Field+Observation+&+Reflection

**Journal & Reflection Notes** I observed three classes at an alternative high school that is part of the Education Services District. This school specializes in ESL students though it does accept some native, English speaking students who, for various reasons, were not succeeding in the mainstream schools. This school has four semesters in a year instead of two semesters. Teachers tell me that this schedule allows students to finish two years worth of curriculum in one year. Class periods are 90 minutes long and students take four classes each semester instead of the six to eight per semester that students at mainstream schools have to take. The school I observed begins classes at 8 a.m. and is out by 2:00 p.m. Students and staff get a half hour lunch. At the beginning of my first day I met the Principal who suggested I observe two ESL classes, each with a different teacher with a unique way of teaching. **Tuesday, June 26, 2007 Period 1 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.** || || This class is Reading Lab I. The curriculum taught is READ 180, a program CCSD purchased for millions of dollars and which satisfies requirements set by the No Child Left Behind Act. The district has to pay additional fees for every new group of a dozen to 100 students who enroll in it. Students get a unique login to track their scores. The teacher says the ELL portion of READ 180 is not very good. She also told me that many teachers don’t like to teach the program because it’s so rigid. Teacher starts class by reminding students of the previous day’s discussion about addictions, especially to gambling. She introduces the new vocabulary word “impulse,” and asks students, “Where is the emphasis? What kind of “I” is it? What kind of “U” does it have? What does “impulse” mean? They have been studying phonics and she is referring to if the vowels are long or short. Teacher writes “A sudden urge” on the board and relates it to a vocabulary word they had last week, “urgent.” She hands out Spanish/English dictionaries because all the students, except one girl from Cambodia, are from Spanish-speaking countries. After reading an article out loud about gambling addiction, students read out loud from an article about how much money teens spend. Teacher brings attention to the expression “money burning a hole in your pocket” and asks students what it could mean. Teacher comments to a student, “I love how you are scanning” to quickly get the meaning of the text. Seems like a tactic to give positive reinforcement about a skill students are developing. Later half the class goes to work on some computers with the READ 180 software. Students use headphones to listen. Each student’s unique logon keeps track of his/her progress and what the student’s native language is. The program can offer the student cognates in his/her own language to assist with comprehension. Teacher posted a list of Spanish/English cognates on the wall on a big piece of paper, but the paper just indicates that the words are “cognates.” It doesn’t say with which language they are cognates. I wonder if this confuses or ostracizes the Cambodian girl. Teacher says that CCSD doesn’t like to give students tests in their native language, such as Spanish, but that she tries to accommodate the ELL's by including more pictures and simpler sentences in her tests. She says she feels it’s important to “meet them where they’re at.” She also talks about pushing the students to learn more. This sounds like the I+1 Input Hypothesis propounded by Stephen Krashen. She gives them 10 new vocabulary words to learn every day from a list of phonograms. The teacher is very enthusiastic about teaching ELL’s because she feels she’s making a difference in her student’s lives by helping them learn English. She tells me that most of the students at the school speak “Hispanic,” revealing some possible ignorance of other languages and cultures, despite her compassionate intentions. **Tuesday, June 26, 2007 Period 2** **9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. ** || || There are 11 students in class. Teacher tells me “as long as you have good materials, you’re good, like some good transparencies and things the kids like to do.” For my benefit, teacher starts class by asking students, “What helps you learn English?” Students respond, “Study, practice, dictionary, listen to music, read, writing, the news, TV.” From 9:30 – 9:45, teacher flips through books preparing for next segment while students copy material from a transparency. The following is some of what was on the transparency: Duty comes before pleasure. Primero es el deber que el placer. __Weather__ High: 105 Sunrise: 5:25 a.m. Low: 78 Sunset: 8:02 p.m.  __News__ Hundreds of residents were evacuated from the South Lake Tahoe area because of a forest fire that destroyed 225 homes and clouded the lake’s clear water with falling ash. (The second blurb was about criminals stealing people’s identities) || || Again, accommodation is made for the Spanish speakers in the class by translating the saying at the top of the transparency. I wonder how the lone Cambodian girl in the class feels about that? The news blurbs are from the Review Journal. Teacher holds up the paper, as a piece of realia, and reads a portion of each featured story out loud. She tells the students that for the whole story they can check out the paper. Teacher calls the booklets that the students keep of what they copy from the transparency their “daily journal” even though they don’t write anything original in them. Teacher emphasizes new words in her speech and paraphrases herself to help students understand the meaning of the new word without simply reciting a definition. Class spends about 30 minutes, from 9:45 a.m. to10:15 a.m. completing a worksheet about the present continuous tense by answering out loud. Students seem bored, however the teacher may be purposely giving the students extra time to process the information. Teacher passes out a worksheet for conjugating verbs. She writes answers on the board for the first set of problems, calls on some students at first, then just lets the class respond as a group. Teacher passes out a workbook and textbook set called “High Point.” It contains a reading about honeybees. Students read it out load and answer questions. Teacher models the new vocabulary “fan” as in “the bees fan the hive with their wings” by waving her arms up and down. Teacher puts up a transparency of a graphic organizer containing the information the students just read. The students copy the notes. Below is a copy: **Honeybees – Hive** Queen || Drones || Workers || Largest bee Lays eggs Up to 3,000 a day The hive cannot survive without her || Male bees No stingers Don’t collect food or pollen Mate with queen || Feed the queen and young Guard the hive Fan to keep hive cool Collect nectar for honey About 60,000 in one hive || At 10:30 a.m., the teacher directs the students to work on a fill-in-the-blank exercise about prepositions from their workbooks. Later they listen to a CD recording of a story in their textbook called, “A Mountain Rescue.” Before they listen to it, the teacher tells them it’s a story about teamwork. Then they listen to a couple of Aesop’s fables on CD, “The Mouse and the Lion” and “The Monkey and the Camel.” Before they listen to them, the teacher tells them they are stories about friendship. Afterward the class briefly discusses the characteristics of fables: · Usually the characters are animals · Fables have morals Teacher asks the class, “What is a moral?” The students agree it’s like a lesson. At the end of class, students listen to and sing along with the song, “Make New Friends.” Make new friends But keep the old. One is silver And the other’s gold. A circle is round It has no end. That’s how long I want to be your friend. Students are reluctant to sing along at first. The teacher does not sing along because she is flipping through books. In the back of the classroom there are National Geographic and Stars magazines available for students to flip through at their leisure. The Cambodian girl from the previous class is in this class too. She seems not to have many friends. She told me she’s been at the school for only a month and a half. She sits quietly at her desk while the other students (who are speaking Spanish to one another) wait at the door for the bell to ring and class to be over. When class is over I ask the teacher for a writing sample from my case study student but she says she doesn’t have one at the moment. Then she comments that she doesn’t have the students write very much partly because when they do, it’s almost impossible to understand what they’re writing about. **Friday, June 29, 2007 Period 1 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.** || || There are 10 students in class - five girls, five boys. Only one girl sits at the front of the class. The rest sit in the back and are much quieter than the boys. One boy comes in about 1 minute late and says the bus was late. The teacher forgives him. Two other boys come in 10 and 15 minutes late. She says she’s heard the bus excuse already today. If the bus keeps coming late, they need to get up earlier to catch an earlier bus. On the board is written the following: Students will: 1) USE ACTIVE LISTENING to learn more about money management. 2) READ orally/ silently for comprehension of new information. 3) THINK about the information the speaker gave about money and compare/ contrast with info from book 4) WRITE how info is alike/different (speaker vs. book) and write on graphic organizer. These were directions for when the class had a guest speaker from the Credit Union who talked to them about money management. Teacher collects homework at the beginning of class. She says, “Let’s continue our discussion about money. The expression, ‘right on the money,’ what does it mean?” Later the teacher says, “Take out your graphic organizers.” The graphic organizers were used earlier in the week for the guest speaker. One graphic organizer says: Comparison – Contrast Pattern Topic: 1) Savings is a good action for the future. 2) Choose a Bank/Credit Union with no fees. 3) Money gets interest in savings. 4) Teens are charged high interest on first loan. 5) Use Kelly bluebook to get price of cars. Teacher tells the class, “Let’s use the oral closed reading method” to read this article about money.  Teacher reads out loud then stops, the students read the next word or phrase out loud, and then the teacher continues reading.  