Sign Language in my class

I told my class on Monday that we’d be learning sign language as our class project and I can’t believe how excited they were and how much initiative some of them took.

This is one major part of our curriculum where I really have total control and I’m very excited myself. I am going to teach them poems and songs and even some mother goose rhymes using sign language.

My table that consists of my chinese speakers and some high-generating spanish- speakers was particularly unleashed. One student at that table bought a Mother Goose book of rhymes to share, and my very shy student, YL, actually stood up and demonstrated to the class how to sign his word! I had given each student two words to learn to teach to the rest of the class, and with prompting from his friends at the table, he stood up, faced the class and showed them “clean”. He even let me hi-5 him! This, a boy who hides his smiles and normally won’t look at me. This class holds a lot of promise and potential.

In teaching ASL, it also offers me a way to teach nouns, adjectives, and verbs, which otherwise are not in our curriculum and which I find helpful when learning a new language. Yay :)

Incorporating Languages I Don’t Know Into My Teaching

using Chinese within sentence frames

As I have mentioned previously, I have 9 students who speak languages in class that I don’t – Indonesian, Chinese, and Bangla. I also have Urdu and Pashto speakers but they have a little more English than the others, much like most of the Spanish speakers in my class of 28.

The majority of these new students are Chinese-speaking. Initially, I had them seated in pairs but mixed into other tables. I did this mixing thinking it would encourage more English usage, which it seemed to, but they were very disconnected from the class; like they were inside a bubble that they’d breach only rarely.

However, during a spelling bee last week, I had them all together at one table. Their job was to follow along with the written words as students, lined up, spelled them, and they were to raise their hands when a word was misspelled. I wanted to see if they knew the letters, and two did. Two others were able to follow along, though, and maybe didn’t feel comfortable raising their hands.

During this bee, I noticed that while they may not have been speaking in english, there was more language learning happening – they were closer to the front of my class and discussing, working out together what was going on.

So, this week, I created a table of 9 – with the 6 Chinese speakers plus 3 Spanish speakers, right at the front of the room. This also allows me to pool my resources – bilingual dictionaries and such – and focus on what troubles they may be having.

One thing we are working on right now are biographies of a person they know. I always put sentence frames on the board but now I add Chinese as a guide. It’s a bit mechanical but I feel it has to be right now because they simply can’t do sentences or even put the right english word after a frame on their own. I also put photocopied entries from our dictionary as part of the word wall.

I don’t know Chinese but I have studied Japanese, so I have some understanding of the use of characters and I assume the syntax is much the same, and therefore quite different from English. So I don’t know exactly how their translations work, but I primarily rely on one other Chinese student (who arrived to the country last year) who speaks Beginner English. Not only does this seem to help, but they are far more engaged during class. I think, on some level, they feel like valid participants in the class. I have also been trying to learn some chinese and they have been helping me with my pronunciation, which I think also helps make them understand that I value their language and am also comfortable making mistakes!

Using the first language is always crucial, if frowned upon by some, and really not easy when you don’t already know it yourself!

and i thought the worst was over

Last week my principal was supposed to come observe me but she never came. She came today and I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I am feeling so bummed. I had a really great lesson planned that would have pleased her to no end but I didn’t do that one because our students in 5th grade have to create certain things as part of the biography unit and I decided at the last minute that if I didn’t explicitly teach how to do that, they wouldn’t be able. But given it was last minute, it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.

And it is admittedly chaotic in my room. I have kids reading in groups or partnerships for about 10-15 minutes in biography and then the rest of the time they are reading fiction. Then some go to the computers to work on a program for language learners. My levels range from -A to P, so it is a big challenge for me. It’s like a one room schoolhouse. And part of me feels like – let her see it in its most natural state. I am new and definitely am functioning beyond my strengths in many ways. Other teachers tell me I should have a para and other supports and that it’s incredible the numbers I have given their needs. I don’t know about all that but managing it all during Readers is definitely my weakness. I just have to remind myself she has gotten glowing reviews from other APs.

UGH

in-school suspensions?

Whose idea was it that students who do things worthy of a suspension should first he “suspended” by having to go to another classroom first? Where teachers become like prison wardens? Even when what the student does is potentially harmful to other students’ health and well-being? Is this a step a school has to take before they can move to another level of consequences?

