Leaving/Follow Up

"How was student teaching?"

"How was Malaysia?"

I've been asked this twice, and my initial reaction is to stare, then blink, wide-eyed, with an open mouth until my reflexes save me by uttering something generic, like "good", or "great".

And in all honesty, depending on my position in processing, my answer may vary.

One of my close friends just spent the past 6 months in the Philippines, on a rural island doing an internship. An email full of re-entry tips was sent out to all interns, one of the tips was to "practice short and meaningful answers".

You can't sum up these experiences into short answers. You can try, but how do you answer those questions?

My answers come out in stories, over a long period of time, and in photos, in impressions, and feelings. My own family still has not heard all of the stories of my times in China, or Chile.

But for the purposes of this blog, I will try to summarize.

I had a wonderful experience student teaching this semester. I could not have asked for better cooperating teachers, classes, or situations that happened. I am incredibly grateful for those who have kept me in their thoughts and prayers, for while it was a great semester, it was not without great difficulty at times!

The last week of student teaching was full of grading, and last minute end-tying. I did "comments" for all the ESL students, which is an evaluation on their quarterly report card of strengths and areas of improvement. There were Christmas parties and goodbyes.

I ended the semester by going to the Philippines for a week. I returned to the US on December 23rd, ready to relax and spend time with family before going back to NY.

In my first blog post of the semester, I mentioned not seeing myself as a teacher. I see myself as owning more of that title now.

I hope to continue to write about ESL and the world, for they are full of adventures.

Happy New Year!

The hardest thing I had to do.

I have often been asked what the hardest part of my trip was. My answer has always been leaving. I love change, I hate change, and leaving a place and the people there means change is inevitable, as is my love-hate relationship with it. While I know I will have a hard time leaving Dalat and Penang, the hardest thing I have done here so far is dealing with a student's plagiarism on a big assignment. 


When my first cooperating teacher left, I was left with many unfinished projects. One we decided to continue was an intensive, quarter long biography assignment. The students had been assigned a biography to read, write summaries and reflections on for every chapter, and give a presentation dressed up and in character. 


Of course they procrastinated. 


However, the presentations went smoothly, and I moved on to grade the reflections.


Some of the students had clearly put a lot of time and thought into their summaries and reflections. Some had obviously not.


Overall, I was impressed. I was too impressed, it turned out, especially when a student's writing began using advanced phrasing and words that I didn't even know. With some google detective work, I found out that the first 11 chapters were directly copied from CliffsNotes. I was highly upset. It was late at night, and I had to now go back over the other students' work to make sure they had not done the same thing. 


I was also very upset with the book assignment. It was an adult level book, in content and in language. Assigned to a 6th grade ESL student. You don't do that. It puts the student in a position of needing to seek outside help, and in a position of cheating. It is not pedagogically sound in the least bit, either.

The next day, I discussed my findings with the MS Principal. He said according to Dalat Policy, a zero should be given. I also talked with the long-term ESL sub about the situation. The book was inappropriate, in content and in level. We didn't want to give the student a zero. The book was ridiculously hard. However, something had to be done. 

I ended up talking with the student about the situation and their actions. Extreme remorse was expressed. (I was holding back my own tears). Blatant plagiarism was never the intention, the book was simply to hard, and the content too inappropriate. Copying was coping for this ELL (English Language Learner). The embarrassment and shame of the situation was enough of a consequence, we felt. I made sure the student knew they were put into a bad position, but also that they could go to the teacher or principal for help if they felt an assignment was above their level.  Hopefully a lifetime lesson was learned.

I know I learned.

You're not in NY, anymore-- a look at the surface differences of Penang

It has been said that you learn more about your culture by looking at a different one. 


Here, I am learning about my culture by living a different one. 


Here are some more obvious surface differences of life in Penang and life in the US:


In the US, I shop at stores with walls for food and clothes. Very rarely do I eat out, or buy food from a street vendor.


In Penang, I shop anywhere-- in the mall, or in the open air nightmarket. We eat out almost every day, and the food we get is from "hawker stalls", little shanties or more permanent open structures that host a variety of food.


              And when you eat out in Penang, you get your drinks from the same person you order the food from. Here, more often than not, a stall will sell either drinks or food, not both. 


And speaking of food, seeing cats and dogs in eating and food prep areas is normal. I realized that restaurants that are "shut down" due to health violations would be first class, pristine environments compared to some of the stalls here. And you know what? I don't even care that the person may have not even washed their hands. I am grateful for the food, it is good.

