Oppressed

I've always been interested in the history of oppression in general, so I really enjoyed reading Friere's work for today. I think he had a really good point when he talked about considering the history of oppression and its impact on our teaching practices today. Throughout history, there has always been a group in power and a group oppressed by those in that power, and this includes in the realm of education as well.

I would even go so far as to say that as TESOL educators, the issue of oppression is more relevant to us than other educators. Every teacher will encounter some instances in his or her classroom that they will have to cope with, but as TESOL educators, we have chosen to specialize in cultural relations, which is inherently tied to the issue of oppression. Members of different cultures constantly separate the world into "us" and "them," which is the root of all oppression, and it is our job as educators to overcome that xenophobic separation and build functioning, cooperative communities in our classrooms.

Observing has been a part of my training as a teacher for a couple of years now, but I never bothered to think about why it is considered to be so beneficial. It just seemed like the only way to get a peek at at what practicing teachers are doing in their classrooms and thereby learning by or against their examples. I never thought that it could also be beneficial to the practicing teacher. It does make sense after our readings though. I pay far more attention to what I'm doing every day when I know I'm being watched, so it makes sense that teachers would too. I also know that when I'm being watched, I tend to consider how what I'm doing looks to whoever is watching me, which functions as a sort of self-observation.

Lesson plan

Melissa Riddle and I will be coteaching a mini lesson together. We have decided to do an introduction to a lesson on personal narratives, featuring "The House on Mango Street" as a companion text.

Cultural Consciousness

I was really glad that cultural consciousness was addressed in this week's readings. I have always thought that it should be featured much more in ISU's ESL education program than it is. A person's culture is going to define a lot of their beliefs and behaviors, and it is absolutely critical to have a thorough understanding of a student's culture in order to successfully interact with him or her. Without understanding that in Japan, it is considered impolite to ask questions during a lecture, a teacher or classmate may be led to believe that the student in question has a complete understanding of the material, when the opposite may be true. Or on the other hand, a teacher may believe a non-participating student to be lazy, when that student is following the social politeness rules dictated by his or her culture. I really wish that ISU would require some sort of "Multicultural Issues in the Classroom" class so that we would be a bit more prepared to take on the challenge of understanding and accommodating students of all cultural backgrounds in our classrooms.

Progress report

I am very pleased with how my website is coming along. I have claimed a domain name, and been building the website to fit the vision that I have formed for it. It now features a user forum and has a form which visitors can use to send the page author (yours truly!) feedback. Since I want my page to be beneficial to all English language learners, regardless of their educational situation, there is a sign-up button so that visitors can sign up in order to participate in the website's social aspects. I am currently working on embedding helpful applications into the website to improve the aesthetics of my homepage and also to help language learners to navigate the site successfully. My next step will be to add content such as games, media, and links to the site.

Superman?

I really enjoyed seeing Waiting for Superman. I thought it was an important insight into the life of practicing teachers and students' parents in less-than-privileged life situations. I particularly liked how the issue of tenure was addressed in the movie. I do not believe that teachers, or anybody for that matter, should be protected from job loss when they are not qualified to do their job. Tenure exists so that teachers and professors can't get fired for addressing controversial issues in their classrooms, or being on an unpopular side of an argument, not so that teachers can do their jobs for a couple years, then not do them until they retire. This issue really burns my biscuits. I do think that it is important for teachers to have job security, as they are absolutely vital to every child's development, but I do not think that that security should be granted if it is unearned, or continually granted if the situation changes.

The only criticisms that I had for this film would be its minimal coverage of NCLB, which is a huge part of the education system today, and its focus on charter schools as the answer to failing educational systems. Charter schools are great in most cases, but they are not available to every student in need, as clearly demonstrated in the film. The main problem, I think, is getting rid of incompetent or uncaring teachers. It is up to each and every one of us as educators to assume our role as Superman in our students' lives. The actions that we take or do not take can have a huge impact on them, and therefore it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to assure that it is a positive impact.

poetry

I am not usually a big fan of poetry, but I'd never been to a live poetry reading before, and I must say, I really enjoyed it. Listening to people pouring out their hearts and identity struggles was a unique experience, and one that I am so glad that I got to have. My favorite poem that I got to hear was one of the first, and featured the line "Who is you, but who is not me." Unfortunately, I failed to record the title or the presenters name, because I would really have loved to see more from her. Her use of language was so masterful and evocative of the emotions that she was trying to convey that I found myself sucked into her world. When she used the term "chink," too, I found myself shocked and slightly offended, but without that term in her poem, it would not have had half of the impact on me that it did. I applaud her courage and artistic ability, and I would love to know her name, if any of my classmates happened to write it down.

readings

In order to be a successful language teacher, one must both read and write proficiently in the target language. This has always been my assumption, and for total fluency, it is true. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are critical skills that any language learner needs to master before he or she can claim themselves to be fluent in the target language. However, this does not mean that those skills will all grow at the same rate in a classroom. This week's readings pointed that out for me. I always assumed that students would grow at roughly the same level in all of these skills throughout their education. This is not true at all. Granted, some students will progress equally in all language skills, but that is not to be expected from every student. As teachers, I believe that it is our job to pay attention to our students' language skills progression, discover which areas they are excelling in or may need some assistance in, and to give them that assistance accordingly.

Module 02

I really liked this Youtube video. It only makes sense that in order for language awareness to be effective, the usage of language must be authentic. Using real advertisements as we did in class last week, or real travel brochures as was illustrated in the video, were perfect examples of authentic language use. In using them to discuss the features and aspects of language, we not only learn about the functions that we are studying, but we also get to see them in action, which is equally important. Without the ability to both use and recognize language features, having studied it doesn't really do us any good, and that goes double for ESL students.

