December 8

I have read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in an EAF class here at ISU, and once getting past the very complicated language, I am struck again and again by the powerfulness of this work. Critical pedagogy may be the most important thing we learn about as teacher education majors. Oppression is really never-ending. Across time, borders, and oceans - oppression is found everywhere. One place we can vow to end it is in the classroom. Fundamental societal changes need to occur in order to end oppression anywhere, and the classroom can be a great starting point for that change. Freire quotes, " The awakening of critical consciousness leads the way to expression of social discontents precisely because these discontents are real components of an oppressive situation" (36). Critical consciousness is the way!

December 1

Kuma's chapter 13, Monitoring Teaching Acts, offers a very nice closing to this book. In ISU's Teacher Ed. Program, we are constantly taught to reflect, reflect, reflect, and Kuma is offering strategies for self-ovserving, self-analyzing, and self-evaluating ourselves as teachers. I love that Kuma expresses the need for a user-friendly system as opposed to very complicated models discussed in the beginning of the chapter. The M&M scheme was extremely detailed, and I wish I would have read it before conducting my observations! I found episode 13.1 very interesting, and the M&M scheme made it possible for the teacher to recognize the missed learning opportunities in that class discussion. I think it is very common for teachers (especially beginning teachers) to recognize learner-initiated opportunities that are in line with the lesson plan or agenda and ignore ones that are not as described on p. 301. What an interesting concept! I am very impressed with this strategy and its integration of teacher, observer, and learner experiences to truly offer useful information to the classroom teacher. The use of videotaping is obviously invaluable, and I will certainly be thinking about this in the future.

November 17

My final project is going well. I am observing at Kingsley Junior High approximately eight hours a week and writing my observation reports. I also have the opportunity to teach parts of lessons, and the teacher and I work together quite nicely. Over break, I will begin connecting my reports to the readings we have done in class.

Kuma's chapter 11, Ensuring Social Relevance was my favorite reading this week. He talked about the politics of language, being aware of all contexts that the language is being taught in (international, national, ethnic, political, religious, etc.), as well as English as a global language, the home language's role in the classroom, and the use of appropriate teaching materials. It is important to know the role English plays on a global level so that we avoid the standardization that he describes in detail. At the end of all of the talk about how a language gets standardized, he says, "Standardization is essentially a political act over which teachers may not have direct control...The least teachers can do is to recognize the rich linguistic and cultural heritage the learners bring with them and use them as resources to build bridges between what is known and what is new" (249).

He also talks about the use of the L1 in the classroom, which I thought was extremely interesting. This is something I have observed at KJHS and I was very confused about. He says that it is actually beneficial and in most cases not used to its potential. We can see how in the episodes he lists. They show instances of using the L1 to recognize their own cultural differences, making the students feel more comfortable by encouraging them, and more (see list on p. 254). He quotes Elsa Auerbach when he says, "...both research and practice show that the use of the L1 in early L2 classes is critical not only for later success but also to a smooth transition to the target language" (254).

The final point in chapter 11 is the use of appropriate teaching materials. He says that textbooks are not a neutral medium and talks about the use of materials that represent both the local and global cultures rather than the culture of the target language community. This chapter was so helpful for me. I learned so much about best practices and how to make sure the pedagogy of possibility is upheld in the classroom.

November 10

As we discussed in the lobby of the theater, the movie was obviously very well made with very wealthy contributors, etc. Therefore, it was pretty convincing, however, I believe it was extremely one-sided. Afterwards, I was left with a lot of questions...some of them I cannot even remember now - I wish I would have written this earlier - but overall, it was simply an attack on the public school system and teacher unions that "keep jobs locked into place after 2 years." Although the cute children and loving parents who wanted more for their children tugged at my heart strings, I know this is not what the entire public school system is like. In order for our nation's education system to change, the change must occur at a much deeper level...at the level of families and communities and hopefully, eventually, we will have some sort of societal level wake up call that will make us realize that if we don't improve our education system, we are going to suffer as a nation. The change this movie suggested, disbanding the unions and closing public schools with replacements of what I am not really sure - charter schools? is not the answer to the problem. Obviously there is not one answer to the problem...which is why this movie is extremely misleading. It leads us to beleive that there is this simple solution - that all public school teachers need to go and we need to start over by starting these private fascilities - which is not a reasonable, justifiable, or long term fix to the problem. So what is? This is the question. It is obvious that we need reform...but how and what do we do next?

