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...