Chapter 25 was much more relevant to me, now, as I am finishing up my student teaching in MPS, than it would have been five years ago. I graduated from a predominately white, suburban high school, and diversity wasn't much an issue for me (that I was aware of anyways). However, after having experience with teaching English language learners, I was glad to have this read clear up a few things for me. At the beginning of my placement there was a student who had recently (within about 2 weeks) moved to American from China. With that said, he didn't know any English, yet sat in the English class every day. I felt sorry for the student, because I would see him look at his fellow classmates' work and copy their answers to the best of his ability. My co-op had no clue what she was supposed to do with him, except try to teach him in English.
Eventually he was transferred to a different school where he would be able to learn the English language, and my co-op was extremely relieved; but after reading chapter 25, my perspective of this issue has greatly changed. I really wonder -considering the school I'm currently teaching in had these type of resources -if it would have benefited the student to be taught the content we were learning in his native language. I strongly think he would have picked up on the content. I do believe that it is important for students or anyone for that matter to learn English at some point, but when? I'm not entirely sure. Overall, I know that this chapter made me see the whole "English learning" issue from a different angle. It's definitely complicated.
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5 years ago
1 comment:
What I grapple with on this topic, Jenny, is what languages do we decide to teach in? I am not a proponent of English Only education, but when I begin to think of programs in bilingual education, I am overwhelmed with questions as to how they would actually work. What languages to we choose to have bilingual programs for? Is it just Spanish and English? Or Chinese (and do we choose Mandarin Chinese?), like the student at your school? What about Hmong, Italian, Slavic, German, Serbian, Arabic (of which there are different dialects)?
Not to mention, as you alluded to, would all schools have the resources to implement bilingual education programs? At my placement, they can't even afford a librarian, let alone a bunch of language teachers. Or would each teacher be required to learn a language?
I think bilingual education is a great idea, but I want to know the specifics of how people want to implement the programs rather than reasearch on the negative effect of English Only education presented in this article.
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