In Kuma Ch. 10, we take a look at the four language domains of reading, speaking, listening, and writing. It is obvious that we should not be separating these skills when it comes to teaching English Language learners. We should be providing them with a classroom environment that integrates all of them into well prepared, engaging activities. Kuma gives tons of examples of activities that are successful in doing this, and once again, I am really grateful for this book and all of the ideas. It seems to be something so obvious, but reading about it and breaking it down will really make it stick with me and be an important factor when I am planning for class.

November 3 SLAM

Wow! This was definitely a very good experience. It is amazing to see how talented people are on campus. I wish I was able to write poetry! This event got me thinking about all of the different strengths and interests my students will have and further reminded me to think in this light. I have actually never been to a poetry reading before, and this was extremely powerful. The diversity in the types of works was really interesting to me. I loved the rap. I felt like I knew that young man after his reading. I also really liked the Who is You poem. This would actually be great to use in the classroom, because I think a lot of immigrants or sons/daughters of immigrants could relate to her words.

One thing I noticed and was a little shocked by was the host of the show and his sense of humor. I will admit, I definitely laughed and found his jokes funny, but it got me thinking about the way we handle stereotypes and dealing with diversity. For example, after "Who is You," he said something along the lines of her bad grammar, and if a black person would have written that, they would have never gotten away with it, but she was Asian. Is this the best way to change the horribly prejudicial world we live in...by laughing about it and at it? I feel that sometimes we do this to try to diffuse the situation, but when I caught myself laughing, I felt really terrible inside. I wonder how she felt after spilling her guts to a room full of strangers about her identity crisis...

As for the last performance, I was actually pretty disturbed. It is amazing how different people can be affected by different works of art/literature/etc. It was really interesting to see the room emptying out, and as much as it pained me to do so, I didn't think I could stand much more. I actually had nightmares that night!

All in all, it was an experience that really got me thinking about pretty much everything. So I'd say it was successful!

October 27

Module 2, Building Language Awareness was a great follow up from our discussion last Wednesday. It is very interesting that traditional aspects of language, such as grammar, are once again holding an important place in teaching English as a second language. Grammar is being brought back, but in a different light. Instead of memorizing grammatical forms and constructs through drills and rote learning excersizes, it is now important that we teach grammar through activities that include authentic materials that will teach students these grammatical forms in a variety of contexts. I thought the activities in the video were good because it gave the students an opportunity to relate an American history lesson to their own personal histories, and the use of real brochures to plan a trip was a good tool to show students certain grammatical functions in a certain context.

What is diversity? To me, to you, to American society? Why do we have to put a label on people in order to deem certain cities, schools, and classrooms "diverse." The very first page in Ann Johns' article, Linguistic Diversity and Instructional Practices says, "...in many parts of North America, the "African American" census category now includes a growing contingent whose families have just arrived from Somalia or Ethopia in eastern Africa, students very different from the young people descended from West Africans who were forcibly brought to the United States in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries." This is so very true. What makes us categorize ourselves into the White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian categories? It is clearly being based on race - skin color, the shape of our eyes, hair type - IT'S LUDICROUS! This should inspire us as teachers to embrace diversity in a different way than society is telling us to. Each of our students comes to our classroom with his or her own sets of challenges, family life, linguistic abilities. Realizing this may be key to helping our students find themselves and success.

As Johns explores the "Hispanic" group of students' discrepencies between BICS and CALP, I am reminded of the students that I have been observing over the last few weeks. It is amazing how certain students can be so talkative and social - sometimes I think why are they even in ESL? - but when we sit down to read an excerpt from the textbook or work on writing a spatial order paragraph, the student is at a loss for words. This happens across cultures, races, categories, whatever you wanna call them, but it is certainly interesting to explore the differences between 1st, 1.5, and 2nd generation immigrants from a certain country. Of course the opposite is found as well. There is one student in a beginning class that I am observing that rarely ever speaks, and yet when you look at his writing, it seems that he should be in a much higher level. His CALP is great, but his BICS needs practice. In this article, we also see the importance of distinguishing between different varieties of English and what our students know and have been taught or introduced to in the past.

I love that Johns offers solutions to this ever present struggle to embrace diversity and help all of our students achieve success. Getting to know your students is obviously the first vital step. I have seen my CT's methods, and I am very encouraged by her openness with her students. She seems to serve as more than just a teacher to her students, which is really important for children who may be so lost in every aspect of the word.

