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.