Later, the teacher has a student read a whole section aloud.  Teacher asks the class questions about the text and they answer as a group out loud.  At 8:45 a.m. half the class goes to take a reading test on the computers, but there is something wrong with the computers so the students go back to their desks.  Students are given 15 minutes to work quietly. Teacher walks around to check on students’ progress.  On the walls there are two lists of Spanish/English Cognates, one list of adverbs, one list of adjectives, one list of verbs, one list of nouns for each type (people, places, things, actions), a list of “Cool Words” and a list of “The Five W’s” (who, what, where, when, why and how). READ 180 paperback books and audio books are available for students to read in class. There are three posters on the wall recruiting for the U.S. Army. They say, “After years of fitting in, maybe it’s time to stand out.” The photos show one soldier looking at the camera surrounded by a group of soldiers wearing the same uniform. Today was the end of the first three weeks of Summer School. Grades will be given on Monday. The teacher’s speaking style is relatively quick and she doesn’t modify it very much to help the students understand. This could be good because the students can get used to the way English speakers normally talk, but it may prevent students from receiving comprehensible input. **Friday, June 29, 2007 Period 2 9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.** || || There are 12 students in class. Teacher doesn’t start class until 9:41 a.m. when she puts up a transparency so students can start copying from it. In the meantime, some of the Spanish-speaking students are teaching the Cambodian girl how to say “hello” in Spanish. She teaches them how to say “hello” in her language. A student walks in with boxes for the teacher and another boy says mockingly, “Oh, thank you, Roberto.” Ironically, while he is mocking the other student, pretending to be the teacher, his pronunciation is pretty good. The “o” at the end of “Roberto” sounds especially American English. Today’s transparency features the same type of information as Tuesday’s. The news topics for today are: Teacher finishes her discussion of the students from Macau by saying, “Boys and girls, are we thinking about our careers, our education?” as she continues to fumble through papers and books, seemingly looking for the next material to cover. Teacher gets angry with the students for talking to each other in Spanish and asks that they not have private conversations. She tells them to stand in front of the class and tell everyone what they said. This is strange. Everyone but the teacher and the Cambodian student understand Spanish, which means everyone in the class already heard what they said. The teacher seems irritable today. Later they listen to a recorded voice on CD that talks them through a worksheet on “Everyday Problems.” A student walks across the room to pass a note. Even though the teacher is at the front of the room looking down at the transparency, she doesn’t seem to notice this – or maybe she just ignored it. The class brainstorms everyday problems and the teacher puts their comments on a transparency. A student offers up “English class” as an everyday problem, but the teacher rephrases it and writes down “Learning to speak English.” Another student comments in Spanish, “Notice how she changed it!” It is clear that the students don’t respect this teacher very much, I think in part because she doesn’t respect or understand them. The teacher doesn’t know how to relate to the teenaged ELL’s and is probably intimidated by them speaking a foreign language that she doesn’t understand and can’t control. Next, the class works together filling out a crossword puzzle. Next the class reads a story from the magazine, “SCOPE: Reading, Writing and Reality for Teens.” The story is based on the movie “Flicka” which is about a girl who is failing school but is determined to tame a wild Mustang. The teacher doesn’t pay attention to students as they read. She fumbles with papers and books. This teacher’s curriculum allows different types of learners to interact with English in a variety of ways. Analytical learners can pick apart the sentence structure with the grammar-based worksheets. Globally oriented learners can pick up parts of the language through the teacher’s discussion of the newspaper articles and through readings. Sound oriented learners can pick up the language through the audio recordings and the singing of the song from the previous class. A shortcoming of this class seems to be the content, however, which seems dry at times and doesn’t necessarily speak to students’ needs or interests. **Friday, June 29, 2007 Period 3 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.