Paper ideas

- I have no idea what I'm going to write about!!

Lesson Planning.

I cannot stress enough how important lesson planning is. I agree with the text in that it makes me feel more confident, helps me learn the material better before I present it, and makes everything just go so much more smoothly. The reason is because you have a plan, know exactly what you are going to do once you finish an activity, have the materials you need to implement the lesson, and most importantly, you have the lessons set up in an order that is of benefit to the learners. Just this summer, I had a cooperating teacher who did NOT plan anything at all before she came to class. Literally, she would arrive 5 minutes late in a rush and ask me what we did in the first class, then ask me to go make copies of any of the work sheets we used during the class period. It drove me crazy, because she had no idea of how to teach the material that she was presenting because she wasnt sure of the validity of what she was saying since she did not even know the rules to the material she was teaching. Also, you could tell that the students knew and realized that she did not have anything planned at all for the period, they knew that she was just winging-it every single day. You could tell that this took a toll on the kids, because they probably thought, "Why should I come to this class prepared and put in time and effort, when you are not even coming here prepared and putting in time and effort into educating us." And I could not believe it because it was a 3 hour class period, and she did not come prepared with a thing to do, she choose to just wing-it instead. Not only did it make the students have no respect to pay attention to what she was teaching, it made the material she taught extremely boring because she did not come up with creative and engaging ways to teach it. Instead it would LITERALLY be her giving around 50 vocabulary words from the reading, writing the definitions of each and every single one on the board, forcing them to copy in their notebooks each definition, and then MAKING them for homework write sentences using each word word correctly. It was the most boring hour and I could imagine it was the most boring homework for the students as well. I would walk around and try to get them to work, but I couldnt blame them: I would be dragging on getting to work if I had to write 50 sentences with words that I never used before.

So whenever it came for my turn to take over the instruction, I always made sure that I was prepared. I did do lesson planning, and it truly helped my lesson to go as smooth as butter. In the beginning, I even did scripted lessons so that I wouldnt get lost in what I wanted to get across. There was a goal, there was a target for the students to reach, and the ways of getting to that target. It also made it easier, because I was able to come up with activities to do in class before hand, meaning I could buy all the materials (posterboard, tape, markers, rulers) etc. before coming to class and have a clear idea of how I was going to execute the project. Lesson planning truly made my day go by better. Even though part of my internship was not to make and implement lessons, I felt it necessary because how could I just sit back and watch the poor students go through learning in the way they were from that specific teacher, day in and day out? I almost needed to do it to stop even myself from going crazy. And actually, whenever I taught, the students all payed attention and participated in the work. Maybe because it was more meaningful that just regurgitating 50 sentences of words that had no meaning to them. Half the time they would just make horrible sentences that didnt even make sense because they just wanted to get the completion points for having what appeared to be 50 sentences on their paper. It just wasnt an effective way of teaching or an effective way of learning for the students, and it drove me crazy.

This lesson planning that I did was day to day. I mean, I did not come into the internship expecting to plan lessons. I guess I just did so anyways because I was an over achiever and neither of my cooperating teacher had any idea what the AP Exam for Spanish was like, so I felt the need to teach the grammar necessary to take it.  When I become a teacher in the future, however, I plan on making my lesson plans for the entire year, so that the material can be taught in a natural flow that is natural to the SLA of the students, and that is organized in a manner in terms of themes, etc, etc. I am somebody who prefers to be prepared, and on top of that this is MY profession. I have no idea how somebody can just not care enough to even plan what they are going to be teaching for THEIR OWN job. It just inspires me that much more to be ready to teach in urban areas, because I know my dedication and determination will really make a difference on these kids lives since I actually care about their education.

9/22

I really found the article on Sheltered-Instruction to be interesting. In the section labeled background, it states that LEP students have a higher tendency to receive lower grades, get judged by their teachers to have lower academic abilities, and also to score lower on standardized tests. This section, hit home for me, because in much of the observation that I have done in classrooms, as well as just from observing teachers actions at my high school, I have realized how much teachers do judge LEP students to have lower academic abilities. In my high school, there was many LEP students who could not understand the teacher very well. I would help some of them to get the material, but it was almost as though the teacher would ignore them. I feel bad for these students because it is unfair to them. The teacher's know that they have limited English, but does not try to differentiate their instruction to better fit their needs. The article and research state that it takes 4-10 years for the students to develop a proficient level of Academic English. This time span however is not met, because teachers do not wait until the students are proficient in the language before they enter them into regular classes in which the subject matter is taught in English, but more importantly it is an Academic English in which the students need to be able to write persuasively, express analysis, draw conclusions, make hypothesis and conclusions, and other activities that require a high level of English proficiency. How can students accomplish this list of activities required in almost all of their classes, if they have had such a limited amount of exposure to the English language? What many teachers do not understand, is how second language is acquired. "Ideally, all content teachers would be trained in areas such as second language acquisition and ESL methodology although often that is not the case" (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 9). I am not saying that all teachers need to become masters in the subject as we are studying to be, but I am saying that they should really have an understanding of the diversity that there can be among their students. Many teachers do not realize how diverse their classroom is in terms of language and culture. This can have an effect on the classroom because there are many differences in the students lives such as their educational backgrounds, their expectations of school, their socioeconomic status, the language that they speak, and their social customs. Therefore is one student is from another country and they do not understand the classroom expectations of participation, turn-tasking and established routines, then they are going to struggle significantly in the class. Sheltered Instruction is an amazing way to reduce such problems. Even if a school does not implement such program, teachers should keep in mind that some students have limited proficiency and need a differentiation of instruction to help guide them through. Something as simple as giving them a sheet of a list of vocabulary words that they may not know could help them significantly. Just today, in doing clinical hours, I helped a student who had LEP. She was doing her science homework and explained to me that she did not understand more than half of the words on her worksheet. I then took a look at the work sheet and realized that she was required to read a paragraph and answer the following questions. I must admit that there was many science specific words and large words in the sentences that I could understand why they would be difficult for her. It took us the whole hour for her to complete the worksheet because I had to explain each sentence by using simple language that could be comprehended by her.

