Inquiry Project: How to Engage EAL Students in Literature Studies

When I heard there would be an inquiry project for ECS 350, my thinking went back to ESST 300 last semester. In that class, we were assigned an inquiry project that would deal with an area that applied to Social Studies. For this project, my classmates chose a wide range of topics, from the affect of standardized testing to providing diverse voices into the classroom. When I began to think about what I wanted to do for my inquiry project this semester, at first I went back to the topic I did in ESST, Anti-racism education. As I thought more, I began to want to pick a topic that would have specific implications in English classrooms. This was how I came to the conclusion to look into the topic of ‘how to properly engage English as an Additional Language students in literature classes?’.

The inspiration for this topic began in May. A friend of mine had come back to Regina to visit before he was leaving the country to take a job as an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan. I had just finished my first year in education, and was excited to talk to my friend about how he would be approaching his first formal experiences as a classroom teacher. When we met and began to talk about what his job would look like, I was disappointed to say the least. He explained to me that his job would be, what he described, as a ‘human tape recorder.’ Basically, whenever a student would have trouble answering a word they will go up to him, point at the word in question, and my friend will properly pronounce it to that student. Although my friend sounded very excited to be able to go to Japan, his work appeared to leave a sour taste in his mouth.
Through my experiences this year, I have begun to learn this idea of ‘the human tape recorder’ could easily also be applied to teacher here in Saskatchewan. As our province continues to grow, and non-native English speakers come to the area, I am sure there are many teachers who be be having trouble finding ways to engage these additional language students. I believe this way be particularly difficult for teachers in English literature, where the basis of their course depends on students being able to fluently speak English. So, I have decided to look into ways that English teachers have been able to engage additional language students into their classes. I hope I will be able to take some of the skills I learn about from this inquiry project and be able to apply from in my pre-internship and, eventually, my internship.

Luckily, one of the readings for my ELANG 350 class deals specifically with engaging EAL students. The article “Words, Words, Words: Reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners” by Christina Porter deals with ways the author was able to successfully teach Shakespearean plays to additional language students. The part of the article I found the most interesting was how the types porter has for EAL students can still easily be shifted to native English speakers, especially considering how Shakespearean plays can be very intimidating for high school students.

The first type Porter suggests is to used an abridged version of the play. The author suggests to use plays that are about 30 pages in length and that “while is time consuming, you can edit the play down yourself or search for an abridged version online” (45). Porter also talks about providing students with a short summary of each scene before actually reading the text. I think this strategy would be particularly useful for EAL students, because though they may have a rudimentary knowledge of modern English they would have almost no idea of what Shakespearean English would mean, so the summary could be very useful. This would also be useful for native English speaking students who are struggling to grasp Shakespearean plays, as it puts the plays into something that resembles their own form of speech.

Porter also talks about how students need to be warmed up before stepping into the world of Shakespeare. She talks about how to warm her students up, she would provide a chronological set of lines from the play without providing any idea of what the play is about or what the characters names are. This is done so students “focus on the language and not worry about the characters just yet” (46). Then, from these lines she has students make predictions about what the play will be about from their lines. The students write their predictions down on an index card, and then collects the cards to see what they think the play will be about. The point of this activity is to introduce “students to ‘speaking Shakespeare’ and previews the major action of an act or the entire play depending on the lines chosen” (46). Once again, I believe this is an activity that would work for entire classes, and not just EAL students. It engages students with Shakespearean language and has them attempt to translate that language into predictions about the play. It would also be a great form of diagnostic assessment for teachers, as it allows them to see how comfortable their class is with Shakespearean language.

The entire article is an interesting read, and I will provide a reference for anyone interested. I am exited to see what kind of text I will be able to find about engaging EAL students in the English classroom, and ways that I can apply this knowledge for myself.

Porter, Christian. (2009). Words, Words, Words: Reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners. EJ, 99(1), 44-49.

http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/stable/40503325?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents.

The Importance of Transparency and Collaboration in Assessment

As I was reading chapter three of Making Classroom Assessment Work, for some reason I had a vision of government pass through my head. Maybe I have just taken to many political science classes in my university career, but there was something about the chapter’s message of teachers making their quality expectations clear to their students. This connection was the idea of transparency. In a perfect world, we as citizens would our governments would act with a great degree of transparency (I know this will probably never happen in my lifetime, but I can dream) so that regular citizens can clearly see the decision making processes of those in charge. This applies to the classroom as teachers should, ideally, make their design making process in assessment and grading clear to their students.

