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.