Bangladesh Images

In my experience with my placement student from Bangladesh, multiple images came to my mind. The first came when I discovered her love of reading and books, which she would later tell me was a big part of the culture of her country. I also made the assumption that she would be connected to the religion of Hinduism or Islam, which I discovered was the later. I also found that her and her family still enjoyed eating traditional Indian food from time to time, showing again her family's connection to their original culture at home. These connections with her home are important for helping her remember who she is and where she comes from, especially while living in a country that is filled with such diversity in culture.

ELL Identity Comparison

Being able to understand a student's background and identity is imperative to being able to reach them as educators. I have written down in the document attached below similarities and differences between my ELL student, T, and myself, and have found multiple differences in our backgrounds that could affect the way we act in our everyday life. These differences need to be carefully observed to maintain progress and continue to build upon ever growing relationships between teachers and students.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wv5OMETeTg2DP0fE_Wcu-TqDVyiIdWdJ42WsaE7_hWw/edit?usp=sharing

ELL Student Speaking WIDA Level

Following the first few weeks of working with T, I've determined what I believe is her WIDA level in speaking. Out of the 5 possible levels, I have found she is a 4. I've determined this by using can-do descriptors and comparing them to our interactions and conversations that we have had. The level 4 speaking tier states that students should be able to take a stance and defend it, compare and contrast points of view, explain content related issues, and respond to slang. Level 5, however, states students should be able to engage in debates using technical language, give multimedia oral presentations, and explain metacognitive strategies for solving problems. During our meetings, T has created a pros and cons list between our two presidential candidates, and also discussed her reasoning for supporting one of the two for her own reasons. We have also held causal conversations on what we did over the past week, containing occasional slang or casual terms that was easy for T to discuss with. However, she is approaching level 5, as she has told me she presented multiple PowerPoint presentations for classes, but her ability to fully debate over a topic using high level vocabulary is not so direct. She engages in reading highly advanced books for an early high school student, specifically a Dan Brown novel, and in it keeps tabs on words she doesn't know so she can research what they mean and know exactly what the author is describing. This can in turn effect her ability to speak professionally in public and in debating topics and very high levels. By reviewing this, I can determine as an educator to focus on her development of vocabulary and academic language to assist in her oral and presentation skills.

Future Aspirations of Culturally Diverse Students

During my last meeting with T, I noticed she had the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown with her, which she told me she was reading for fun. This surprised me, as not only is the book advanced, but she was reading it as a hobby, which many students don't do as often as they used to. This lead to a conversation about her collection of books still back in her old country, which her family goes back to every so often and allows her to bring more of the collection back, a little at a time. She also told me about a special country-wide book fair that draws hundreds and thousands to buy books from vendors every year. Hearing about this interest in books completely changed my view on other countries. As a world power, we are told most countries have little educational opportunities, which may hold true in some places, but they have plenty of passion to learn and succeed. This eliminates the preconceived notion that students from other cultures have less interest to learn in schools, and that they have the same drive other students have as well. To drive this point home, T also discussed her intensions of becoming a surgeon, and to try and attend the best school she could possibly get into, and during the time of the meeting, that was MIT. These high goals set up this student for great success, and I feel that she has the potential to get where she wants to be simply because she is sincerely working hard to be the best she can.

Cultural Backgrounds of Bangladesh

During my multiple placements this year, I have discovered one of my students has a strong background from Bangladesh. In order to fully understand some of this background, I have talked with the student and conducted personal research on the country to determine how living there could effect the student. The official language of the country in Bengali, and it also recognizes English as a secondary language. This is relevant as my student can speak English fairly well, but often writes in Bengali for personal use. The country borders to the Southeast of India, which means it is involved with the tensions that have grown between India and Pakistan, which resides on India's western border. Modern political turmoil and religious extremism are often issues in the country as well, and can be reasons for refugees to flee the country. The main reason I have gotten from my student, however, is simply business and work opportunities. After looking through these pieces of evidence, it sparks my curiosity to know if work was the only reason for coming to America, or if other influences affected their decision. My hope is to have another conversation to go deeper into the student's background and discover more about her family and background and the effects that it might have on her.

