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.