I have a student who got in trouble several times for essentially sexually harassing other students, either by making moaning noises and “grinding” other students or the floor, chairs, etc., and sending around at least one sexually-explicit note, touching girls, and daring another boy to open the girls’ bathroom door. Now, he had an incident where he either coaxed or forced a boy to play with poop while in the boys’ bathroom.

This can’t be normal boy misbehavior. If you ask me, something is happening in his home to cause this odd behavior. But even if some seriously bad “education” isn’t happening, something is wrong enough that simply sending him to another building at the same school just isn’t enough.

He needs counseling. And, frankly, I don’t think he should be allowed back in my classroom to potentially hurt a girl. I just don’t see how sending him to another classroom is in any way going to have an effect on him. Neither would a “stay home and play video games” suspension.

*sigh*

what are we in for?

Layoffs of school aides. Threats of budget cuts.
More students crowding into our classrooms. Many of them new to the school or country, thus needing to learn brand new routines and languages.
More changes to expectations for classroom teachers’ manner of instruction (such as teaching points) and data collection.

Teachers who I remember still feeling optimistic in November of last year are exhausted, headachey and declaring themselves DONE! already.

These can’t be good signs.

I personally had a lot of hope and optimism drained out of me recently thanks to an unrelated, personal issue, but at least I now know that that can’t be the cause for this neverending drain I am feeling. It’s unfortunately a shared experience.

What i like to call the biggest* conundrum that will never be solved

The massive “poor working conditions” umbrella can bundle many diverse challenges, ranging from furnaces that malfunction in freezing weather to inadequate textbooks to oversized classes to endless after-school meetings. Few of these can be remedied by individual teachers or even administrators. They require no less than a total restructuring of our educational system, along with a serious infusion of cash. In short, this falls into the not-in-our-lifetime category. -Coleen Armstrong, Teacher Magazine, 11/18/2009

Believe it or not, but reading this made me smile (apparently I have a tendency to smile and laugh when others would cry in pain and pull their hair out, which I probably should). I was actually just having this conversation just the other day – the volcano-like problems that are hidden beneath the banal day-to-day problems we experience and how we’d have to unearth THEM to get anywhere near solving the problems we’re actually aware of and working on all the time.

I was having this conversation with a teacher who is a year newer than me and who was venting about the ways in which school administrators seek out the newest or freshest or most passionate teachers and suck them dry before –or leading them into– burn out. And it’s not because administrators are evil, although they may tend to be more like business managers than teachers with a philosophy of education. It’s these damn volcanoes we’re constantly on top of, “unawares”

My personal frustrations in my first year of teaching focused on my feeling inadequate and unable to make the difference I wanted to, in part because I was new but also because I was a push-in with roughly 120 students to serve. Last year was great, but I was frustrated by a special education student who had been referred 2 years earlier but never tested, and who was painfully aware and embarrassed by his different abilities, and I felt I didn’t know how to teach him to read. But I never felt so overwhelmed that I considered quitting.

Welcome to November 2009. I started this year thinking I was teaching kids I knew in fourth grade. A few days before school started, I learned I’d be teaching fifth grade. I was told I’d have 20 students, about 12 beginners, the rest intermediate or advanced. I now have 28 students and all eight are new to the country and speak no English.

Sometimes people think I just have to differentiate for the “newcomers”, the “beginners”, “intermediates” and “advanced” in 4 neat packages. No, I have a very wide-ranging class with essentially 28 different levels of English with various strengths, weaknesses and needs. This is far more challenging than what I did before. I shouldn’t have a class this size. It honestly shouldn’t be legal. It should be reduced because of their special needs that go far beyond teaching the content areas. But, no. In fact, I’ve been told I can have up to 32, as if I were a general education class. This number of students is overwhelming to any teacher anyway, but add on top of it any number of extra needs (or, in my case, multiply those special needs by 28), and you know what it’s like.

I have dreams and nightmares about this class constantly. And please don’t tell me that if I reach one child, then I’ve done a great job. Bullshit. That is not my job, and evaluating myself according to the most meager standards makes me feel MORE incompetent to meet their needs, not less.

So, there are the frustrations I feel in trying to figure out how to balance all the things the kids need so that they are all learning SOME portion of what they personally need in addition to the general content standards (or, trying to figure out what they need to even access and understand every content area) – never mind trying to figure out how to communicate with them.