9/20

I am honestly so happy that I decided to take on a TESOL minor. The reason is because I have never learned so much about second language acquisition, and how second languages are learned. You think that with me becoming a Spanish teacher that people in my major would have to take more classes similar to the ones that I am taking right now, but they are not required! This blows my mind, because without some of the material that I am learning, I am uncertain whether or not I would be a successful language teacher. I mean, I know I would be great either way, but the reason that I will be successful is because now I have an understanding of WHY teaching a certain way works, WHAT it is called, and HOW it is or is not effective to the learners. Sometimes, from doing the readings, I find myself a little overwhelmed with all of the terminology and all of the explanations of different types of approaches. Although, I find that I can understand some of them because it was the way I was taught. This summer, when I was teaching in Little Village, I found myself using methods that I did not know the names for, but I only used them because of past experiences of because they were what I felt would best be understood by the students. My CT's did not seem to use any differentiating types of methods, espically one who just stood in front of the class and talked the whole time, never giving the students to practice using the language. It drove me crazy, and I could not wait until the time came when she would let me take over the class for an hour to give instruction. It is very clear that my style of teaching was completely opposite of that of her own. While she liked to be the dictator of the classroom, I truly enjoy getting the students engaged and working in pairs. I myself like many tasked-based activities which allow the students to go above and beyond the normal fill in the blank worksheets. I feel that they benefit so much more when the activities they are doing are engaging and problematic, versus just filling out a worksheet. It makes so much more sense to use the language in meaningful contexts than to just fill out a blank on a worksheet. When the material that the students are learning is meaningful to them, it makes much more sense that they will remember that material better.

Communicative Language Teaching

When I think about what I am going to teach in my own class, a million things come to mind. Not only am I going to teach how to use the language (grammar), but I am going to teach how to use the language in every day context and with other speakers of that language. What does this mean? This means that in teaching the language, I also have to teach mannerisms and competence of the target language. Cross-culturally speaking, each and every language varies in terms of how social deixis is seen, what is acceptable and non acceptable when communicating, and the list goes on. For example, in Spanish there are two forms used when talking to someone directly. You may use 'tu' which is used for more informal situations, or you can use 'Ud' which is used for formal situations. It is important to incorporate such material into your classroom and explain why it is important to know such things. Also, I plan to teach how  to reply to requests, how to compliment, and any other variation of language that is different from their own. Obviously, the mannerism of the United States are not the same to those of other countries. For example, just simply giving a compliment may be acceptable here, but it may not be so in other countries. It is important for the students to know not only how to use the language grammatically, but it is even more important for the students to know how to use the grammar socially and communicatively.

Yes, they can learn the cookie-cutter "Hello" "Hi" "How are you" "I am fine". But is this going to be the  how the conversation goes every single time that they run into someone in the target language? No. The students need to learn the variety of greetings they can hear in a variety of contexts: "What's up" "Yo" "Hey" etc. can be some more useful greetings for the students to learn, although they should also be learning when it is appropriate and when it's not appropriate to use them. Nevertheless it is important that they learn them and the context in which they are used communicatively. 

Chapters One+Two

I really liked how in chapter one the author described teacher education to be an ongoing process. Even though I am going to graduate in a year, I feel that I will never be done learning. I will also be doing continuing education throughout my career, but I feel like even after I get my masters and everything else, that I will continue my learning process as the years go on. One important part of this ongoing process is reflection. In being a teacher, one must constantly be reflecting: reflecting on how the students reacted to material, reflecting on you delivered the material, and whether or whether not each of these things was successful or not. If one activity did not work or the way in which you delivered material it is important that you go back and modify the lesson so that the next time it will be successful. This is reflecion-on-action as the book states it. But more importantly, I believe that a conscious and reflective teacher should have the ability to reflection-in-action, that is having the ability to locate and identify problems that may occur on the spot, and modify them in that exact moment.

Also, in the section about Transformative Intellectuals, I truly agree with the notion that teachers should also be critical pedagogists. I also agree with Freires idea of the effects that sociopolitical factors have in the classroom. For example, in being a teacher it is important to understand and know your student. Not just understand the behavior that they have in the classroom but also truly understand their life at home. That is, their cultural background, their income, their family structure, etc. etc. All of these factors that were just listed make up a student and how they act in school. Some teachers may see 'Johnny' as lazy, doesnt want to work, never listens, etc. But what most teachers fail to do is understand what is happening at home. Johnny may be from a family that lives in poverty which means that there may not be a stable source of food that comes to the family. For this reason, Johnny may be distracted in class because he is wondering when he is going to eat his next meal because he has not ate in a whole day. Taking in to account every aspects of each students life can create a better understanding of their behavior in class.