So today was an interesting day. We had some grad students come in and teach the class. I enjoyed their lesson and thought it was extremely relevant to today. I've always had an interest in Spanish so I can speak it fairly well. I grew up in a public school where there were a decent amount of latinos. I also played a lot of soccer but not for the school. My brother and I started playing soccer after school and invited some of our latino friends and it eventually became a regular thing where every Tuesday after school we would play soccer. A lot of our friend's families started coming and playing also. My brother and I were the only white people there so it really started to help our soccer skills as well as Spanish. Even though I may not know a lot of vocabulary, I can fake it enough to seem fluent.
So I have never really gave a whole lot of thought of, what if I have a student who doesn't speak English"? I hope by the time I'm teaching full time that I'll be fluent in español that I will not need a translator. I think a second language should be "more" required of us native Americans. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing people say "this is America! Speak English"! We used to be this great, big, melting pot and now we're just making the rest of the world think that we're kind of stupid.
Hey Bill..
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100% I think ELLS are going to be more likely to understand our language and culture if we are willing to make an effort to understand theirs. Its one of those areas where you have to meet them half way, find something they care about/are familiar with, and relate the content to that. This is really the only way to make a connection with them. Once they see you are willing to work for them, they are more likely to work for you.