October 20

Chapter 6: Promoting Learner Autonomy was really interesting for me because I actually related it to my Material Evaluation. The textbook I evaluated, Inside, by National Geographic was an excellent resource to help teachers promote learner autonomy. Kuma says that, "The narrow view of learner autonomy involves, simply, enabling learners to learn how to learn" (133). To me, this really encompasses the underlying message of post-method pedagogy which encourages teachers to form their own teaching methods based on experience in the classroom. If the teacher knows how to promote learner autonomy, he/she will be able to, in a sense, "train" students to use their own personal library of learning strategies which will lead to success and motivation for the student. It is difficult to stay motivated when you are confused all of the time and you are constantly recieving failing grades. Teaching students learning and reading strategies is something that can help them find a starting point and improve their language skills from there. Inside did a wonderful job of explicitly explaining learning and reading strategies, and the district where I am doing my clinical observations has done a great job of building reading strategies into the curriculum which goes along with their textbook choice.

October 13

In reading this week's article, I was a little shocked to see curriculum compared to marketing strategies and who are considered the "customers" or "consumers." The article compared teachers to mothers and students to babies...the whole analogy made me take a step back and think about the way curriculum really works. I mean it's true that the text book writers, material developers, and test writers are the main customers of curriculum, but I guess I have never really looked at it that way. It is interesting to look at education from the viewpoint of marketing or politics and see the way it mirrors the society around it. If enough parents want something and they have a particular importance in a community, it will most likely affect the schools. I am always questioning this - who makes education the way it is? All of us together, of course, but it is just interesting to see it portrayed in this fashion and think about who has the most "at stake" when it comes to education. As I continued to read about content-based, process-based, and product-based curriculums, I was confused as to why we are making a distinction at all. Why don't we take all of these aspects into consideration? She does go on to say that depending on the needs of the students or area, many of these may be combined to form the curriculum, and I wonder once again, who makes that decision?

I also found it interesting to take into consideration what the role of the target language is in the particular community where a curriculum is being developed. If we truly were to take this into consideration, wouldn't all American students be learning some target language at a younger age since so many languages are spoken widely in the U.S.?

October 6

In reading Kuma's Chapter 8, Activating Intuitive Heuristics, I was faced with a similar reaction I have had to much of this book. As I began the chapter, I definitely agreed with the whole "self discovery on the part of the learner," and I still do see how amazing this would be...but I am faced with questions of practicality and if this concept is a little bit too idealistic. In episode 8.2, the teacher does a great job of fostering this self discovery, but how many classes out of 10 in that same scenario would have gotten the same grammatical structures out of looking at this picture? I bet this very teacher if placed with a different group of students would not be able to get this point across herself. What happens when you plan this great activity and present it to the class to be answered by a sea of blank faces. We could argue that this goes back to knowing your students, but what would this teacher have done to foster self-discovery in a basic ESL class? Would we still be striving for this, or would we be taking a more deductive approach? As I read about the benefits of inductive teaching, I began to think of my own learning styles. I am a deductive learner. I like to be given the rules and the opportunity to practice and master them...I am not really sure if I would do well in this type of setting. I would feel lost and without direction. I was glad that the chapter progressed to talk about more of a mixture between inductive and deductive strategies, and I think if we look at the brain and go back to what we have learned about left/right brained studens, we would see the importance of including both. This also seems to me to be very westernized...I wonder how students of different cultures would take this push for self-discovery. This would be interesting to research across levels and cultures!

September 29

I have yet to meet with my conversation partner! We have been assigned to each other for about 2 weeks now, but she is very busy applying to the master's program at ISU. She said she would contact me on Friday, and I am hoping to finally get my first meeting with her early next week. I have developed an introductory blurb, a discourse completion task worksheet, and a needs analysis for her, and I am really looking forward to getting started.

As for the readings, Sleeter's, Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelming Presence of Whiteness, really spoke to me because I just observed in a bilingual school this Monday in Little Village in Chicago. I actually attended CPS for one year, and I have always been around diversity, but a lot of the students in ISU's program have little background in this area. It is obviously very important to embrace diversity and incorporate it into the classroom no matter what context you are in, and it is interesting to read about the various ways to prepare pre-service teachers to do this. I think ISU is heading in the right direction with the diversity hour requirement for clinical observations and the bus trips to Chicago that are offered to students, but if we delve deeper into the feelings of pre-service teachers and even the professors who are teaching us pre-service teachers, it is really astounding. The materials that we read and view in our education courses portray urban education to be this crazy animal that we have to tackle, when in fact, it all depends on the context. I saw a Chicago public bilingual school that taught pre-K to 2nd grade this Monday, and it was an amazing school. The teachers and resources were more amazing than I ever remember having as a kid, even in the suburbs. The teachers were very enthusiastic, the parents were involved (and they were majority Latino), and the school was full of pride and support. It was a great environment. The classes were large, but well-behaved. It was very interesting to see what a good teacher and environment can do for these kids, regardless of their SES or LEP status. Instead of teaching us to be afraid of urban education, maybe they should let us get out there and see for ourselves. We might just find that it's not that bad.

