Tag: power

Reality vs Myths

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Reality of an ESL Teacher

It has been 49 days since I saw my students and coworkers. I chose to dedicate my life to helping my students achieve and develop into young adults. I never predicted that the last trimester of my second year of teaching would be online. 

As I spend my days waiting for my students to send a message or join Google Meet, I also reminisce about how long I have known some of these students. I am a second year teacher, but I have been working at the same school for four years. I was a field experience student, teacher candidate, long-call substitute, summer school teacher, and finally full time. With four years at the same school, I have known most of my eighth graders since they were sixth graders. There is one student in particular that stands out from that group because he says, “We go way back.”  He’s right. We do go way back. We met during my first field experience placement when he was in fourth grade. I have had the privilege of watching this student grow up, learn another language, and develop into the jokester we always knew he was. I am saddened to think I will not hear him brag about how long he has known me and I am disappointed they are all missing out on the Spring Fling and other end of the year celebrations.

I miss instructing my students and being able to see and hear their progress. I miss our silly conversations about their lives and how they are too invested in my wedding plans. Even when this pandemic ends, life will never be the same. They have missed out on major moments in their childhoods and as a teacher, I have missed out on helping them get there. There are many things I wish I could have known before becoming a teacher. There are many things I still have to learn myself, but the least I can do for you today is share what I do know. It is time for us to talk about what it is really like to be a teacher of ESL.  Today my goal is to debunk some of the myths that go along with teaching ESL and give you more of an insight to the reality of this profession.

Five Myths About Teaching ESL

ESL teachers need to speak the language(s) of their students.

I cannot count how many times I have been asked if I was fluent in the languages my students speak. If I was, I would be fluent in English, Somali, Arabic, Spanish, and Creole. Don’t get me wrong. Teaching my diverse group would be much easier with a stronger background with their languages. To bridge the gap between languages, I have put an emphasis on learning phrases and keywords in each language, as well as becoming familiar with their cultural traditions. This simple gesture goes a long way in building strong, respectful relationships with students.

Your job will be fulfilling EVERYDAY.

As much as we want to have amazing days everyday, it is impossible. We can strive for great days, great lessons, and great attitudes; and manage to survive a chaotic day, failed lesson, or bad attitude. During my teacher candidacy, my cooperating teacher would say, “Let’s chalk it up as a fail and do better tomorrow.” She knew not every lesson or class would go right, which made teaching that much better. We cannot put high expectations on every aspect of our teaching. We need to leave room for adjustments and be willing to start from the beginning when necessary.

Teaching only happens in the classroom.

Distance learning, e-learning, and traditional learning are all forms of teaching we have become more familiar with during this time. Most people believe teaching only happens in the classroom and students will not learn outside of their regular learning environment. Some of my students have checked out for the year because they do not want to learn from a distance. Others are thriving because they are able to get the help they need from instructional videos and tutorials. It is possible for learning to happen outside of the physical classroom, but it takes time to develop online classroom routines, expectations, and management procedures.

Many of my students began learning English from listening to American music, binge watching shows on Netflix with English subtitles, and making friends who are native speakers or multilingual speakers who share the same language. I really encourage my students to read novels that also have movies. This way they can have multiple opportunities to read and hear the words. Through these outside learning opportunities, they are able to interact with the language and acquire basic skills to continue working on when they get back to the classroom.

Every teacher has their own classroom.  

Wrong. As an ESL teacher, I am also required to co-teach for a portion of my day. When I first began teaching, I had three co-teachers and did not teach a class alone. It was a struggle to find a balance as a new teacher, but it only got worse when I had to ask one of the three co-teachers if I could put my desk (that I had to request from the custodial staff to find) in her room. Almost finished with my second year and I still had to find a new home for my desk back in August. I also co-teach 4/5 classes and had to find an empty classroom to house my advisory and EL Developing Reading classes. Basically, do not assume you will get your own room with a desk and a chair right away. Schools tend to have more teachers than they do classrooms, so if you plan to teach ESL prepare yourself for this possibility.

Anyone can teach English if they speak it.

The reality of the situation is that a lot of people think they could teach something and I admit they are not completely wrong. They might be able to teach a skill like throwing a ball, basic math, or the ABC’s, but can they manage behaviors, while differentiating a lesson for 35 students? Probably not. Teaching is not for everyone, as I am sure you know. Not everyone could handle the stress and excitement of being a teacher. 

