I love ESL!!!

Hello All,

Wednesday night I took a job to fill in for an ESL teacher at IHS. Though I was anxious about my abilities to actually help this very diverse group of students, their high level of respect and dedication reassured and comforted me. Here's a brief rundown of the day:

2nd period: CAS (content area supervision) class. There were about 7 kids in this class, all with different levels English speaking ability. I spent the period helping each student with homework from their other classes (math and history were the main subjects I needed to help them with). All they needed most of the time was for me to reword or describe a question for them. They understood the work, but just needed help understanding what the teacher wanted them to do. I helped explain the concept of ratio and also helped a student with the Pythagorean theorem (I was proud that I even remembered that stuff). A great period!

3rd and 4th period: ESL III. These students were almost fluent, but were still working on complete mastery of the language. We completed a game of jeopardy on Romeo and Juliet (which they had just finished reading). This class had such an attention to detail - they created the questions themselves and one of them asked how many teeth the nurse had...and they remembered (4)!?!?! They had so much fun trying to define and identify the part of speech of obscure Shakespearean words. Some of the sentences they came up with for these words were so funny (most the time correct, but still funny). It was great and they all really enjoyed it, all the while proving they really understood the play (and the language).

6th and 7th period: ESL I. This was a class of students who were at the beginning levels of using the language. There were two sisters from Burma who had only been in the States for 1 month! I cannot even imagine the frustration of going to a school where you have hardly any idea of what is being said and being unable to even communicate confusion! These students are so brave and courageous to be coming to school everyday, trying to learn in a language that is completely foreign to them. Luckily for the two sisters, there was another girl from Burma who had been in the States for almost two years and she helped serve as a translator to ensure understanding. This class was fabulous and they were all so understanding and compassionate! We spent the two periods working out of a workbook similar to those I used to learn Spanish. After we finished the tasks the teacher had planned, we still had few minutes left and I asked if they would mind sharing their stories with me. They were delighted to do so. There were students from S. Korea, Burma, Japan, China, and West Africa (none of them spoke Spanish...the only other language I am sort of fluent in). Many of them had been in the country for less than 1 year. Most came to the States for education...for their parents, many of which attended Cornell. They liked the States and many said they had no desire to move back to their native countries.

When they were sharing their stories (at many times struggling to find the correct words to explain their feelings to me), I was awestruck by their perseverance and willingness to tell me everything. I do not think I would ever be strong enough to completely immerse myself in a country where I would essentially lose my voice due to language barriers. Voice is so closely linked with identity and it would be terrifying to be unable to communicate concerns, questions, desires, interests, or any basic level of communication. When I apologized for being so new at the situation, they went out of their way to say I was doing fine. They were very concerned with how I felt, when really they were the ones who were going up against great odds in pursuit of education. They were a wonderful group and I would be honored to be able to work with them again. It was one of the best days I have had yet and I miss them already. I am going to investigate opportunities to volunteer to help ESL students and adults - I think I may have found my calling.

These classes increased my disgust and concern over testing ESL students in English after one year (see post from earlier in semester). I doubt that any of us would be able to perform well on a test in a language we had only been introduced to the year before. Have any of these legislators even tried to empathize with this population's experience?