** || || This is a regular English I class that includes ELL’s. There are 17 students in the class. The same teacher who teaches the Period I ESL class at 9:30 a.m. teaches this class. The class reads out loud from a booklet called “A+ Starters – Second Quarter.” One student, a native English speaker, stands in front and leads the class in reading and calling on students to answer the questions at the end of the reading. The passage is about Henry Flipper, the first Black West Point graduate and first Black officer in the army. Flipper was accused of theft and, even though a judge ruled he didn’t do it, Flipper was dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming an officer. President Clinton posthumously pardoned him in 1999. A student says in Spanish, “Si, pues,” to something the teacher said to him. She doesn’t understand what he said and sends him outside for about a minute. I’m conflicted about how to interpret this interaction. I don’t know the history between the teacher and this student. She may have thought he was back-talking her in Spanish. Maybe he just code-switched into Spanish when answering her question in the affirmative. Next, the teacher passes copies of a paperback book she found at Borders called “the Crossing.” The story is about a 14-year-old boy struggling to survive in the Mexican border town of Juarez and how he tries to cross the border. The same student, who led the class in reading about Henry Flipper, now leads the class in reading “The Crossing.” He directs each student to read a paragraph. Teacher keeps note of who volunteers to read and gives points to those who do. A native-Spanish-speaking ESL student reads out loud, though haltingly. I might have heard a student or two snicker when the reader mispronounced some words. Later a native English speaker mispronounces “Juarez” and the joke’s on him. Referring to the story, the teacher asks a girl if it’s true that criminals can run free in Mexico because the police are so corrupt. The girl says in her town people are “civilized.” She’s from Guadalajara. I sense she may have been offended by the teacher’s generalization. Later I notice the student playing with her iPod, hiding it behind her book so the teacher can’t see. I wonder if this behavior came from anger at the teacher’s comment, which turned her off to the book. Teacher was going to have students return books so they can work on their rough draft writing, but she lets them vote to keep reading “The Crossing” for the rest of the period. They decide to work on the rough drafts of their tall tales next week. Students continue reading out loud, but a man walks in to the classroom and interrupts to distribute bus passes. As students wait for the bell to ring, I notice that Spanish and Black English are being spoken among the students. Students always seem more engaged in this teacher’s class than in the other teacher’s class. The content always addresses the student’s needs (money management), backgrounds (Black civil rights and Mexican immigration), and interests.  **Reflection & Conclusion** || || She is also dedicated to interacting with the students to check their comprehension and move them along to the next project to prevent boredom and not waste time. The teacher told me some of her students think they don’t need to learn English because they will be returning to Mexico soon. She told them that they shouldn’t waste this opportunity to learn English – a language they can still use in Mexico to get a better paying job. After some thought, the students agreed with her and were more enthusiastic about their studies. This was a great example of the teacher making a connection with the needs and goals of her students. The Clark County School District created this school to help address the needs of the rising number of ELL’s in our community. I wonder, though, if this attempt to give special consideration to ELL’s is actually hindering them to some degree. The large majority of the students are Spanish-speakers, which means the students interact largely in Spanish. Those students who don’t speak Spanish have a greater need to learn English to make friends, but those friends are often not native English speakers. Teachers have expressed to me that the school is aware of this dilemma and is looking for opportunities to diversify its student population. On the other hand, the school creates an environment that is very supportive of the ELL experience. Krashen’s affective filter is less likely to inhibit students’ learning because they share their struggles with most of their peers. The longer class periods are appropriate for this student body because they not only have to learn the content of their courses, but also the language that supports it. The 90-minute periods give ELL’s extra time in class to process information in order to respond or ask questions. It also reduces the number of classes that require homework in the second language. The supportive environment and sheer number of Spanish speakers also helps prevent a sense of low native language status (as a contextual factor in second language acquisition, as discussed by Aida Walqui in the September 2000 Eric Digest). This means Spanish speakers are less likely to reject their native language.
 * FIELD OBSERVATION**
 * A naturalization ceremony downtown where 150 people became citizens.
 * Metro police “crack down” on drug dealing with a new surveillance camera installed at Fremont and 15th Street. (Teacher points out “crack down” as a new vocabulary word.)
 * Students from Macau are visiting Las Vegas to learn more about the gaming-hotel industry. They toured several hotels.