September 21

Reading Chapter 4 in the textbook really opened my eyes to the idea of mismatches in the classroom. It is so important for us as teachers to be conscious of this before entering the classroom so that we are well-equipped to turn them into opportunities. It was really striking for me that in the episodes in the chapter, the teachers were actually unaware at times that they were even occuring, leaving the students very confused. I loved the questionnaires that were included in the chapter because it is clear that if the students and teachers are aware that mismatches are unavoidable and are going to happen, it will be much easier to use these situations as learning opportunities.

In Kumaravadivelu's article, Toward a Postmethod Pedagogy, he talks about the three parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. As I was reading about the parameter of particularity, I thought back to last week's readings, particularly Guangwei Hu's article, which discusses the use of CLT in the People's Republic of China. The article states that "It is dangerous for educational policymakers to take an 'autonomous' attitude as opposed to an 'ideological' one, to pedagogical innovation and to succumb to shifts in intellectual fashions" (102). We need to recognize that every situation and context calls for its own particular methods and practices, and Kumaravadivelu emphasizes this concept yet again with this parameter. He gives great examples of trying to implement CLT in classrooms around the world, such as in "Pakistan, Shamim (1996) reports that her attempt to introduce communicative language teaching into her classroom met with a great deal of resistance from her learners, making her 'terribly exhausted' and leading her to realize that, by introducing this methodology, she was actually 'creating psychological barriers to learning' (p. 109)." For me, this is all coming back to refusing to accept just one single end-all, be-all method that is going to work in any situation or context. It is clear that context, in every aspect of the word, plays a huge role in deciding which method(s) to use in the classroom.

September 8

As a language learner and teacher, I have experienced many different approaches. I don't think I have ever experienced the use of only ONE approach at a time. This is interesting to me because it is very clear that there is no "best" method that is going to reach every student. When we look at the history of language teaching and the methods that have come and gone, we can see that we are always looking for the best way to teach languages, when really there is no "best" way. Every student has individual needs, and only a variety of stimulating materials and methods in the classroom will be successful. For this reason, we are now learning about ALL of the methods and various assessment practices. I personally learn best when I am alone with my book and a teacher as a guide. I like to listen and read the language at the same time. In the beginning, I would study lists and lists of vocabulary translated from English to the target language. We cannot assume, however, that our students are going to learn the same way we did. I feel that this may be a common mistake that teachers make, and I will be sure to make a conscious effort not to do this in the future.

This is the first semester that I have really stepped outside of my content area of Spanish and all my pre-conceived notions about teaching and began to REALLY learn about what it is we should be doing in the classroom today. I am a bit overwhelmed by everything that our professors are now telling us we should be doing, all of the videos we have been watching showing good teaching methods that I certainly was never taught with, and observing schools like U-high which uses so much technology in the classroom daily, I feel like I am fighting to keep up with what is going on. All of this is pretty scary, seeing as I am about to enter the classroom as a student teacher next semester, and reading the basic roles of a teacher in Kuma's Beyond Methods is a little calming. It gives us a place to start when thinking about what kind of teacher we want to be and what we should be doing in the classroom as effective teachers. In chapter 1, Kuma describes three roles of teachers: teachers as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and transformative intellectuals. Teachers as reflective practitioners is pretty old fashioned, but in reading the description, I was certainly reminded of some teachers I have had in the past. It is easy to remember my really great teachers (which are few and far between) because they were constantly changing things up, keeping us interested, and they were full of reflection. Perhaps this is why I am very in tune with teachers as reflective practitioners. If there is one thing I am learning, it is that we are responsible for our own professional development and reflection is key. We should constantly be working towards new ideas, more ways to reach different students, research, etc. Teachers as transformative intellectuals is also very interesting and many of the parts seem very important. Transforming individuals inside and outside the classroom is what we should be doing as teachers. Advocating for language learning is the first step I think we can take as language teachers to bring awareness to our students and initiate change.

