Language and Power

“Teachers must be creative and flexible, serve as a catalyst for discovery as students learn to operate effectively in their multiple worlds.”

As an ESL teacher myself, I found a lot of these articles/videos to be very enlightening. Reading about both personal experiences and objective breakdowns of how bilingual students learn is extremely helpful.

In “Teaching Multilingual Children,” Collier states that teachers must “...be able to mediate and resolve intercultural conflicts, keep students on task, and serve as a support base. Teaching is complicated, but it is also rewarding in ways that many other jobs can never be.”

This early quote resonated with me greatly. I find that teaching ESL is extremely challenging. In each class, students skills in the domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening vary so largely. Where one student may be a strong reader, he or she may lack listening skills which adds a level of challenge in larger rooms.

However, I find that the ESL population at Central Falls High School are some of the most thoughtful and inquisitive students I’ve interacted with. The sense of reward when a student grasps a concept or has a meaningful dialogue in class is unmatched.  

Collier’s emphasis on the importance of home dialect and its appropriate use within

the community really stood out to me. Every single student in my class produces content in both their first and second language. This is something that I embrace and try to show students is encouraged within my room.

I think this goes for many of the teachers/classes in Central Falls High School.

Collier’s description of code-switching as a “creative and dynamic process” is accurate in my opinion. To have a structure built around two different grammatical systems is really sophisticated and one of the most exciting things to witness as an ESL teacher.  

“Guadalupe Valdes has stated, “"Bilingual speakers are aware that each of their languages has certain strengths and that two languages can be used simultaneously to convey the most precise meaning.””

Something I love seeing is the student collaboration when trying to explain a complex idea to me. They have the words in their first language, but are sometimes unable to convey them. Students will work together and attempt to translate information for me. It’s a really beautiful classroom occurrence that I always enjoy witnessing.

In episode two of Translanguaging Guides for Educators, there are a lot of great tips and information. It brought me a sense of accomplishment that I try and practice these tips already.

For example, my students make a lot of presentations in my class. One in particular was “my favorite,” where students wrote about some of their favorite things.

As a surprise for my students, I created the same assignment and presented in Spanish and Portuguese. It was a huge step out of my comfort zone but students were able to assist me with pronunciation and fixing grammatical errors I had made. They were able to laugh and see that trying something new didn’t need to end up in shame or embarrassment.

These were such inspiring reads!