My nose, taste buds, and lungs have not had to compete with cigarette smoke while eating for a very, very long time. Remember the times when they had the almost useless "smoking sections" in the States? That isn't even thought of here. 

When I'm at home, I take my shoes off when I get inside, sometimes they make it to the shoe rack. 

Here, my neighbours in the apartment building all have many pairs of shoes strewn about before their doors, or neatly stacked on a gigantic shoe rack outside of their doors. The only problem I would have with doing this is the question of--how safe are all those shoes just lying by themselves? Will someone come by used shoe shopping, or is it just something nobody even thinks about stealing because they all do it? 

 

At home, there are fake and real Christmas trees. In the stores and public places, they go up in October, sometimes.

Here, there are no real Christmas trees. They have only just started putting up the fake ones (everywhere). My students had so many questions regarding this tradition: if the trees we get in the US are actually real, why we get real ones, where we get them, and if I was really pulling the wool over their eyes when I told them about Christmas Tree Farms. Their questions made me laugh a little inside. Those things we in the North take for granted and as tradition are thought of as near fiction to students who have grown up on the equator. 

At home, I am quite resistant to ever turning on the AC in the summer, with the exception of heat waves. Here, one of my favourite things at night is turning on my aircon in my room and journalling under the comforter... At home, I am mostly cold. Here, I am still cold unless I am outside. My teachers still laugh incredulously at my quirky need to always have a sweater/scarf inside. (Those rooms are COLD!) Air con. 25 degrees C is cool. 22C is air from the arctic. The ESL room is small, and feels like 19 degrees when the aircon is on.

When I find bugs at home, they are met with an ear piercing war-cry and imminent death. Here, I have more of a "live, and let live" mentality. They aren't really hurting me, and there are just so many that it is almost fruitless. This does not however, stop me in my daily attempts to oust the spider in my WC. I dump water on it, it moves to a drier spot on the large tub of water. We have a routine. 

an experiment

Wednesday. 


I walked out of the full classroom and turned left, so the students wouldn't see me. The noise grew louder with each step I took away from the classroom. I ran away from the windows, laughing now, as I met my classroom teacher, and two supervisors on the stairs. I waited four minutes before I entered the classroom again, and I was greeted by chaos....


Before the class began, I put potato chips and skittles in bowls, and set these on the student's clusters of desks.


I turned my camera on, hid it in a desk, and put it into video recording mode. 


I wrote the "Do Now" on the board. #3 was to NOT TOUCH  THE FOOD.


I greeted the students at the door. After the students entered, most shouting about the food, I pressed the camera's record button, then announced I had to run to the copy room. "I'm sorry I put the food out" I said apologetically, "I shouldn't have done that in the beginning of the period, it is for you all at the end of class". 


While my feelings on teaching Bible remain mixed, I set up a memorable (at least for me) social experiment.


Before class, I found four of my students outside, and told them they could have a mission, if they accepted. Their mission was to: eat the food I put out on the table, no matter what I or others said. They could start to eat the food, and try to get the other students to do so once I left the room. Some of them were "good kids", so I thought it would be interesting. They weren't allowed to tell anyone else about their "mission". 


We had been learning about temptation, and to spice things up, the 6th grade teachers and I thought of this activity. 


...As I entered the room after the 4 minutes, I first expressed my shock at the situation, then admitted to setting them up, and recording the audio of the class. (I gave the rest of the students who had figured out it was a set up permission to eat the chips and skittles). The students were in an uproar for the next two days about the whole experiment; their reactions to it were only fed by being able to listen to themselves the next day. Despite the difficulty I had getting their attention for the rest of the week, I believe that they did indeed learn the objectives of the lesson-- strategies to deal with temptation, what it can look like, etc. 


I am so glad I was able to do this. One of the unique aspects of teaching at Dalat is that we can do things like this, and build on them. I actually did this during a formal lesson in which I was being formally observed, I am grateful that my supervisors were on board with the activity.  It made teaching Bible more fun for me, and hopefully more fun for the students to learn. It let the students see I love to laugh and have fun, and gave them an opportunity to laugh with me, something that I think doesn't happen often. While "having authority" in the classroom is important, I want them to see that the "authority" in the classroom is a human too. 

catching up

the speed of light is sometimes how I feel things change in my life.

