Reflection Wheel Journal #1
Event/Behavior:
My CLD student absents from class after knowing that she got a low mark for class participation. I knew this from her close friend. A day before, I remembered calling her to my office telling her to be vocal and actively participate in order to score. I remembered also using the word passive to her. Prior to that, (during a class session) I called her to speak in front of classroom, asking her opinions and at the same time correcting her grammar and vocabularies.
Feelings:
- Confused
- Frustrated
- Sad
Thoughts:
As a teacher that concerns my students’ improvement and grade, I meant nothing harmful to her. I don’t want her passiveness to encumber her growths as L2 English speaker. I thought she felt useless because of her inability to participate actively in classroom. Furthermore, her inability to speak fluently compounds her belief that I do discriminate her. I thought she felt afraid to talk by perceiving in her mind that I and her colleagues evaluating her grammar and communication abilities. I think she feels down because I labeled her as being passive student.
Learnings:
Step One:
I assumed all students love talking and can participate in classroom activities.
I assumed all of my students are the same when it comes to learning strategy and preferences.
A potential bias I had was it is okay to label student as being passive as motivation.
Step Two:
It is my mistake to assume all students love participating in classroom activities. She might think that I will ask her more questions in front of class so that she will be an active student and at the same time having a chance to evaluate her grammar and finding her mistakes so that she can loose her face in front of her colleagues. This is actually a personal attack on her ability. It damages her pride. I do realize it is wrong to label student regardless of what my good intention was, because words or name calling to students can give negative impact if the student interprets wrongly. Also, students learning strategy and differences should be celebrated and cherished because they are unique. Based on TESOL ESL Standards for P-12 Teacher Education Programs, teacher must understand and apply knowledge of the role of individual learner variables in the process of learning English.1
Step Three:
My father was an army. His style of motivating me is ‘special’ or I can say it is more to military style. He taught me that whenever other people tried to underestimate me, I should response back by proving that their notions were wrong. I should perceive it as challenge. I guess I can apply the same thing when I want to motivate my student which turns out to be wrong. Also, when I attended my school (during my teenagers), my teacher would correct my errors openly, and I believe, she did in a good faith and with best intentions. So I just did the same of what she did to me by applying it to my student. I put my trust on my teachers as I put it to my parents. I do not question their authorities or intentions. Parents are respected in our culture; it goes the same to teachers. Most of the time, teachers are equivalent to parents in term of their status. This is due to the nature of their jobs which is conveying knowledge and information. In my culture, we are encouraged to speak in public, to voice out our opinions and to share so that others will know what you really live the events around you.
In this case, my student comes from a totally different world; the way she is being brought up is different and she did not go through my stages of upbringing. Imposing my way of life and my way of thinking (perspective) is totally damaging to her. We live in colorful world and diversity, culture, race and religion are the things that make it. These will lead to different perspectives and understanding. My student’s dignity as individual that has different culture creates the colorful world I mention above should be respected and appreciated.
Applications:
Step One:
The reaction of her is a reflection of my inept professionalism as a bilingual ESL teacher. I should read and discover more about my students’ backgrounds and cultural differences so that this incident won’t happen. CLD students are in fact the asset because they will give me opportunity to delve further into multiple cultures and ethnicities thus enriching my experiences.2
It is clear that “we treat all students the same” obstructs meaningful instruction and learning because it leads me to neglecting them.3 Also it shows my instruction does not fulfill the standard of CEE guiding principle to develop my lessons based upon previous education, cognitive abilities and language proficiency level. Watching movies or starting a background research on my CLD students’ backgrounds is a good step towards understanding them better. By doing this, many elements within the culture of my CLD students that I do not know about will emerge. This will be additional feedback and information that is valuable to me.
Step Two:
I will take specific notes so that this incident won’t happen again in my class. Instead of asking her to speak in front of class and correcting her publicly, next time, what can I do is by letting her to speak in groups. In developing her confidence, I will value her answer by responding to the content of her ideas rather than focusing on her grammar and encouraging interaction within group to develop her confidence. It is important to note that I should view back my opinion of students being active in class because different cultures have different interpretation on that, for example, in my CLD student’s culture (the one that I am discussed now), being mentally active in class is listening actively in class, maintaining harmony and not showing off in contrast to my culture that acknowledged outspoken and openness.)
I want my student to know that their education and improvement is important regardless of where they are coming from. I want them to realize as well that teachers do make mistakes but education is about learning and to improve. Importantly, the incident happened should not thwart off learning. Educating, understanding our students are our first priority because who ever they are, they are accepted, cherished and celebrated well in our education institution.
References:
- Herrera S.G, Murry K.G. (2005) Mastering ESL and Bilingual Methods (Differentiated Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Students.)( pg.3) Pearson Education, Inc, USA
- Ibid. pg 11
- Ibid. pg 17
Tags: class participation, class session, classroom activities, colleagues, communication abilities, english speaker, grammar, kamal, orphan, passive student, passiveness, reflection, sad thoughts, student learnings, style definitions, style name, times new roman, using the word, vocabularies