Month: February 2020

Equalizing Power with Students

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There are many directions this post could take. While I intend, in the future, to reflect on ESL resources and academic articles written about working with English Language Learners (ELL), for this first post, I wanted to discuss the impact ELL students have had on me.

Some view the student and teacher relationship as a power dynamic where the student always acts as the receiver. While this happens, I found that working with students is a two way street. Power is something that is negotiated and at times needs to be surrendered.

When I learn of the obstacles students overcome to be accepted in American universities or the challenges of learning a new language as a refugee, my struggles pale in comparison. It keeps my life in perspective and helps me reflect on the things I have learned from working with these students. In many ways, I feel like what they have given me is far more valuable than the grammar and punctuation rules that I try to teach them.

It reminds me of a television show called Christy from the 1990s, about the life of Catherine Marshall, a teacher who went to the backwoods of Tennessee in the early 1900s. While the show was, for the most part, forgettable, what stayed with me was a line during the opening credits, “I came here to teach, but they show me every day that I am here to learn.” This quote encapsulates my time working with ELL students, and I feel that I am the true beneficiary of these interactions.

At times, working with ELL students is overwhelming. Grammatical and spelling errors may cover the page making the writing almost impossible to comprehend. It takes time, but with patience things improve. My advice though is not to counsel patience, but to recommend giving up power from time to time. Work from a place of vulnerability. I recall working with one student and we were not seeing eye-to-eye. My explanations did not satisfy her in a way that she understood.

What did I do?

I gave up the authority. I had her tell me what her understanding of the assignment was… in her native language (Korean). She spoke for a couple of minute’s gesturing with her hands. I sat in silence and didn’t understand a thing she said. When she was done, I asked for an interpretation. Speaking in her native language seemed to have calmed her and she worked through her response in English. From her response I was able to find a thread of something that we could work with and make our session productive. She mentioned cooking with her mom and I used that to start a conversation about her favorite dishes and how some were made. I even asked how to pronounce them in Korean. She laughed at my appalling pronunciation, but that emotion brought about a connection.

I used the idea of her cooking and connected it to writing a sentence. A paragraph. An entire essay.

Making the connection with something she was passionate about put us on the right path for completing the assignment and saved what could have been a rather awful coaching session. But it came about from my willingness to give up power and not be the expert. I allowed myself to feel uncomfortable and take on the role of the student.

So don’t be afraid to give power to and learn from your students. You will get far more from them than they will get from you.

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TESL Adventures

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Welcome to TESL Adventures! TESL is short for Teaching English as a Second Language. Our blog will explore different experiences of working with English language learners (ELLs). Along with our experiences, we will share tips, resources, and articles for TESL. 

Join our adventure and maybe we can help you learn something new! Learning is lifelong and we want to share our passion with you. To start us off, I will be introducing our blog contributors. Our blog has three contributors with unique backgrounds and experiences. 

Our first contributor is Molly Sand. Molly is an English as a Second Language teacher. Her teaching license is ESL K-12. She currently works with grades 6, 7, and 8. Through her profession, she has been able to interact with students from all over the world, who have varying levels of English proficiency. This has exposed her to the challenges and successes for students learning a new language. They are passionate and have encouraged her to learn more about their cultures every day. She enjoys working in a diverse environment because she is passionate about learning and traveling. Her students have taught her so much over the years and she plans on sharing some of her classroom experience with TESL Adventures, as well as including specific resources for working with ELLs. She has been at the same school for about four years. Her experience there has included field experience student, student teaching, long term substitute teacher, summer school teacher, and full-time EL teacher. Each of these experiences taught her how to adapt quickly and made her more confident as an educator. Now, she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Writing Studies and Rhetoric. With this new degree, she hopes to become a better writer and educator. 

Next contributor is Seth Naslund. He has been working in writing centers as a Writing Coach and Administrator since 2013. He has worked with more than 1,200 students from over 30 different countries. He enjoys working with students from diverse cultural backgrounds as it allows him to learn about people that have a wide range of beliefs and lived experiences. He has Master’s degrees in both English Studies and Rhetoric and Writing. Seth is passionate about helping students of all ages, cultures and learning styles discover their own individualized writing processes. Working with ELLs is always an adventure for Seth and he finds helping these students find their writing voice to be one of the most rewarding aspects of working as an educator in writing centers. 

The third contributor is Michael Libby. He is a triple major at Saint Cloud State University. His majors are Community Psychology, Chemical Dependency, and English. He will be heading into a Master’s program at SCSU right after graduation. During his free time, he volunteers at Minnesota and Teen challenge. This past school year he started working at Mary Stangler Center for Academic Success. During this time, he had the opportunity of working with a lot of students from eastern Africa, which has been an amazing learning experience for him. Even though this is not what he pictured himself doing, it has been life-changing at times. He is looking forward to sharing these amazing stories and the challenges that go into working with some of these students.

If you made it to the end, We imagine you are wondering where else you can find us. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram to receive updates about blog posts, tips for learning English, and more adventures.