A drastic change occurred in my student teaching experience at Dalat when my cooperating ESL teacher resigned. That occurred in the beginning of my second week here. Today marks the third week of me teaching the ESL classes with a long-term substitute. The day she resigned, I took over the ESL program for the rest of the week, and a bit of the subsequent week until a long-term substitute was found. That time was very stressful, I was not supposed to have taken over yet, and did not know much of what the curriculum was, or the ongoing assignments that were left behind. I was at school late every night, trying to continue in the curriculum path I knew little of. The rest of the staff were incredibly supportive during this time, and still are. They helped make what could have been a tumultuous, awful time very bearable.

 Some changes in the subsequent weeks have been made, and I am (thankfully) no longer teaching the 7th and 9th grade ESL classes. The 7th graders were the most effected by the resignation, and were quite resistant to a new, green student teacher taking over their comfortable classroom and curriculum. They were my most difficult group. When it was time for me to give a few ESL classes over to the substitute, they were my first choice. In the beginning of my education classes, we had to observe 10 hours of a class. I had middle school, and it was AWFUL. It takes a special person to teach middle school, and that person is not me!

Along with teaching Grade 3, 6, and a 7-9 Word Study program, I am independently teaching Bible, and Social Studies to a mainstream class of 20ish students. While it is a "mainstream class" , most of the students speak English as at least their second language, and the official ESL students are also in the class. Teaching Bible is difficult. I don't like grading spiritual things, even though there is an academic side to Bible. I would much rather it be a pass/fail class. Social studies is easier to teach, content-wise. Though I am encouraged to "make my own style" of teaching these classes, I find it difficult. I have a slightly different teaching style than my cooperating grade 6 teacher, and I don't want to give the students whiplash with different rhythms. Stepping in halfway through a semester is more artificial, and I do not want to step on toes of routines that are already in place.

However, there is a bright side of those already in place routines! I have been introduced to the concept of a "Do Now". This is a little activity or task I write on the board before class starts. The students come in, and instead of me waiting for them to get settled, then getting them quiet and beginning class, they begin to complete the "do now" as they enter. This little thing has been excellent for the larger mainstream classes I have been teaching. It gets the students ready to learn, and gives me a little more breathing room to begin the lesson.


In summary, these events happened so fast, it has taken me this long to process, hence the lack of updates. I spent the 3 day Thanksgiving weekend in Langkawi, with my great aunt and uncle. This time was refreshing and exactly what I needed (if only it were a bit longer!)

Did I mention my Thanksgiving was also spent on a sailboat?

I'm planning on writing more, and more often so stay tuned!

A Day in the life of ME, at Dalat

Despite the fact that I'm living on beachfront property for the next six weeks, I am not at Dalat International School for a vacation.

Most of the classes I will be teaching are ESL. In the morning, I get to school at 8am, or a little before. SAT time starts at 8:15. SAT is not a test from CollegeBoard, but is a short time that is part of the middle school concept here at Dalat. SATs are small groups that meet daily that are lead by each middle school teacher. Having a small group allows students to be more vulnerable as they set goals, and explore emotional, spiritual, and practical life issues during this low pressure, early morning group time. I think it is fantastic.

Classes start promptly at 8:40am. The first class time, A block, is Bible. During B Block, Language Arts is taught. 7 ESL students from the two sixth grade classes are pulled out during that time, and go to a separate ESL classroom.  I go with them.

Social Studies is taught during Block C. This is another class I will eventually be teaching. This makes me a little bit nervous because it is not a dedicated area of expertise or study for me; but I am up to the challenge! Preparation will be key for this subject.

Now, this is where things get complicated. The mainstream 6th grade teachers have a large block of the afternoon for prep time and lunch, from about 11 o'clock to 12:40. ESL does not. On MWF, from 12:05-12:40, 3rd graders have their ESL pull out time. I do some of my copying and prep during the in between classes time. On T and TR, admissions testing and interviews take place. ESL teachers are a part of that, which means that I will be taking a role (tbd on how much) in testing, interviews, and admissions meetings.

Sometimes for lunch, I will walk across the street to SAB, an Indian restaurant and get "carry away" (how they say take out). I am LOVING the Indian foods here! Roti canai anyone?

7th grade ESL is at 2:20, and ends at 3:05.

While the rest of the students have what is called "X-block" time, (Elective classes on T/TR, Study hall on Wednesday, Group activity on FR), 7th and 8th graders have what is called "Word Study". Word Study takes place on MW, and is largely dedicated to vocabulary building. 9th grade ESL students have ESL class on T/TR.