South Burlington ELL Placement 10/10/16

On Monday the 10th of this week, I went to meet with my second ELL student, who for future reference will be referred to as B. Unfortunately, she was absent from school. However, after talking to another student working with her, he told me that B wanted to find a way to contact me to let me know ahead of time if she would be absent. This showed me that her absenteeism wasn't necessarily because not wishing to attend school or see a tutor, but could be any other reason that hindered her from attending. This prompted me to research absenteeism, especially in ELLs. In the link I found below, 22% of eighth grade ELLs were frequent absentees in 2015, with the average being roughly 24% since 1994, which is one of the higher percentages in the groups shown in the data. From my previous knowledge, this could be caused by any number of cultural influences that may not be made aware to most educators, or any other more familiar reason. Educators must be able to understand that students can still be passionate about learning even if they are absent from school. It is simply our job to find out the reason why and find a way to provide knowledge to students despite absences in the classroom.

http://www.childtrends.org/indicators/student-absenteeism/

South Burlington ELL Placement 10/7/16

On Friday this past week, I had my second meeting with T. We worked together to figure out and become confident with the new material she learned in her class. I also generated some small talk to learn more about her and her background, which aided in my understanding of her from an educator's perspective and creating a more relaxed environment by showing I was truly invested in "student". However, one thing T said to me stuck. She told me that "I don't need to be so formal when talking with her". I felt by her saying this, it meant two things: one being that by talking and showing T that I was invested in her as a student, she feels more comfortable with me as an educational tutor, and two being that while teaching, I still tend to be more professional, and phase out my individual personality. Reflecting on this, I understand it is important not only to be professional in the classroom, but also provide real personality in order for material and knowledge to stick to students, which is something I must be able to balance out in order to be successful.

Formative Assessments

I have attached a strategy log which is meant to be a resource for 5 different formative assessments that can be used within a classroom. Initially, I created a simple table with information organized into grids, but in order to create access for EL learners and students with reading disabilities, I included images for each assessment, slightly reduced the reading level for each passage, and attempted to allow for text to speech access. I was able to determine how to gain access to text to speech within my own word processing on my computer, but was unable to create audio files of the text to speech to allow for anyone who sees the document to use text to speech. My next goal will be to find how to do this and make documents even more accessible for students. By going over my document and finding multiple ways to create ease of access, I have learned any form of information being given to students within a classroom can be shaped to be easy to use just by changing subtle aspects of the material.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzxxG1w6ypN7UHFfOEs2YnRsNU0/view?usp=sharing

South Burlington ELL Placement 9/30/16

On Monday this past week, I began my first day of tutoring with my first ELL student. For the sake of protecting the student's identity, I will refer to her as T. T asked for help with math homework, and for the entirety of our time together, we worked to gain an understanding of the concepts she was working on in class, which we were successful in doing. Going into the tutoring session, I was unsure of what level of math T was engaged in. I found that I didn't recall how to do the problems myself, so we ended up discussing what we though the solutions would be, bouncing ideas between us until finally we discovered how they should be completed the right way. Then after some practice, T felt very confident in her ability to complete the problems. By conversing and working the problem out, T was able to find out on her own how to solve the problems, even with my initial inability to lead her directly to an answer, and become comfortable with her work. This trouble ended up showing me another way to help students reach their own conclusions and to teach through what could have become an awkward encounter of simply not knowing how to help.

South Burlington ELL Placement 10/3/16

Today marked the first day I went to South Burlington to meet with my second ELL student. Unfortunately, my student was absent, which means we will have to wait until next week to meet. However, because we would be meeting in one of her classes, I was able to assist other ELL students as well as others as they worked on a project, giving me other opportunities for experience within a classroom. Drawing on prior knowledge, I understand that my student could have been absent for a number of reasons, such as an issue at home, illness, or even a reason based in the student's cultural roots, so I feel it won't be much of an issue as our meetings progress. Reflecting on the experience, I feel I have a good understanding of the classroom environment that my student is participating in, and I believe that I can be helpful in assisting my student in the weeks to come.

Culture in Education

In preparation for our upcoming placements at local schools, a number of our classmates and I attended a meeting to acquire information on what to expect. During this meeting, a piece of information stuck with me on educating students with a diverse cultural background. Students are often absent, or what we consider to be late to meetings and classes. As educators, our initial reaction may be to assume that the students doesn't care to learn. However, certain cultures determine that being on time means they will "get there when they get there". This shows as professional educators, we cannot accept students' actions at face value, and instead learn to understand why they act as they do, whether through cultural background or personal issues in their lives.

Blog Introduction

Hello,

My name is Patrick Martin and I am a History and Secondary Education Major at Saint Michael's College. This blog is being written to keep track of my progress, thoughts, and experiences in becoming a professional educator. It is also being written to show proof of my knowledge of Vermont's Performance Critieria for educators and my ability to demonstrate them.