In-class Activities

Our group had the article by Tom Rosenberg “Changing My Name after Sixty Years,” which is about a Jewish man that had his name changed upon coming to America from Nazi Germany when he was a boy and his journey back to reclaiming his roots and his original Jewish name as he grew up.  This is basically what we came up with during class so far:

Have students observe how Mr. Rosenberg used the narrative to tell his story: what language he used, different words, tenses, viewpoints, etc that made it a narrative.

Students can then research their own names and heritage and write their own narrative about their family’s changing identity.

Students can focus on vocabulary words commonly used in social justice issues that are also found in the article, such as tolerance, exposure, discrimination, stereotyping, and initiatives.     

In addition to the written narrative, this may also be an appropriate time for students to practice oral story telling in front of the class.  

John's Article

Initially, I was not overly impressed with the article because by just glancing at it, I thought it would only be applicable to those who are interested in being collegiate professors.  As I have no intention of being a professor, and as my heart lies in public schools, I was very interested to see how I would grow from reading John’s article. 

As it turns out, John’s article is quite helpful regardless what age or linguistic ability your students have.  I particularly thought it was helpful that John’s provided the section, Discover Who Our Students Are that would be quite useful to use in a pre-collegiate classroom.  I think it is crucial for educators to truly know their students in a cultural way, by asking them the questions John asks in this section, we as educators will be more available to understanding their backgrounds and their needs as diverse students. 

When we are able to recognize the differences of each of our students, we are then able to work towards teaching them in a meaningful way.  For instance, you may have several students from Mexico in your classroom, but the conditions under which they came to your classroom may be different.  You would not teach a student who speaks Spanish full time at home the same way you would teach a student who’s parents speak some English and whose siblings speak English.  You would also teach a student differently who has been in the US 3 months versus 3 years.   We will be teaching students who are much different that us and we need to be knowledgeable and sensitive to their needs. 

Module 2

I don’t know how I feel after watching the second module.  I was definitely a great lesson and I think kids of their age would really benefit a lot from a teacher and aides like these.  Their activities were authentic and engaging, perfect for ELLs and native speakers alike. The skit is a great activity that encourages situational role-playing and encourages lingual participation in front of the entire class.  I thought the guided discussion was great because it really brought each student’s cultural diversity to the forefront of the discussion.  Each child’s journey was important to the entire class, which I think is a necessary feeling for children to have if they are to truly succeed.   They also had the authentic task of making a travel brochure, which I thought was great.

My hesitation with this video is that there did not seem to be a lot of reinforcement of language skills.  It was full of cultural exploration, which is wonderful, but it seemed like there should have been some focus on the actual language being used so that students could build up their language skills.  

Autonomy

I was very pleased that Kuma included a chapter on learner autonomy.  I think it is imperative that educators realize it is not up to the student alone to develop their autonomy; teachers must be a facilitator and a supporter to their students’ learning goals.  Of course, it is primarily the students choice to be autonomous, but if the do decide to be so, the teacher has a million resources to help that student, if s/he is willing to devote a little bit of time and energy.  I never have thought about autonomy in a narrow and broad sense before, and I think Kuma made some interesting points about there is a difference between  how one learns (narrow view) and how one can advance in their level of learning (broad view).  I think this is important to understand and recognize as a future teacher because so often I think of these things as the same thing.  Often I think of learning as being linear, when it is not.  We do not just learn more and more, but we can learn higher too.  (If that makes any sense!)  I think it was good to read about learner autonomy from a perspective of some teacher responsibility because in most C&I courses it is explained simply from a “your students could be autonomous, but don’t get your hopes up” point of view.   

Chapter 8

In his chapter on Activating Intuitive Heuristics, Kuma talks about learners’ self-discovery.  Idealistically, I am a huge advocate for this type of thinking.  I think without a doubt, some of my more memorable learning experiences have been through self-discovering rather than a more direct, lecture based method.   I think the challenge I often run into when taking this more idealistic view on education is in regards to a practical application of this ideology.  Kuma says in the first paragraph of chapter 8 that “When applying [heuristics] to language learning and teaching it means that an important task facing the language teacher is to create a rich linguistic environment in the classroom so that learners can activate their intuitive heuristics and discover the linguistic system by themselves.”

The problem I find with this is that it is so difficult to determine where the line should be drawn in terms of freedom of self-discovery.  We have talked in class many times about integrating multiple approaches to teaching in an ELL classroom, and it does not seem possible or practical to implement this in its entirety because students would be missing out on a lot of beneficial instruction from the teacher.