Since last Wednesday, the 9th of November, I have been am teaching and preparing for all of these classes (except A and C block. But I will be taking over those at the end of this week).

"It is very easy to become consumed [by preparations and school]", one of my teachers warned me. The fact I am writing this at 7pm and am still at school is evidence of that. There is a danger here, certainly not danger of a lack of energy, but a danger of giving too much, and lacking boundaries between your job and the rest of your life. I suspect the rest of the staff has already learned this. Burning out can happen, and quickly. And within my first week of taking over classes, I am beginning to. Despite my need for success in student teaching, I need to set appropriate boundaries and goals for myself and this job.

Compare and Contrast: The Python Story

Here are some of my observations from the first few days I have been in Malaysia. Dalat School is very unique, and quite different from the American public school system. It is not ruled by state and federal standards, teachers have much more freedom to explore subjects and certain topics with their students. 

A glaringly obvious example of the differences between a private school in Malaysia and a US public school is an event that happened my first day here. An 11 foot python that had ingested a goose was found, somewhere off campus. The snake (actually small for a python) was gravely injured, and someone brought it to school. It died, and all the students were allowed to see it. Pythons aren't a common occurrence here on school property, but I suspect that the ability to take advantage of rare and exciting teachable moments such as these are more common, and encouraged. The high school biology classes got to dissect it the next day. That in itself was a marvel to me. It wasn't ordered from a lab, or snakery somewhere where the animals are prepared for dissection, it was fresh out of the jungle. No formaldehyde. No nothing.  The lesson and preparation for the dissection were mere hours old. Everyone in the school, staff and students, were psyched about the opportunity. Nobody blinked an eye. It was a learning opportunity for the film classes too, they are going to make a video of the dissection and put it on youtube.

I mentioned the event to my dad in an email, commenting that this would probably never happen in the USA. He replied comically, saying  "…you are right about it never happening in the USA.  We would have had some bizarre animal rights group protesting the dissection, and lawsuits from the ACLU asking if the python’s rights had been violated.  Meanwhile no one is protecting the rights of the goose (hopefully not the one who lays the golden eggs)".

In short, there are many opportunities here that would not be able to happen in the US. 

Like I previously mentioned, Dalat is a private school. This means students must apply and interview in order to even be considered to study here. Students here want to be here. They want to be challenged, they want to learn, and are eager to explore different subjects. Their advanced curriculum sticks out to me, especially in 6th grade science. They were looking at basic chemical reaction equations. They were looking at them, not solving them by themselves, but they were still there.  I don't know about you, but I don't recall doing those in 6th grade. It is only an introduction to them, and students are not expected to master them but the fact that they were on the board was a bit of a shock to me. Even in the ESL class, the ESL students are high intermediate to advanced. As a class, we went over a students' creative writing. Dare I say there was more interaction and constructive criticism than in my college writing class? Perhaps it is because of the age, nature, or comfort level of the students, but I was also surprised at the quality of the writing.

These will most certainly not be my last surprises, but I look forward to more!

Penang Arrival!

Quick update, more details and thoughts to follow later, along with photos!

I have arrived safely in Penang, Malaysia! I got here Sunday night, spend Monday fighting jet lag, and had my first day in the classroom today. Working on internet access.

Coolest thing of the day? Seeing the last part of a dissection of an 11 foot python that had swallowed a goose. I also learned that there are many, many more bugs in the world that I had originally thought.

Kids Say the Funniest Things

I dearly love to laugh. And honestly, on the occasion I can't really take everything seriously. Even if a student has a wrong answer to a question they should know, the wrong answer can be hilarious. (I hope I won't get in trouble for saying that in relation to teaching, but sometimes one of my students will say something, and I will have to turn around and laugh silently and shortly while writing on the board, or smooth out the smile that quickly spreads across my face.)

Here is where it gets real. While laughter is good, I fully realize that laughing at someone can be very damaging. May I even say that we can all remember a time that someone laughed at us when we were trying our hardest and were very hurt by the laughter? However, laughing while learning is essential, and encouraging students to take ownership of their language and use it as much as possible is one of my goals. Encouraging laughter in a general sense can help create a safe environment where the student can be encouraged to learn from their mistakes, and even eventually, laugh with their adventures in language and content.

Here are some of the funniest moments so far:

--I showed a picture of a bowl of oatmeal. Me: "Can you tell me what this is?"  student-"A meal nobody likes!"