The main difference I see in the two organizations I have included earlier, is that teachers have to make their designs easily digestible for their intended audience. While politicians can arguable try to intentionally confuse citizens, teachers should take the learning outcomes they either invent or take from curriculum, and translate them into phrases their students can understand. This is an example of how we want our learning to be student-centered. We are taking outcomes, that are meant to be understood by teachers, and taking them and translating them into words for our students. This is a powerful idea. Through this idea of translating outcomes, we are changing the perspective of learning from one that is focused on the government curriculum, and putting that focus instead on students.

The idea of transparency I spoke of earlier comes up after the outcomes have been translated. This is because Davies, the books author, suggests teachers allow their students see the end goal of what the teacher wants students to learn. This would appear to not be that revolutionary an idea. As the author states at the beginning of the chapter, “when golfers swing their club, they know where to aim-toward the flag marking the next hole” (25). In the same way, by being transparent definition of what we want our students to learn we are providing a clear destination for where we want our students to end up. By letting our students see a little bit of our process, we can possibly provide a road map to student success.

Chapter four goes into how we should provide models to students of different levels of work, and what good work looks like. The idea that stood out to me in this chapter is how schools should create a cohesive vision of what good work looks like inside their walls. I thought this was an amazing idea to apply within education. Time and time again, I have questioned what kind of standards would be used against me as a student. Myself and my peers would gather around and talk about what teachers were hard markers, and what other teachers in the school expected in their classes. This would be so much simpler if all teachers in the school had similar expectation of what good work looks like. Also, students may feel less pressure in a class with this model, as they know how their work is being assessed as they have experienced other classes within that school.

The other idea from this chapter I thought was very good, was the idea of providing students with a range of examples of work. This means not only showing students examples of work that got the highest grades, but also work that received middling and low marks. The idea of multiple models watches to something we English people talked about the other day in our ELANG 351 class. In that class, we spoke about the idea of the “Grecian urn” in writing classes, which is when a teacher provides a polished piece of writing to their students. Doing this can create anxiety in students, as they may believe that they cannot watch the excellence in the model presented. The same situation can happen if we only model work that received high grades to our students. Students may become paralyzed when presented with this level of work because they do not believe they can match such a high standard. For this reason, it is important to model different levels of work so students can see where mistakes were made in the past and so that they can know others have made mistakes on these types of assignments prior. As an example, Rhonda did this for us with the example blogs she posted on the website. These blogs presented a range of grades, not just the best of the best of her past students. This provided us as students with examples of where her standards as an assessor lay, and where we should aim in our work.

In summation, these two chapters reinforced how important transparency is in terms of assessment. We, as educators, must make our standards clear to our students so they know where to aim. Also, by being transparent we are creating an environment that is more welcoming to students and their ideas. If we are clear with our expectations of students, we welcome them to try and reach for what we have laid out and to even go beyond them.

The debate over keeping behaviour in report cards

Is it a teacher’s responsibility to grade their students on their personality? Should a student’s behaviour influence their final grade? According to the article “Keep Behaviour in Report Cards”, the argument is made that a student should be judged on their behaviour and it should show up in their evaluation.

This article’s inspiration came form the Saskatoon public school board taking behaviour off of high school report cards. The article’s author makes the case that behaviour should be on report cards because without this type of evaluation, students will take tremendous advantage of it. The author makes the case that student’s will inevitably copy “chunks of an online publication into his essay without acknowledging the source” (“Keep Behavior in Report Cards, Saskatoon Star Pheonix: October 4, 2010) and will be given a chance to re-do the work. The author is also against the idea of schools scrapping late marks. It appears that the author’s main problem with this is how it will hurt the work ethic of students, and will reward students for missing deadlines.

This article is a perfect example of how people outside of education are very abrasive to any changes to the educational system. As has been stated many times, every thinks they are an expert on education because everyone has spent some time inside a school in their lifetime. If a person has done well in school, many times they do not want the system they had success in to change. If it worked for them, why wouldn’t it work for some else? As well, this article exhibits the idea that certain people believe that if teachers begin to give a little bit of leeway to their students they will be taken advantage of. Students will be handing in assignments late and taking credit for other people’s work, and will still reap the rewards of high marks in spite of their supposed crimes.

For me, I have no real problem with schools getting rid of late marks and no longer putting behaviour on report cards. When it comes to late marks, I don’t really believe that it is the students getting marks in the nineties that are handing assignments in late. I would argue that it is students who are struggling in school that hand in assignments late, and simply docking off late marks doesn’t necessarily answer the problem of late assignments. These students may be handing in assignments because they lack confidence in their work and need a teacher to help them gain faith in the worth of their effort.

In conclusion, when it comes to the idea of having behaviour on report cards, it is probably right that it is being taken off. It is not our jobs as teachers to judge students on things such as their personality or classroom demeanor. We should be trying to help make our students into the best people they can be, but we shouldn’t punish them if their behaviour doesn’t line up with our personal morals.