Then there’s the frustration with my administration’s seeming desire to want to just dump all these kids in my class without any thought as to the effect it will have on them or me. They expect me to be able to do all this and I don’t know if I should feel appreciated, used, or unimportant (aka “these kids won’t score high on the tests, so who cares what class they are in”).

But the even bigger problem – the volcano – is that the ENTIRE set up is AGAINST these students. Why should a student who has come from Bangladesh have to take the NY Social Studies test? Even if it’s in their language, or translated to them, who in their arrogant, ignorant mind thinks they’re learning our approach to history in their schools?? Or that they’re fully able to grasp what is being taught to them in English – in any subject – that they ought to take ANY state tests created for native English speakers??

What sense does it make for a student who barely or never went to school in their country be placed in fifth grade simply because of their age?? Because it’d be even more insane to put them in 1st grade???And these kids are going to be promoted to the next grade no matter what because the fact that they don’t know English can’t be used against them.

These students deserve a school that offers the time and environment necessary for learning the content and English simultaneously without forcing them to suddenly conform to the pacing or testing that native students do. Yes, they shouldn’t be placed on hold from learning until they grasp English, but they also shouldn’t be placed on the same pacing and grading system either as students born into English. Dual language is a preferred alternative, but right now, not every child is going to be given a class where they can learn in their first language — there simply isn’t the money, resources, or teachers.

But that is precisely the problem. We are soooo far from offering immigrant kids what they ACTUALLY need. The whole system needs to be upended. I went to a non-graded school for one year, and while it didn’t have the socialized learning that these kids need, the idea that kids are allowed to progress in each area at their own rate while still being held according to certain standards, I think that would be an important detail that schools in my imaginary world would allow.

Armstrong, in the article I quote above, tries to address a particular aspect of teaching that can drive teachers away, so the rest of the article really didn’t speak to me. There are no teachers, veteran or otherwise, doing what I’m doing, at least not at my school. And I can’t say I know if I will ever find my niche because the content of what I’m teaching doesn’t bother me at all, neither does the grade level — it’s the other more demanding needs of the students, and that changes every year, with every grade. I could have just as easily been teaching a third grade like this. What doesn’t change is the inequality and injustice of what they have to confront and me constantly trying – even in my sleep – to find a way for them around that.

So, while I have said to myself that if I get one more student, I will quit, that I am at my breaking point, I know I won’t. And not because of the economy. But because, despite all the frustration and the things I hate about the position I am in, I feel that what I’m doing is really important and I’m hopeful it will get better.

*right up there with every other injustice you can name, of course

inquiry teams

Have any of you ever heard of Inquiry Teams with only one person on them? I was asked to be my own Inquiry Team. Is that as odd as it sounds?

But the teacher said we could talk!

Every teacher struggles I think with the types and levels of talking in class. Kids have a tendency for the gift of gab and how well a teacher curbs this is often used as a lithmus test of her strengths as a classroom manager by those observing.

Enter my class this year. Maybe 5% can understand and make themselves understood in English. So whether I instruct them to work in pairs or not, they are going to use each other to negotiate meaning in class. As long as work is being done, I really don’t mind talking, even off-task talking. I believe it helps to create a comfortable atmosphere, unless it is disturbing other children and it rarely seems to. But I don’t feel comfortable running my class with that because of how my superiors will view it. I think they see the importance of oral language but I don’t think they have ever thought about how to manage it aside from requiring “accountable” talk that employs academic language. I mean, I also would like to plan out how to better harness this need and tendency of my students in a way that will help them grow. I would like to give them as much time as possible to explore and use spoken English.

Any suggestions? :)

more layoffs?

Now NYC is reporting more layoffs of city services, including schools. I guess the federal money we got only helped enough for the one year? Ugh. Now I get to worry about my job security again. I hate working twice as hard as some teachers and be at risk [for being excessed] just because I’m not a veteran. I get the importance of unions and due process in school’s attempts at trying to get rid of people, but there is no logic in keeping slackers over people who bust their asses. Any person –in any job –who says otherwise is worried about the quality of work they are doing.

They already laid off 600 school aides as of Friday. “School aide” might not sound like an indispensable position, but it really can be. At my school, they laid off the one Chinese-speaking aide we had which now means we have no way to communicate with all the recent immigrant families from China. It also means that students like YL, one of mine, who have serious issues and should be speaking with a guidance counselor weekly, won’t get to speak to anyone.

