Blog Entry 1

            Upon enrolling into this course, I thought this was just any other second language class that will teach us about diversity in a classroom. I assumed that I had some background knowledge on this because I am an English language learner myself when I was younger. Once I started interviewing, observing, studying, watching blogs, and researching I came to realize that I barely knew the foundation of what it actually takes to teach, assess, and understand English Language Learners. I learned about different accommodations, or modifications are intended for English language learners so it could make up for a student’s lack of proficiency in the language, like giving them extra time, oral interpretation of directions, or have the native language version of the test. I also learned about additive bilingualism, this is very important all around to me and also to other ELL teachers that I interviewed as well, it’s important to m...

Hello everyone and welcome to my Blog Entry #3! I got the privilege to interview Ms. Reyes, a fellow 4 th grade bilingual teacher. Ms. Reyes is a first year teacher at Dogan Elementary and taught 1 st grade the first half of the year. Dogan decided that putting their 4 th ELL students in a general classroom was not a good idea and their grades reflected it. Ms. Reyes is now a 4 th bilingual teacher with 14 students in a self-contained classroom where she teaches them all subjects. This has always been meant for her, because she was also an ELL student herself. Ms.Reyes believes that ELL students should be put into a classroom where they are exposed to both English and Spanish equally. Most of her students sadly came from a public school system where the students did not have the ESL support or resources. When ESL and content instruction in English pressure students to replace or demote the home language, subtractive bilingualism may occur” (pg. 22) Ms. Reyes ...

Hi everyone! This is my Blog Entry #2 and I interviewed my fellow classmate, Angelica. She is twenty-three years old, who was born here but both her parents came to the United States from Mexico. Angelica grew up only knowing Spanish because she was not introduced to English at a young age. She learned her second language, English mostly from school and also from her older siblings. When I asked her where she mostly learned English, I was surprised with her answer because she said she mostly learned at home. “Students from a minority home may find the culture of the school vastly different from the culture of their home, and the teacher may be their first contact with the social world outside the home, and their first contact with English.” (pg. 29) This caught me off guard because usually people learn English at school and her family members knew only Spanish. She said she learned from her older siblings and watching TV. What I found interesting was that she had a difficult time l...