--We were working on synonyms, and a student wanted to know how to use the word afraid in a sentence. My quick example was "I'm so afraid of tigers". As a quick afterthought I said, "That's just an example you know. I'm not actually afraid of them". Immediately, the student emphatically exclaimed, "I AAAM!". Another student walking by quipped, "but we're supposed to be afraid of all dangerous animals!". I affirmed this to both students.

Silly Miss Rachel. I let my own ego get in the way of teaching. It is okay, and natural to have a fear of dangerous animals. Thank you for humbling me a little, 3rd graders.

--I showed a picture of an owl. Student response: "When him see a zombie, him fly away! *flaps arms and runs off...*" Not only has the consistent use of the pronoun"him" instead of "he" started to make me laugh, but the zombie reference was so irrelevant to anything we had learned.

--I pointed to a picture of a giraffe. "Can you tell me what animal this is?" Student response: "A MONGOOSE!". How did that word get in their vocabulary?

-- Kindergarten Student A: "ouch!" Kindergarten Student B's instant response: "What's happening girrrlfrraaaaaind??"

Coming from a 5 year old English Language Learner's mouth, this was hilarious.




Again, while many of these quotes are funny, especially in context, it is important for me to realize the real people I teach.The students are real people, not just robots who I have to teach. They too have their own lives, feelings, families, emotions, loves, and struggles. Listening to what they're saying when they're not giving me an answer to the hundreds of questions I ask per day can help give me insight into their personalities and lives.



I too, am a student. I too, am learning, and am learning to laugh at the mistakes I make while teaching. =)

StrengthsFinder 2.0

At first, I was happy to take the StrengthsFinder 2.0 inventory. Most Nyack College undergrads take this bestselling strengths inventory their freshman year. I am in honors, so I didn't have to take it. Until student teaching...

So according to this inventory, my strengths are: 

 

Input

Connectedness

Intellection

Ideation

Adaptability

 

I find that  these are good representations of some of my strengths. Nothing really surprised me. However, my results guide warned me that my results may not be as accurate as they could have been because I picked in the middle ("neutral")  for almost everything. (This is where I start talking about how much I disliked taking the test.) I only had 20 seconds to answer each question. That made me anxious and didn't help at all for the questions I could not decide on.

Some of the questions absolutely baffled me, because to me the two options, of which I was supposed to pick one, were one and the same. Often both were immediately instinctive to me. Ex. I often: 1. Encourage others. 2. Strengthen others. For me there is no difference. So I had hoped that by picking the neutral option (between the extremes), that I was telling the computer who I really am. It didn't get it. So while I feel my results were accurate, I wonder what they would have been if my true answers were taken into consideration. I would much rather sit down with a counselor or verbal test administrator and do this inventory a different way.

An "ESL Moment"

I was nervous for my first informal observation. I was going to be observed working one on one with Jose*, a student who I have worked with before, but who has to be constantly kept busy.

A little background on the student: When Jose arrived at Liberty in May two years ago, he was put into a second grade classroom. Before his arrival to the US, he had no formal or informal education. He could not even read, write, or do math in Spanish, his native language. He went back into second grade that September and is in third grade now. However, he is still reading at an1st grade basic level and has trouble with spelling. I had been working with the words "came" and "come", "hen", "goat", and other basic words. I emphasize to him about reading carefully and looking at all the letters because he makes up words occasionally, or will swap words for ones he knows. When he is reading aloud and runs into a word he is uncertain of, he will also look at me with a big smile and hopeful eyes, hoping that I will give him the answer. As much as I would love to, giving him the answer will not solve the reading problems he will have in the future. Giving him the tools to figure out how to read and sound out words will, so I say: "The words are on the page, not on my face". "What do we do when we see a word we don't know how to say?" I ask. "We sound it out." "So let's sound it out, what does the first letter say?". I do this multiple times a page.

Back to the observation: I had pulled out a variety of things for us to work on, including spelling. I want to make spelling fun and approachable so I had a bag of refrigerator magnet letters with the letters of the words I wanted him to spell. I had him spell them on the table, then when he wanted to, put them on the magnetic dry erase board. "Write down what you spelled in your journal!" I would say after every word he successfully spelled. "Close you eyes and spell it!" I would also command. A variety of activities and flexibility are essential to working with him, and having him go from reading a story, to getting up and spelling the words with magnet letters, to sitting down to write what he wrote are ways to keep him active but to maintain an environment of intrinsic motivation. When he, or any student, feels successful at spelling words, (or anything else), they want to do more! I also used words of encouragement to keep him going, and to let him know about his successes. He was doing so much better than normal at spelling and reading. When he saw the bag of remaining letters sitting on the shelf he exclaimed "there's more?!". I affirmed this and let him spell more words, which he was so proud of! My teacher, supervisor/observer and I left him to his own devices as we talked about my lesson. Meanwhile he wrote "Jose is a winner" on the board with the refrigerator magnets. He had risked spelling it wrong  in order to show he was proud of himself! "That is an ESL moment", my supervisor said. "Those are the moments that keep you going". And it truly was. 

