We all go into teaching with the perception that we are only going to teach content, the content that many of us are so passionate about. At least for me I know that was the case, I went into teaching because I loved Spanish. I wanted to teach other people the language and help them in their quest to learning a new language. I will be honest and confess that I never stopped to think about all the other different aspects that go into teaching. It wasn’t until I started the teaching credential program that I found out that teachers have to think of students as individuals and that we are not only teaching them the content, but we also have to know what our students needs are and be aware of what they bring to the classroom. Our students come to the classroom with different needs, and experiences and knowledge. This experiences and knowledges they bring are known as their funds of knowledge. I think is essential that we as teachers use this knowledge our students bring in our favor. If we know what our children need and what they already know we can plan our lessons based on this information. I feel like using their funds of knowledge in our lessons will help them learn better the content and will help us build positive relationships with our students. For instance, Spanish is my content area, I could give my students a survey at the beginning of the year and see what their interests are, then I can include their interests in my lessons to make the class session a little bit more engaging. Something we can also do at the beginning of the year is give them a small assessment to see where they are and how they feel about the material. Like I mentioned before I will be teaching Spanish, I know learning a new language can be quite difficult specially for students with learning disabilities. If it takes 25% more time for a person learning a second language to process what is been learned, imagine how much longer it will take a person learning a new language with a disability. As a future language teacher, I think it is extremely important that I know what my students’ language needs are and that is why I think giving students small surveys or activities about how they learn best perhaps will give me an idea of what my students needs are.
As a requirement for my TED 453 class I have been doing observations in Stephen White Middle School. I have been observing a Dual Language Immersion class for the last couple of days. The classes are taught in both English and Spanish. From what I have observed one half of the classes are in Spanish and the other half is taught in English. I was assigned the English and History classes. I am observing from grades 6th to 8th so the dynamics are very different for each grade. Her class sizes are very small compared to the entire school, I don’t know if the dual language program has something to do with it, but her class sizes are quite small for her 7th grade she has twelve children, and for the 8th grade she has eleven. The 6th grade is where she has more children or at least more than the other two grades, there is 16 children in that class. I have noticed that for her sixth and seventh graders Ms. Silva, the teacher, has arranged the children in groups of two and from what I heard she does this so that the students can help each other. When it comes to her 8th graders she lets them sit wherever they want, I don’t know why but that is something I would like to ask her. Even though she is teaching the children history in Spanish that is a subject I am not very familiar with, so I decided to ask the teacher for a book so that I could help students if they ever needed my help. Unfortunately, she told me that the books she had were very limited and that even students had to share.
I asked Ms. Silva if she had any students with IEPs or a 504 plan in her classes so that I could observe them in more detail, but she only had one with an IEP plan. She did not give me much detail about his plan, but she told me that he had trouble with his reading. Ms. Silva told me that his accommodations were very simple, all she had to do was repeat the instructions several times so that he would understand them and give him extra time.
Oregano is an 11- year old boy from Mexico. From what I have observed he is very quiet. I haven’t been observing the class for long, therefore I still haven’t seen him participate in the class. He seems to get along with everyone, but he very reserved. One thing I noticed is that whenever he doesn’t understand something, or he falls behind there one of his peers usually helps him out. I am guessing this is why the teacher has them sited in groups. There is only so much I can find through my observations in the class, so I decided to interview him. I interviewed him a couple of days ago to find out what his interests were and what he needed from his teacher. This is what I found about him, he comes from a family of five. At home all his family speak Spanish. He loves soccer and he would like to be soccer player when he grows up. His favorite subject in school is history.