ENTRY 4: REFLECTION

Reflection

            Last semester, I had an opportunity to do some research/facts about HISD. After that, I started concern about how to teach English Language Learners. In HISD, the ethnicity percent of students are listed as follows: 61.84% Hispanic, 24.02% African American, 4.05% Asian, 8.7% White and about 100 languages spoken. The percentage of students participated in any ELL support programs are 31.47%  in Limited English Proficient (LEP) program, 12.35% in English Second Language (ESL) program and 20.01% in Bilingual program. Just by looking at those numbers, I thought Second Language Methodology course can somehow beneficial in my career. Therefore, I enrolled in this course but I have never thought this course will bring many useful knowledge that help me to become a good teacher not only for my English Language Learners but also for all my students. I feel that I have learned many different knowledge about teaching, supporting my English Language Learners from the video, blog, reading, and assignments.

According to Wright (2015, p. 2), ELLs vary widely by race, ethnicity, home language, levels of schooling, socioeconomic status, parents’ level of education, parents’ proficiency in English. Teachers should know about student’s background, cultural, and their interests. It will help me as a teacher to better support my students in the classroom and make ELL students feel more welcome and comfortable in the new environment.
Through my own experiences and this semester experiences/ learned, I think for those students who are not native speakers of English and start enroll in a new American school system, can quickly be overwhelmed and shut down. Students are expected to keep up with regular schoolwork in their 6-7 classes, as well as try to comprehend exactly what is going on in class every day and adopt to a new society. Not every school have ESL or Bilingual programs. ESL program or other programs that support ELL students is important as it is important to give all students an opportunity to learn, even if they do not have a complete grasp on the English language. While this is difficult and more challenging for these students, it’s incredibly important for them. As an educator, it is my job to awareness of different learning styles, encourage my students to adopt adventurous learning strategies and create a good learning environment, safe, no fear or inhibitions for ELL students. Being noticed that everyone learns differently at different rates lead me to be more patient and think positively.  

I felt every blog, video, reading and assignments in this course was relevant. It was my first time creating a blog so it’s very interesting but I was a little nervous to recorded myself and sharing my thoughts. After 1^st Blog Entry, I felt more comfortable to share because my classmates had established an effective and safe online classroom environment/ community. I feel blog is a great tool for me to keeping my learning journal and learn from my "online" classmates. For me, the reading is a little bit to hard to read and find the main ideas. I hope that there is some study guide to support the chapter reading then it would be perfect for me to get the content and learn the main ideas.

Interview with Mr. Fonte ESL Teacher

My Interview Video
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pwoXC1tWL0avUq4ptMbeGiW8XstS_UGO/view?

usp=sharing

          For my 3rd blog entry, I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Fonte. He is an ESL teacher at Southmore Intermediate. He has more than 20 years’ experience in teaching.  He was a teacher in Philippine his mother country, he taught ESL and American culture at refugee camp back in 1980s for Vietnamese. Wright has mentioned, “Young school-age children often have greater motivation, pressure, needs, and opportunities to develop second language proficiency than adults” (p. 50); Mr. Fonte is also agreeing age is matter in learning a second language. During his experiences teaching ESL to refugees, most of his students was at 40s-50s of age and it hard for them to learn English.

 According to Wright, “ELLs face the challenge of learning to listen, speak, read, and write in English at the same time they are also expected to meet the same grade-level academic content standards as their English proficient peers.” (Wright, 2015, p. 263). Mr. Fonte makes a good point about the challenges that his students faced. Because of the transmigrate, he said in the same time learning English, his students also have to adapt with new culture and new school environment. Some students have a big gap in their education compare with others and in some cases those students weren’t receive education in school systems in their country for few years.
 When I asked Mr. Fonte about some techniques or strategies to help ELLs students, he told me that classroom environment is very important, knowing your students background and let's the student try- if they're not trying, they're not learn from it and as a teacher we should tell our students that "it's ok to make mistakes". I learned a lot from Mr. Monte how to help my ESL students and I enjoyed the time that I had after the interview to ask him more about  his experiences teaching at the refugee camp. It's very interesting to me. 

Reference

Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.

ENTRY 2: INTERVIEW WITH JASON PHAM

Blog Entry 

Watch my interview here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PADTLtFN_EUKw5dxUDoNLxAxFqzAto6w/view?usp=sharing

Jason is my friend for about 6 years already. We first meet at Vietnamese Community Sunday Church. We are both sharing the same native language, Vietnamese, so most of the time we are communicate in Vietnamese. “Nationwide, ELLs make up about 10% of the total population, and the number of ELLs is growing rapidly throughout the country” (Wright, 2015, p. 24) and Jason is one of them.

Jason enrolled in ESL classes and star learning English at 16, 9^th grader. Although it was not mentioned in the interview, I know that Jason supposed to enroll in 11^th grade since he finished 10^th grade in Viet Nam. His parents were the one makes decision because they think he don’t have enough ability and know enough English to be able to follow with the curriculum. According to Wright (2015), “Young school-age children often have greater motivation, pressure, needs, and opportunities to develop second language proficiency than adults” (p. 50). He agrees with me that learning a second language at young ages is better and easier than older age.

Jason left the ESL program after one year. I was so happy to know that his teacher was patient with him and explain to him the benefits of move to regular classroom is better for him after one year in ESL. According to Wright (2015), teacher should encourage ELLs to maintain and develop their home languages while they develop proficiency in English” (p. 23). It’s great for Jason to using two languages and fluent in his native language while learning English as a second language.

My last connection is about Jason’s struggles. According to Wright (2015), knowing a language means being able to use it to communicate effectively and appropriately with other speakers of the language” (p.36). He got a hard time to understand the teachers and communicate with other students to make friends. It’s very important and necessary for teacher to have a strong understanding about student’s struggles and able to help them learning their second language.

Reference

Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.

ENTRY 1: SELF INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone- xin chào tất cả mọi người. My name is Quynh Ninh. I am a senior at University of Houston- College of Education and my major is Teaching and Learning. Since childhood, my dream is becoming a teacher and right now my dream is about come true.