Success sometimes is not about the big milestones, it is about the daily, overlooked, baby steps of progress that are made. That is ESL.

*Name changed for privacy.

What ESL is and why I'm in it.

I've never seen myself as a teacher. You may think this is strange as you read this blog, because it is about my experiences student teaching. I often wondered to myself in the many education classes I had, "what on Earth am I doing!?" I don't have a dream classroom. I don't like lesson planning. I had a bad attitude towards most of the education classes (before methods), and it showed in my grades. I have no dreams to be the next teacher of the year. I came close many times to changing my major. So what is wrong with me?


The truth is, that there is nothing wrong with me. I'm just not the typical education major (and I say that with love to the wonderful fellow student teachers who are at Nyack and who are so good at what they do. Seriously. They are great people and educators. Read their lesson plans sometime!). So why am I still in education? This is a question that I have been trying to figure out for my whole college career. 


Here are a few reasons I have come up with:


1. I'm stubborn. I didn't want to be one of the people who change majors 10 times. I wanted to do my 4 years and get out. Come what may, I thought I would go straight overseas the day after graduating. ESL (English as a Second Language) is an easy way for a non-business minded person  to work internationally. I love other cultures and languages and want to live overseas. The key word is I thought, because I didn't used to want to spend time on a MA or PhD. Thanks to my newfound interests in ESL's two sisters: second language acquisition and applied linguistics, now I would love to get both!


2. When I find a challenge, I don't quit. I love challenges and ESL is full of them. My 75 hours of methods classes field experience showed me that.


3. I like jobs that have different roles. E.g. lifeguarding is a two-fold job; you are trained for more than just pulling people out of the water and yelling "waaaaalk" for 9 hours a day. First aid, CPR, and people skills are all necessary to be a successful lifeguard. Camp counseling utilizes many skills as well. In my first summer of counseling, I used my skills at canoeing and archery to teach classes, diplomacy creativity to figure out how to solve problems between campers, physical endurance to keep going, play games and hike, and my ever-growing store of patience to work with inner-city adolescents for 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. I was stretched to my limit and further. I didn't know that teaching required so many different skills, or that it would be so stretching. (Perhaps I was absent that day in education 101). 


On one of my first days of student teaching, my mentor teacher said to me "In ESL, you're not just a teacher. You become an advocate for the kids". This is especially true in the public school system, where bureaucratic decisions, power struggles, and budgets from the district level to federal level tend to ignore the reason they are there in the first place: the students. What I experienced in the first few days of student teaching gave me peace that I was in the right spot. There is plenty of challenge for me, and plenty of skills to use. An ESL teacher becomes many things, a mediator, a nutritionist, nurse, test administrator, researcher, counselor, detective, psychologist, policy-maker, schedule-writer, informer, file-manager, secretary, advisory, translator, go-to-person, and shield between the government and the individual child. These are from a discussion in which my ESL teachers were listing about our responsibilities. (And of course, when there is a medical or psychological issue, we send the student to the appropriate person.) And I think that there are many other responsibilities an ESL teacher has that I haven't even discovered yet!




My first few days of student teaching at Liberty Elementary were relieving. I have always feared being a mainstream classroom teacher, they have so many responsibilities for the same students every day all day for so many different subjects! In ESL, I see the same students all day and every day (most of the time), but there are different ages, K-5, and we see some of the more often than others. This year at Liberty, the ESL students are all pull-outs, which means that we pull them out of their classrooms to ours to focus specifically on English. We are mostly responsible for teaching the reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary and grammar of English through content. We of course also help with homework or classwork of any subject that they need help with. (In different formats of teaching English, for example a sheltered classroom, specific subject matter is taught to English Language Learners (ELLS) in their own, non mainstreamed classroom).


I could go on for much longer about the intricacies of ESL but I won't! I hope this was informing as well as fun to read, please leave any feedback or comments below! I look forward to writing more and learning more!