Diversity Conference

     The panel at the diversity conference was focused on teaching English Language Learners. Many panelists were from the Lewiston/Auburn area where there are many ELL students due to the large Somalian population. There is also going to be a May term class offered where there will be first hand experience working with ELL students. Although I am not planning on taking that course, I am interested in learning more about teaching these students, especially as the number of native English speakers in this country decreases. I also hope to get a teaching job in the Portland area, where there are also many ELL students.
     I enjoyed hearing the panelists discuss issues such as speaking with the parents of these students. I had never considered that I would have to learn how to work well with a translator in order to completely communicate with parents. One of the panelists mentioned that each school district is required to provide free translation services. I think that this is wonderful and keeps parents from being excluded.
     Another topic that the panelists discussed is just getting to know ELL students and getting involved in their lives like you would any other student. It is important to treat these students with care and patience and realize that their needs are not disrupting to other students. It has been shown that methods used t teach ELL students are actually very helpful to all students. This means that ELL students do very well in an integrated classroom.
     I think that this conference has made me interested to learn more about working with ELL students. I also realized how little I knew about the topic and about how I need to learn more before I start working with these students.

My Mel Experiences

•          Student/Teacher Relationships: My favorite teacher I have ever had was my high school Spanish teacher, Mrs. Soucy. I had a great relationship with her and I could tell that she really cared about me. Whenever I seemed upset she would ask me what was wrong and she was always very considerate when something came up that interfered with homework. Although I had a very friendly, casual relationship with her, I respected and looked to Mrs. Soucy as a mentor more than any of my other teachers.
•          Helping Students Succeed: My least favorite teacher in high school was my Functions/Statistics/Trigonometry and AP Statistics teacher, Mrs. Butler. She did not seem to care at all about student success, but rather was focused on getting through the text book despite the fact that more than half of the class usually failed the final test of the units. She did not seem to care much about encouraging success using differentiation because she always used the same basic formula; each class started off by going over last night’s homework and the rest of the class was notes. If there was extra time at the end of class, this time was to be spent doing homework quietly. She did not even let us listen to music with earbuds while working on homework because she claimed there were studies saying it was detrimental to learning, although she never provided us with more information about that supposed study.
•          Hands on: I have always hated doing hands on activities. I have never found these activities to be valuable, although I know that other benefit from them immensely. Luckily for me, I did not have many classes in high school that focused on hands on learning. Even my science classes were fairly writing and reading based rather than experimental. Other than sciences, I took mostly AP classes, which are fairly limited due to the emphasis on preparing for the AP test in May. In my AP classes we did not have a lot of time for activities and projects, which I did not mind.  However, I know many other students may have done better in the classes if hands on activities were incorporated.
•          Autonomy: Another one of my favorite teachers in high school was Ms. Carter. I took freshman history, AP U.S. History, and AP Psychology with her and loved the AP classes I took with her. Ms. Carter assigned a lot of projects; however, she typically would give us a list of project choices and allowed us to choose which kind of project we wanted to do. She also allowed us to think of our own project that was not on the list and get it approved by her. I think this made projects a lot more fun. It was always interesting to see which project other students chose to do and there was always something on the list that appealed to everyone. Looking back on this, it is apparent that she must have included projects that would appeal to a variety of learning styles.
•          Context: My Spanish teacher, Mrs. Soucy, would always try to convince us how useful knowing a second language is outside of the classroom. One way she did this was taking us on a field trip to do a Spanish scavenger hunt in Lowe’s. Although it sounds like an odd field trip, it was interesting to see how many of the Spanish signs we could read in the store and see if we knew our vocabulary well enough to be able to read the clues and find the products we needed. Afterwards, we went to a local Mexican restaurant and had to order in Spanish. It was a fun way to use the language outside of the classroom and see how valuable it can be in the real world.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust and Fairness

            In this chapter, a student describes a principal who was very supportive of his students and always gave the students chances, even if they “keep messing up” (18).

            As a teacher, I hope that I am able to be encouraging and supportive of all students. I do not want to be that teacher that chooses favorites and leaves others feeling helpless and unable to succeed. I plan to give students many chances no matter how many mistakes they make. I want to try to ensure success for all students. 

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

            In this chapter, one of the students is quoted saying, “If there’s confusion on my face, I want you to see it. If there’s disagreement, I want you to say, ‘You disagree? Why?’” (4).

            This quote jumped out to me because I was able to relate to my own experience as a student. As an introverted person, I am typically quite quiet in class. However, I always have a lot of thoughts going on in my head that I often portray through my facial expressions. These non-verbal cues are a signal to my teachers about what I’m thinking and feeling. If the teachers I had in high school were more observant of these cues, they may have been able to encourage me to speak more in class or they would have been able to see that I am engaged in and thinking deeply about the material.