Language, but to also accept and emphasize the importance of their first language as well.  I want them to feel like they can know and use both languages.  Overall, I just want to be able to aide them in school and help them learn things that are useful outside of the classroom as well when it comes to language and cultural differences.