Gotta love how the Chancellor told teachers, “I’m here today to call on all of you to make sure you and all of your colleagues continue the work you’re doing. Our children will depend upon it.” Of course. And the city depends on teachers having to work more and work harder for the same pay (or, in some cities, less pay) and with the same threats of school closings, or larger and larger class sizes hanging over us. The city is sending a message that teachers and schools are supposed to function at their best with a bare minimum of support. Yet, if schools don’t meet certain expectations and city-set standards, then they could be deemed a failing school and get shut down, excessing even more teachers. I won’t be surprised that many of the aides schools lost were like ours – the sole connection we have to a community we serve. What message does it send if NO ONE at your child’s school can speak your language? (I already have an Indonesian student for whom that’s true.)

And we may be in for even worse, unless some politicians show some backbone. What else is the city spending money on that could be going to schools? I’m sure someone has created a list.

As a side thought — our school still has programs like Chess and Mad Hot Ballroom. Why couldn’t the principal choose to eliminate that instead?

(addended11/18/09)

social studies and teacher allies

No one ever told me teaching could be like a season of Survivor with cutthroat allies that move all the time. Someone once even recommended that I watch my back around two people who are now friends with my “warner”. It’s dizzying. Overall I feel grateful to no longer be isolated in a trailer but part of a smaller school, next to teachers of my grade; I really feel like a teacher now in an actual school. But the alliances and re-alliances are intimidating and I often feel like I wish I was back in my own bubble. Luckily, being in an ESL class, distances me from the others enough that it’s not too bad. I’m sure other work environments can be like this but it’s certainly new to me.

Just last week a teacher who teaches the before-school test prep told students from a different class that their teacher was teaching them a “stupid” way of doing the essay and they would end up failing. Even if it were true, why tell the students things like that? Crazy.

And yet I do really feel grateful being next to teachers in my grade. One of them is a brand new teacher (I’ve got one year on him), and he’s really inspiring in a lot of ways. The other two I have seen less in action but one of them (the “warner” definitely seems to have a lot of experience and is extremely nice and helpful. I feel more like I’m part of a team and I do tend to side more with their complaints than the administration’s point of views more now this year than I ever had before, because my experience of what they’re doing is more close-up.

When I was a push-in, my POV was close, but it was still as an outsider and I hadn’t yet had the experience of running a classroom. Last year, my experience was different because I shared a trailer with a great bilingual teacher, also new, who also had no idea how other teachers experience the school. So, while I still find their lack of interest in learning from/about our particular population, and I find their ignorance feeds some of the negative attitudes toward and treatment of the students, I feel my opinion of these teachers is rounding out some.

All that doesn’t make it feel any less like Survivor, though!

Speaking of test prep, the test today seemed hard to the general ed teachers, so I can only help. Having a Chinese translator today for my 6 students really made me envision all the things I could do if she were always there. *sigh*

online sources for newcomer ELLs?

I use sites like storylineonline.net with its read alouds done by famous people, raz-kids.com with its leveled books and I have Imagine Learning English in my class. But I am trying to find more online resources that offer other similar read alouds or readers theatre, etc. Any recommendations? Preferably free :)

New online network for ESL and bilingual teachers

I just started this network for ESL and bilingual teachers because I have noticed how some of the teachers I know feel really isolated. Some are the only ESL teacher in their school, or are the only self-contained class in their grade, or for whatever other reason they feel totally alone, or feel unsure about how to handle the new and particular obstacles they’re facing this year. Bilingual teachers, too, feel like they’re a dying breed, or feel frustrated because they both feel strongly about kids learning in their first language, but torn about teaching transitional bilingual classes.  Also, I was inspired by this article in education week.

So, please join my Ning and add your thoughts, questions, ideas; share resources and connect with and inspire new teachers, or reignite veterans, or yourself!

I just started it, and would really love for it to take off as a great resource for ESL/bilingual teachers hoping to do the best for their students, grow as teachers, (including ranting and venting as needed), and to help others to do the same.

Personally, this is my third year as an ESL teacher and every year I have done something totally different! My first year, I was a push-in with grades 1, 2 and 4. Last year I had my own self-contained, multi-level third grade class and this year I have my own self-contained fifth grade full of newcomers! It’s constantly a challenge and one of the things that keeps me sane and gives me perspective is being able to commiserate and share with others in the same boat.

this year so far..