Learner Autonomy and Language Awareness

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This is my presentation week, so I'm going to keep my comments here to a minimum. You'll all hear what I have to say later anyway. :)

I really love the concept of language awareness. It's pretty much advocating teaching rhetoric in an ESL classroom. Rhetoric is a really useful tool for understanding why language functions as it does. By studying the effects that language has on it's listeners and speakers at all times, we can consciously choose to use language in ways that produce our desired outcome.

Learner autonomy is also a really great education tool. It advocates giving learners a chance to take charge of their own education and make their own educational decisions. I really like this concept too, since I know that my best work has been done when I have a chance to make some of my own decisions in a classroom.

10-13 post

I feel that it is our job as educators to make our curriculum meet our students' needs. To this extent, I really hate product based curriculum planning where the end product of the education is more important than the means through which it is achieved. The whole time I was reading about this, all I could think about was how much it felt like the way public schools teach to standardized tests. I think that it is absolutely crucial for us as educators to consider how our students are learning, not just what they are learning. As we discussed in class last week, every student is going to excel in different areas for different reasons, and if we are only concerned with their ability to repeat information at the end of a unit, we are not addressing those different strengths and weaknesses properly.

I am a big fan of addressing students' self discovery in the classroom. Every student is going to succeed in a different environment, so using a lot of different teaching strategies and styles is the best way to address all of my students' needs. The only problem that I foresee in actually doing this is that I think it is impractical to expect to be able to address ALL of your students' needs in EVERY class period. It simply can't be done in the 55 minutes that we are allotted in each class period. We can help to achieve this goal by mixing up our daily routine though. If we try to expose our students to a variety of learning styles, then they will be able to adapt their home studies to what suits them best, even if we can't do it every day in class.

Oh my goodness, I logged on today to find that my post from last week did not get published! So while it may be late, I would still like to get my reflections on the internet.

I think that cultural diversity in the classroom is one of the most important parts of being a teacher. This goes double for those of us who will be teaching TESOL, since we will have students from a multitude of different cultural backgrounds over our years as teachers. I was not lucky enough to be exposed to multiculturalism as a child, since my school was pretty homogenous, but I did get a look at some different cultures in high school. The transition from having had no exposure to people from different cultural backgrounds to being dropped into a very multicultural high school was shocking. I wasn't really sure how to behave, so I can't even imagine a teacher trying to enter into a multicultural classroom without having any prior exposure to that sort of environment. We should really strive to get some experience dealing with people from other cultures so that we will be better able to deal with them in the classroom.

My final project is going well. I've done a little but of research into different types of websites that I could create and I have a lot of ideas about what I want to include on my website. The main problem that I am encountering is money, since I really can't afford to purchase web publishing software or a proper domain name. I have seen a lot of teachers use wikispaces though, so I am going to look into that now.

Mismatch

I really loved that Kuma brought up the fact that mismatches in the classroom can be beneficial. If we are able to realize that they exist, mismatches can be used to spark terrific classroom discussions on language, culture, personal histories, and other topics that can cause mismatches in a classroom. Some of the most meaningful discussions I've engaged in in my life have stemmed from misunderstandings. They can help us to understand why there are such differences between people, places, things, and ideas, as well as the differences in our own life. I was so glad to see Kuma realize that and share it with us in his text, instead of just telling us to avoid and correct mismatches whenever possible.

CLT?

I have seen my fair share of TESOL theories over the course of my ISU education, but I have always been a big fan of the Communicative Language Theory. It has just struck me as the most practical and applicable of the approaches. I firmly believe that the main purpose of any language class, be it ESL for ELLS or high school German, is for students to leave with the ability to utilize the language that they are learning. To that means, CLT has always appealed the most to me. Other methods, such as the direct translational method or the reading approach may have useful applications, as pointed out in our article for today, but I do not feel that they should dominate the class. I will always try to make sure that my students are fully able to utilize the language concepts that we cover in class.

Reading reflection

I really liked the fact that our book discussed the purpose of a teacher in his or her classroom. It made me think about how I want my students to remember my course. Was it nothing but vocabulary practice? Was it a safe place to make mistakes? Was it critical that every assignment and sentence spoken be flawless? I want my purpose as a teacher to be an assistant to my students. I want to be able to guide them gently, but not weigh them down with so much pressure to be perfect that they fall under it. The role of supporter has always been the most important role that a teacher can play to me, so I really hope I can live up to that role in my own career.

learning styles

I have only observed in one ESL class over the course of my education here at ISU, but I have attended many language courses myself, and witnessed non-native English speakers' growth. In my Japanese classes, we used a variety of methods to learn different ways of speaking, sentence structural elements, and vocabulary words. We did a lot of play acting in different situations so that we could practice recently learned concepts in a safe environment. This worked really well for me, since it was a chance to practice in a realistic way and practice feeling out the concepts we had learned on paper. However, I know that this was not the most effective way for all of my classmates to learn. A lot of them used flashcards for vocabulary and other concepts, some used writing to explore the language, and others used other methods, I'm sure. I don't think there's any way to standardize language learning so that it's the best. Every learner has a different style, so we need to account for variety and flexibility in the classroom.

Blog Post 1

Ideally, I would like to teach in a university environment. I want to teach students who really want to learn, and will work hard to do so. I also like teaching older students, as I don't get along well with younger children. I think TESOL is a really important topic to understand since our world is becoming more and more global by the day. We must consciously be aware that not every person we encounter will be a native speaker of English, and we must be able to accommodate non native speakers' needs and help them with their English skills. I would really like to be able to accommodate each of my students according to his or her native ethnicity, and I am hoping that this class will help me to do so. Every culture is so different that I feel we need specific instruction in order to successfully deal with all of the different cultures we will encounter in our teaching careers.