Differentiation in the classroom

This week’s discussion on differentiation was tremendously eyeopening for me. The reason for this is because when I was in school, differentiation was not really a part of the conversation. In the high school I attended, I only saw teachers presenting one way to demonstrate knowledge. This was usually through tests, in subjects such as science or math, and final essays, in subjects like English and history. Classes were always organized with desks in rows, and students were usually expected to sit still and pay attention to the teacher at the front of the class. This process was only elevated in university, where final exams and essays became the ultimate way of evaluating knowledge and lectures were the preferred form of teaching. I never thought to question this method, it was all I knew and believed it was right. If it didn’t work then why would I be sitting in a university classroom.

However, this week ( and for much of my time in the education program) has opened my eyes to the idea of differentiation in the classroom. To be a hundred percent honest, during my time as a student something like differentiation was not even on my radar. I was concerned about myself and the results I was getting. I didn’t really care about whether or not a kid who had a learning disorder, or if a student in the class had a great knowledge or English or not. I was worried about myself, and for me the model of education I was in worked. Yet, once I entered in to the education program here at the U of R that changed. This is more than likely because of my shift in perspective from student to teacher.

Now that I have a better perspective of what differentiation is, through the reading we did this week and our in class activity, I think I have been able to get a slight understanding of what the concept is. But, I also think this is the aspect of being a teacher that scares me the most. I’m still very afraid of the great variety of student’s, both in term of culture and learning style, that make up the Saskatchewan classroom. How can I make sure that every student in the class is getting the education they deserve in the face of all the pressures I will face? What happens if the pressure gets to be too much, and I begin to lose hope that I can handle this type of job? These are questions that I cannot answer know, and I probably won’t be able to until I am an actual teacher. I hope the pressure that I will have to endure with this job will turn me into a diamond and will not leave me crushed.

Is Violence Against Teachers a Problem?

As I was driving to the University this morning, there was a story on the radio that truly shocked me. The CBC’s news program The Current was doing a story about violence in Manitoba schools. However, the story was not about violence which occurred between students, but the story detailed violence students asserted on their teachers.

The Current story included an interview with Janice Wilson, a teacher  in the northern community of  La Loche, Saskatchewan, and her experience when a Grade 10 student attempted to stab her with a pair of scissors. Wilson claims this experience, which occurred almost nine years ago, still haunts her to this day.

After hearing the interview with Wilson I was compelled to seek out a report from Winnipeg that inspired the radio story. CBC Winnipeg’s investigative team obtained documents that stated one in seven assaults in the city’s schools are against teachers. Specifically, of 931 assaults that occurred between 2012 and 2014, 137 were against teachers. The story also includes the story of Ron East, a former teacher who incurred a major brain injury after being head-butted by a 15 year old boy in 2001. Though the physical scars are gone, East says the event has left him with a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, making it impossible for him to re-enter a classroom.

Once I finished watching the CBC Winnipeg story, I was shocked and little disappointed in what the Corporation produced. First of all, I was extremely disappointed in the quality of story the journalist here filled. The jest of the story ended up being ‘students are crazing and attacking and our teachers are not safe!!’ Along that same line, the journalist involved did not try to seek out anyone who is trying to find solutions that would stop the cycle of violence in Winnipeg schools aside form suspending students. There must be reasons that these students have such disrespect for authority figures, but the story does not attempt to make any links here.

As well, I did not like how the story treated the central teacher, Ron East. The story makes East out to be a heroic figure who sacrificed his health and well-being for one of his students. This continues the story’s simple narrative  of defenceless teachers against their out of control students. However, I am sure most of the audience is able to tell that these students did not just decide one day to go out and start attacking their teachers out of the blue. This violence is the climax of years of problems these students have dealt with, problems the school system and the society at large have not noticed up to that point.

I will provide links to the stories for any one interested:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/iteam/dozens-of-school-staff-teachers-assaulted-in-winnipeg-in-past-2-years-1.2901178

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2015/01/16/students-assaulting-teachers-in-class-a-common-occurrence-in-canada/

Entering the Blogosphere

As you may have gathered if you read my first blog post, I have not always been a fan of the medium of the blog. During my time as a journalism student, I can say I really looked down on blogs and the people who wrote them. I questioned the legitimacy of blogs, and if I could really take them seriously. In fact, this May when a friend of mine moved overseas to teach English, he wished to document his journey and potentially try to make some money through freelance work. When I heard this, I urged him not to start a blog as he would just become another member of the seemingly endless sea of bloggers, sending out posts to the endless nothingness of the Internet.