September 1

The readings this week covered a lot of different material and topics which really made me think about not only what we are going to be facing in our future classrooms in terms of ESL students, but what we are moving towards as an entire nation and culture.

The astounding statistics of immigrants, children of immigrants, and ESL students in schools in the U.S. found in the New Demography of American Schools give us a quantitative snapshot of exactly what we need to be preparing ourselves for as teachers. For example, according to this article, 1 in 5 school-age children are children of immigrants. These students are faced with so many hardships aside from the language barrier, such as the overwhelming number of LEP students who come from low income families. As teachers, we need to be aware of this and be understanding and supportive of our students.

In Cultural Diversity, we read about the wide variety of contributions immigrants from all over the world have made to our society and culture here in the U.S. In addition to music, dance, literature, and religion, so many of our day to day products and systems have come from immigrants. For example, according to the article, a Chinese American patented the process to make evaporated milk. An Arab American founded and opened St. Jude Research Hospital which employs researchers from all over the world who have discovered treatments of cancer and saved thousands of American lives. The sad part about this is that their contributions are often not valued, and immigrants are still faced with stereotypes and discrimination. As teachers, we can work to change this outlook and fight these negative connotations that our students might have.

Unfortunately, the salad bowl and kaleidoscope metaphors are not always embraced in the U.S. Instead of appreciating our diversity and seeing ourselves as one nation, immigrants are still judged on the color of their skin, language, religion, and even clothing and customs. We are going to see this every day in our classrooms and our schools. The majority of us pre-service teachers are going to be faced with diversity in our classrooms, and unfortunately, our students are going to be divided. The Asian Americans will stick together. The Arab Americans will stick togteher. The Latin Americans will stick together, and even within these groups will be sub-groups of students who have been here longer, who can speak better English, who have chosen to act more "American" often times abandoning signs of their native culture. This fact is sad but true, and as a future language teacher, I would like to do everything in my power to change this.

In The ESL Standards: Bridging the Academic Gap for English Language Learners, we read about the very important goals and standards for the classroom. They focus on integrating English with content instead of just being seen as a language subject. This means that all teachers will have to know about these standards regardless of their content area because they are bound to have ESL students in their classrooms. Something I once read about included this concept of our goal to "bridge the gap" which we do while, perhaps inadvertenly, forcing them to assimilate to the American culture where they must speak English and know how to act appropriately in our culture in order to succeed. At the same time, we are trying to teach our American students about other languages and cultures, knowing the benefits of speaking more than one language and being culturally aware. If we could only work harder to conserve the culture and languages of our non-English speaking students by forming an exchange to teach our American students about the cultures and languages of their fellow classmates, while helping them acquire another language and culture in addition to their own, I believe we could work wonders in changing the outlook of current American society in regards to other cultures, languages, and immigrants in general. It would take a very very long time, but I can only hope...

August 25

My dream job would be teaching English to speakers of other languages anywhere abroad, preferably in Spanish-speaking country. The context in which I would like to teach here in the U.S. would be in a urban setting teaching English as a second language to immigrants. More specifically, I would love to teach at the secondary level in Little Village in Chicago. Working with students from different cultural backgrounds is really rewarding for me. The economic background of my students isn't something I normally think about. In any school setting, you will find students of different socioeconomic statuses, and I have worked with students from low-income families as well as very wealthy students and have not had very much difficulty adjusting in this way.

It is important to be knowlegdeable and conscious of TESOL issues for all teachers due to the huge population of non-English speaking immigrants in the U.S. The majority of teachers will experience ESL students in their classrooms at some point in their career, and they will need to be able to adapt materials and reach that student in different ways. In my case, I want to spend a lot of time with ESL students, helping them transition into a new culture while preserving their own culture, so the issues are obviously central for me.

As a language educator, I want to encourage students to get excited about new languages and cultures. I think that the U.S. is definitely behind and at times pretty ignorant when it comes to learning about different cultures around the world, and language needs to be more important in our education system. Being able to communicate with people of other cultures actually helps students become more aware of their own culture and language. Spreading this cultural awareness to my students is just one of the many benefits that comes with studying a second language, and I want to get my future students excited about these benefits and learning more about the rest of the world as well as about themselves as individuals.

I would like to learn more about practical applications for the classroom in this course. Standards, assessments, and classroom management techniques are all things I would like to learn more about and be able to bring with me to the classroom next semester while I student teach as well as in my future classroom.