Tomorrow is the fifth grade NY social studies test. I will have hopefully three translators in the room, plus myself. There will be a Chinese, Bengali, and hopefully an Indonesian translator. I will be providing the Spanish. I say hopefully because I don’t know if my school has been able to track down an indonesian translator. Practically nothing exists in Indonesian here.

Of course none of this really matters since I really doubt they teach much American history in those countries, but at least they may be better equipped to make guesses and may be able to do the essay question. That is a big maybe since that assumes they were able to learn something from all the English instruction they’ve been getting.

Not sure if I mentioned this earlier but I am teaching a free-standing fifth grade this year and it is the mecca for all beginners and newcomers it seems since out of a total of 28 kids, roughly 19 are beginners and 10 of them are new to the country as of September. The rest are new as of last winter, and small minority have been here two years.
My attitude about this year’s position moves back and forth between sugar and shit quite easily. Some days I am proud at what we’re able to do as a class and I recognize what I am able to provide them and then other days I feel overwhelmed, like my supervisors expect me to do wonders.

Part of the “problem” is that I had a huge success last year, with a class of kids who came in reading level E and left reading level Q. That is like 2 years worth of progress or something. But this year I have more true beginners, so the challenges are very different.

One thing that makes me feel good is that even though I am a new teacher I feel like I have been given a most important class. These are kids who would easily languish in a regular classroom. But sometimes it feels like I was given these kids because no one else knows what to do with them.

For example: there is this other fifth grade teacher who has a student who went back to his country for most of last year and he basically didn’t go to school the whole year. He reads a low level, maybe a J, and he his behavior reflects not having gone to school. So she has told her supervisor she doesn’t know what to do with him. I fear I will be given this kid, but then I had the chance to look at an example of his writing and he is far more advanced linguistically from any of my students! He easily uses past and past perfect tenses, as well as idioms and expresses ambiguity with comments like “she seemed angry with me…” This same teacher teaches my kids math after school, and she asked me, after her first afternoon with them, if they speak English. What?? Out of the 7 she has, only 2 don’t understand English. The rest.are beginners, and one advanced and they never have a hard time in my class. I have clearly come to take for granted the way I and others know how to ask questions in different ways – I guess? I mean, what else could be the reason. In her comments, she insinuated my kids are dumb and can’t even understand their first language.

Why is is that the same things I find thrilling and intriguiging about this job are also the things that drain me?

What are you teaching this year? What are the obstacles that have been weighing on you?

My first observation and meeting with my principal…

Ok, so just recently I was observed by my immediate supervisor (Ms. R) in Writers Workshop. Ms. R is the woman I referred to previously. She came in my class as we were working on Realistic Fiction, where the kids are writing fiction stories with characters they created. We were nearing the end of the genre, so the teaching point for this lesson was about how to add dialog… whether as speech bubbles or dialog in the story itself, depending on where they’re at and capable of doing. Luckily, an ESL teacher who pushes into my class twice a week was there, so after I did a brief mini-lesson on adding speech bubbles, I asked her to take my newcomer-beginners who would get very little from the rest of the lesson. I then dug into “part two” of my mini-lesson where I taught how to add dialog into their stories. So, I do two active engagements (for those of you who use the workshop model). Then they went off. I did two strategy lessons, one for some advanced kids on words that are “better than said” and one on fixing his lead. I also conferenced with kids around the room.

Well, apparently she was floored because she came up to me and said, “they can write! they write a lot!” and then told the whole class, as she was leaving, how speechless she was at the good work they were doing.

She was floored? *I* was floored at her reaction. She even emailed me to say that I am a wonderful teacher and my kids are lucky to have me. Seriously? I think her expectations were that I was watering everything down. And when I met later with my principal she also told me that what I am doing is great (apparently Ms. R had met with her earlier that day), because people come to think of self-contained ESL classes as “dumbed down”. So, I guess despite all my concerns and fears and feelings of unending inadequacy, I am doing well. Not that that means I’m sitting pretty. Just because they feel like I am doing a great job, it’s still not quite meeting my expectations. But at least I feel I am growing in the right direction!

New year… trying out a new theme

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