So, it is more than a little ironic that I am writing a blog post now. Also, as someone who has been staunchly anit-blog in the past, it was interesting to read the blog post “Should students teachers blog?” The author lays out six reasons why she believes blogging is am important tool for teachers such as creating a digital records of their past ideas, improving writing, and expanding one’s professional network.

There were two pro-blog arguments the post’s author made that I believe are the most persuasive for why blogs are an important tool for student teachers. The first is how a blog can aid in reflection. During my time in the education program at the U of R, I cannot count how many times I have heard the word ‘reflect’ and how teaching is a constant process of reflection and application of these reflections on our teaching. It appears the blog can be a good way for teachers to release their reflections from the cage of their mind and put them on the page. Also, once these reflections are on the page there is potential that other teachers can read a reflection and create a discussion through the Internet.

The other important factor blogs can give teachers are how they can expand a teacher’s social network beyond the doors of their school and their city. The Internet can provide teachers with a forum to speak with other members of the fraternity of educators that stretches from Unity to Ulaanbaatar. I remember during my time as a reporter in Weyburn there was a story I wrote about how a teacher in town planned a unit with another teacher who was located in North Carolina. The two teachers connected over the Internet and then planned a book study where their students would interact with each other through both text and by Skyping with the other class. Though I was not an education student at the time, it was inspiring to see the lengths these teachers went to provide their students with a unique experience that never would have been possible during my time as a student.

Though I may not have been a long time fan of blogging, I can admit that it may have some strengths for student teachers. It gives students teacher an opportunity to interact with others in the field and gain knowledge that would be unattainable otherwise. Also, it can provide a good space to reflect on work, and to look back at ideas we may have had in the past. But, I would have to caution any potential teacher to be very careful about what they put on the Internet. It doesn’t take a genius to know that what goes on the Internet is then out of your control. Once you have posted something, you have let the word know that you stand behind what you say, and that you want other people to read it. And you never know who that reader may be.

Finding Teaching Work

I feel like I am in a strange state in my pre-internship semester. While I am excited to enter into the field at a high school for the first time, I am also afraid of what is coming after the pre-internship and internship is over. What I am talking about is the specter of getting my first teaching contract.

My dad jokes with me all the time that I am currently in the easy part of my journey to become a teacher. Though the work in the Education program can be very taxing at times, I am pretty sure that actually getting my first teaching job will be much harder than anything I have done as a student.

David Theriault’s blog piece, “How to get hired and stay hired. A drama in four parts”, takes readers through some of his advice for perspective teachers to find work and keep it. In the piece, Theriault goes through his process of gaining employment from his time as a pre-intern, all the way up to the job interview.

Throughout the piece, Theriault advises potential teachers be very proactive so they can impress potential employers. This advice is very good and can help an applicant stand out to an employer, but I do disagree with what he says about finding the best “master teacher” they can. In Theriault’s experience, he selected his own “master teacher” based on his experience as a substitute teacher in school districts in his area. This teacher was selected through the experiences he had in schools, and selecting the place where he thought he could have the best experience.

When I read through Theriault’s suggestions about pre-internship I found myself not agreeing with what he had to say. For me as a pre-internship teacher at the U of R, I want to be able to gain as many different experiences as I can while I am here at university. I want to have the opportunity to enter different schools, different classrooms, and work with different students. I want to be able to take some risks during my time here at university, because it is during our time as students that we have the best chances to be risk takers.

After I got through the pre-internship section, I found myself agreeing with what Theriault had to say. During our time in the schools, both as pre-interns and interns, we need to stand out. We are entering into a fierce competition with other applicants, trying to attain the scarce resources of long-term employment. We need to make sure that the people we interact with during our time in their schools remember who we are, and also want us to come back to that school later.

For me, this may be one of the hardest aspects I will have to come across during my time as a student. I hate most things that usually come up with having to get a job. I hate having to talk about how good I am, and how I am so much better and more qualified for that job than anybody else. But, if I want to be able to gain a career in anything it is these insecurities about myself that I will have to overcome to be able to have a career in this or any other field.

My first ever blog post

This feels like a momentous occasion. For the first time in my life I am making a blog post.

In the past, I was someone who has looked down on the practice of blogging. I assumed “the blogopshere” was a world full of annoying squawkers trying to have their faint voices heard in a sea of white noise.However, as time went on I began to see there is some value to this new frontier of the written world. Through courses I have taken at university, I have been opened up to a growing number of people who are using the the medium of the blog to do substantive work. Will this blog be one of those places where the new ideas of this generation find a home? Probably not, but I hope this does become a place where I can learn about a different form of writing through blogging, and also continue to learn more about the new medium of the internet blog.

About Me

Hello everyone. Welcome to the blog!!