Katie and Kristie implemented their science lesson in the kindergarten class at Brigham last Thursday. They chose to do their lesson on living vs. nonliving things and we got to take our students on a mini field trip to the playground. As I was observing and helping out during their lesson, I was made very aware of my original goal I had set before we started coming to Brigham. When I was initially thinking about how my experiences would be in the bilingual classroom, I was very worried about being able to accommodate the struggles that the bilingual students would be facing. I turned this worry into a goal by stating that I would find out what some of the biggest struggles English Language Learners face and learn how to better accommodate them. Communication was certainly one of the biggest issues that I faced in the classroom last Thursday, and the experience didn't give me confidence that I would be attaining my goal without some real help and intervention.
When we took the students outside, it was hard to keep them in their small groups since we were on their "recess territory." A lot of the students began with the concepts we had asked them about (finding an object and declaring it living or nonliving). However, it became very hard to bring them back to the topic at hand when they went into recess mode and starting running around and playing tag. Since most of my small group's primary language was not English, they didn't feel the need to listen to me–or potentially didn’t even know they were supposed to be listening–when I would instruct them to "come back to the group" or "don't hang on that branch." Their struggle was being able to understand and respect a teacher that had never seen them before and didn't know how to communicate with them in their daily, dominant language. As a teacher in training, this discouraged me because it made me realize that I really didn't know what to do about it.
Dr. Osorio was outside with us during the time that we were instructing the discovery activity, so she was able to communicate with the students in Spanish about coming back to the task at hand or rejoining their small group teacher. While it was very beneficial to have the help out there on the playground during our activity, it’s a harsh realization that I may not have that kind of help in my future classroom when I need it. If I have a student that’s falling behind because they don’t understand my instructions in their Second Language, it’s my job to make sure I can figure out how to accommodate them so they don’t fall any farther behind on my behalf. As my goal will continue to unravel during my time at Brigham for the rest of the semester, I’m hoping that I will be able to see more bilingual practices implemented that I will be able to use as my own one day. While this experience didn’t leave me confident or prepared for the bilingual challenges both my students and I will face, I am hopeful that I will continue to learn through my observations and experiences as we finish this semester.
In the mean time, in order to better prepare for the student’s challenges I will face next time I’m in the classroom, I will begin to do some research about different practices and activities teachers have used in their classrooms. For starters, I can make myself familiar with some key “school” words such as “pencil” and “markers” and “playground.” If I add a few new words to my vocabulary each week, by the end of the time at Brigham I will have studied and hopefully be able to implement of those words on a daily basis to help communicate with the students better.
I have bookmarked this website into my internet “favorites” tab because after browsing through it I have discovered it will be a very useful resource to use throughout my time at Brigham as well as my years ahead teaching my own classroom.
Exceeds: Went over the word limit and included a link to a useful bilingual education resource and ended on an inspirational quote.
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