I have been spending two hours a week "observing" an English Language Learner (ELL) class, led by Rosario Veracruz. I put "observing" in quotation marks because there are two children in the class (Miguel and Benton), so I can't really "observe" (since I bring the student:teacher ratio up to one:one, and I teach both Miguel and Benton in Language Arts). In addition to getting a teaching license in Language Arts, this degree will give me an ESOL endorsement; part of that means seeing ELL teaching in action.
A few words about our students: both of Miguel's parents are Mexican; he was born in Salem, OR and has been living in Eugene for four years. He is a fluent speaker of Spanish and his conversational English is very good. I have seen very little writing from him in our language arts class because he tends to avoid doing writing, preferring instead to chat with his friends. He is charming and sociable; he also hates school and is constantly "in trouble."
Benton was born in the Marshall Islands; I haven't been able to get a straight answer from him about when he came to the US--either he doesn't know or he doesn't want to say. He is fluent in Marshallese and speaks English passably. The vocabulary of school seems foreign and strange to him and he has significant trouble with English syntax. He is cheerful, smiles constantly, asks lots of questions and likes to socialize.
On Friday, Miguel was suspended, so he missed all of Friday and most of yesterday. The out of school suspension rattled him pretty deeply--in part because of the way that his parents responded to it: they threatened shipping him off to military school or sending him back to Mexico to work. He came in this morning with a profound need to talk about his schooling life. Instead of taking the spelling quiz he was supposed to take on Friday, he and Rosario talked for almost 30 minutes about life, school, being Latino in an all white school, his attitudes towards school, work, life, relationships.
I worked with Benton, writing sentences about "school" vocabulary. I ask my gentle reader to consider the challenges of explaining the word "comprehension" to a seventh grade boy whose English is a little rusty. Benton kept saying: "I don't get it. I don't get it."
A little light bulb went on over my head: "Comprehension is when you "get" something."
That's a trick I learned from Rosario, to try to uncover the language they do know to help them understand language they don't know.
I must confess, the one-on-one work I did with Benton today was probably the most enjoyable teaching experience I have had yet at Edison.
Behind me, in the cavernous classroom which would hold 38 math students 2nd period, Rosario and Miguel talked about life, about being Latino, the pressures and expectations and fears and hopes. I hadn't heard Miguel speak as much or as passionately about anything in the six weeks I had seen him in school. I could tell that Rosario was concerned about him; she switched from language teacher to life coach. And I could tell that she had gotten something through to Miguel. He interacted with her differently than he interacted with any other adult I had seen.
After class, Rosario thanked me profusely for working with Benton while she talked to Miguel. And then she proceeded to bend my ear about how hard it was for Latino children at the school. She talked about Miguel told her that his brother was in a gang and that his father didn't want him to speak to his brother. I asked her: "Is that the kind of thing that the guidance counselor should know?"
She paused, as if calculating whether or not to trust me. She continued: "The guidance counselor is a little white lady. If she tries to intervene with Miguel, she will probably just drive him away from her--and, if she tells him that I went to her, from me as well. She doesn't know what he is going through; I do." I could tell she wanted to say more--much more--about her experience teaching at Edison. I got the sense that she was lonely, that she didn't have the opportunity to talk about her experience working in this mostly white school.
I was late to my second period class; Rosario and I were standing in the commons outside of my classroom. Laura had started in already, and she looked out into the commons, caught my eye and gave me a look like: "what the hell are you doing out there?" So I had to take my leave of Rosario, though I didn't want to. I sensed that both of us could have stood there for hours, talking about Miguel, Rosario, Benton, Gil.
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