As an ESL teacher, I have experienced a lot of people saying it must be easy since I am a native speaker. Trust me, it is not easy at all. Teaching students who have various English proficiency levels and learning styles has many challenges. Currently I work with students considered level 3, meaning they are not beginners but more so intermediate. Typically, conversational speech happens quickly for many learners and reading and writing are the most difficult. Teaching someone how to read and write takes a lot of time and lots of phonics practice. Repetition is key when learning a language. Students need multiple interactions with a word before they are able to read, write, say, and hear it. This only happens when a teacher provides those opportunities throughout a lesson. 

For example, to learn academic vocabulary I will read a story from the textbook to my class that contains the words they are learning. Then I will have them read with a partner or they will take turns reading aloud to the class. They are required to participate in discussions about the text and I provide them with sentence frames to encourage an academic discussion. They will also complete various writing activities to practice using the vocabulary words. These are not things every teacher is trained to provide to their students. But an ESL teacher is trained and will be able to scaffold a lesson to fit the needs of all of their diverse learners (with practice, of course).

Even though teaching ESL is not at all what I expected, I have been able to learn so much through my many experiences in the classroom. Teaching has its ups and downs like any profession, but I believe it is one of the most rewarding. We get to experience our students learning from mistakes, achieving, and establishing their personalities. If debunking one myth at a time is what it takes to encourage more people to be educators, then that is what I will do.

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Empathy, Compassion, and Understanding

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Let’s be real for a moment, the majority of us tend to get short with individuals after telling someone something for the 10th time. I know I have in the past and I have to remind myself while we might know something and it comes naturally for us, it might not for someone else. This, in my opinion, is the first step when working with an English Language Learner (ELL) student.

While reading an article by Terese Thonus, called “Serving Generation 1.5 Learners in the University Writing Center,” she makes a valuable point that most of these students we are working with are probably first-generation college students. With some of them, more than likely, the first generation that can read and write in English, and quite possibly in their native language.

This story reminded me of the first interaction I had working with an ELL student in the Center for Academic Success on the Saint Cloud Technical College campus. During the fall 2019 semester, a young student in her third semester at the college in one of the more advanced writing courses the campus offers. The paper she wanted reviewed was titled, “I will make my father proud”. The story was supposed to be about someone that profoundly changed the student’s life or someone they look up to. She mainly wanted assistance with grammatical and spelling errors. There were only a few minor errors, but I could see how she struggled with sentence structure throughout her paper. With attempting to explain what else was going on, she took it as a direct personal attack against her paper. Trying to explain to this student it wasn’t the material that was incorrect, but it was more of how her sentences were coming together. We had spent almost an hour going through the first paragraph and trying to narrow down what was going on.

When asking her what she was trying to say, she would explain it in simple and fluent English. This is where her story hit me. She was writing a story about the man that influenced her life, her father. I learned from the paper that her father had passed away from a heart issue the summer before. During her high school experience, he had hired her a private tutor to help her make something out of herself. She finally learned how to read and write in 2013. Not a single person in her family back to her grandmother and grandfather could read or write in any language, she was the first. Her father passed away before her graduation which you can tell was hard on this student. Her goal is to graduate nursing school and become a traveling nurse in refugee camps to let her dad know she is grateful and to make him proud.

Her story is very touching for me. I am a 39 year old working on a triple bachelors in writing and psychology, while my father is currently battling COPD and Type 2 Diabetes. Listening to her story and how much emotion she put into it, made me want my father there to watch me make something out of myself.

When I had originally started working with her a few sessions before this, I was starting to get a little short with her and frustrated. I would explain something, come back 5 minutes later to check up on her, and she wasn’t progressing. I got frustrated because I could not tell if it was a tutoring issue, the language barrier, or did this student just not want to do the work herself.

Finally understanding this student’s story and struggles in life opened up my eyes. It’s not a tutoring issue, but more of a developmental issue when it came to her learning. For someone that was on her third year of college and taking a college-level course while only having 6 years of actual education behind her, she was doing remarkably well.

When some of our frustrations get to us, we need to remember this student’s story. I know I will always keep it with me in my journey through life. One of the greatest lessons I had learned from this is to be patient, asking probing questions that helped break some of these barriers or misunderstandings. The other thing and the greatest lesson from this are to not get frustrated. We all have our history and we all learn in different ways.

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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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