Responses to Language Diversity; Prompt 6

The world of education in my eyes is taking on a whole new level due to one major aspect: the growing number of English Language Learners in our schools. Having a language barrier between students and parents and teachers can become very troubling at times because the point of a message may never come across and can literally get lost in translation! In my SL classroom, I do not see alot of tolerance (not the exact word I want to use but close enough!) for any language other than English. Now this could be due to the fact that I came into this classroom more than halfway through the school year and the teacher may be expecting her students to be only speaking English at this point. I am sure that if I was in the classroom early in the school year I would see a more tolerant level for other languages in the classroom.
During one visit to my SL classroom, I had a difficult time keeping all three of my students on task. We started off playing Sight-Word Bingo and of course all three wanted to be the 'Caller' of the game, so to settle things I appointed myself as the Caller. After about twenty minutes of Bingo, we moved on to read a book the teacher had requested we read together. Again all three students wanted to read first so I just appointed the child to my right as the reader. This student decided that they were jsut going to go ahead and read the whole book, even though I kept stopping the student and telling the student that the others needed a chance to read. The student who was second to read took matters into her own hands and decided to read over the first student! So I had two students reading the same story at the same time and they were not listening to my instruction. Finally I interrupted them and said we are moving onto the next activity. I usually find it difficult to have my students read books, they much prefer to play the games and do the activities the teacher leaves for our group so introducing a board game got them to listen to me. But of course there were issues with the board game: one student wanted the star-shaped game piece, another wanted to continue reading the story and another one wanted to go first in the game. Some how they figured out who got what game piece and who would go first themselves and we began to play. This visit I found very trying but I did not give up and I kept doing my best to keep my students occupied with the materials the teacher left for us. As a future teacher, I know I will run into days like this in my classroom and I will need to be able to keep my composure and keep my students on task, so this visit was good practice for this!!

Collaborating with Parents; Prompt 5

Seeing the teacher in my SL classroom handling the variety of students in the room makes me wonder how she handles dealing with the parents of these students. In a discussion with her, she told me that most of the parents of her students do not speak English well and communicating is tough sometimes. When talking about one of the students I tutor, my teacher told me that the only way to communicate with the parents of this student was to send a letter home with a sibling and the sibling would translate the note to the parents. It is unfortunate that this is the only working system of communication between the teacher and the student's parents because the note could easily be misinterpreted, misunderstood or could not even be read to the parents. It is sad that even in modern times teachers cannot have basic communication with the parents of their students due to language barrier.
When I am a teacher one day, I hope that I will be able to have efficient communications with the parents of my students. One method of communication I can think of now that I would like to utilise one day is email. I feel that actually seeing the message from the teacher may make more of an impact on the parents. Also, parents who do not speak English could easily copy and paste the email into an online translator in order to see the message in their own language. Although an email may sometimes seem impersonal, I still feel that it can definitely be an effective means of communication between teacher and parent. Other issues besides language barriers that I may face when trying to communicate with parents is that parents may do nothing to fix a possible problem I could point out with their child. For instance, I may alert parents of a problem with their child in the classroom that should be dealt with at home and the parents may not take any action. If I were to encounter such a problem, I would send home another note about the issue but making sure there is high imortance on the issue.
This prompt actuallly fit perfectly with an experience I had in my SL classroom. One of the students I tutor has some behavorial problems. Each week the teacher would threaten to send a note home and each following week I would not see an improvement in the student's behavior. I feel uncomfortable asking my teacher why this student's behavior has not improved because I dont want her to think I am criticizing her methods of communication! But, I wonder if a note was ever sent home in the first place...

Assessments in a Diverse Classroom; Prompt 3

As a future teacher going into classrooms in these modern times means walking into schools that are much more culturally and ethnically diverse than they have ever been. This growing population of diverse students is changing how teachers must teach and assess their students since there is a variety of languages in some classrooms. In order to accomadate the variety of languages in a classroom, as a teacher I would try to include some aspects of students' different cultures in order to show that although some cultures are different, there are still important and should be respected. In assessments, for students who still struggle with English I could help them by using a translator in order to help the students understand what is being asked of them.
During one of the visits to my SL classroom, I had to deal with one of my student's very stubborn behaviors. This student is very bright and is usually on task, but during my time with her she was very stubborn and would pout if she did not get her way. Finally, I told her that if she wants to sit there and pout that we will just continue on with our activity without her. This sort of approach to her stubborness actually worked. After a while of not being included, she eventually gave in and worked with our group leaving her stubborn ways behind. I felt bad being stern with her, but she needed to discontinue her attitude because it was hindering the learning of the other two students in the group!