What a Day. . .
Today was quite a day. I can't think of a more intense, challenging, interesting, or badly needed job than being an ESL teacher--and we haven't even started pulling kids out of their mainstream classes to teach them yet!
The day began with a kindergarten English language learner from Africa ran away from his classroom and refused to go back. He seemed more afraid than defiant to me. After all, here were all these big people--not his parents--speaking to him in a language that he wasn't fluent in, all in this really big, strange building. I think he was experiencing some serious culture shock. He finally returned to his classroom with his older brother and my cooperating teacher.
The day ended with an afterschool meeting with both my cooperating teachers (elementary--whom I'm working with now, and high school) and a professor from the college who will be supervising my student teaching. That was brief and went well.
In between those two events, a lot happened: English proficiency testing of two kids; some planning for the first day or two of teaching; a special education meeting which I thought earned the translator a medal for just following the conversation (nevermind translating it!); a discussion of the problem of child abuse (or accusations of it) among refugees; another conversation about life in refugee camps in Kenya, during which I learned that our Somali translator had to move from one camp so he wouldn't get killed.
That's not all. . . there was one more very interesting topic of conversation. I'll save that for my next post. . .
The day began with a kindergarten English language learner from Africa ran away from his classroom and refused to go back. He seemed more afraid than defiant to me. After all, here were all these big people--not his parents--speaking to him in a language that he wasn't fluent in, all in this really big, strange building. I think he was experiencing some serious culture shock. He finally returned to his classroom with his older brother and my cooperating teacher.
The day ended with an afterschool meeting with both my cooperating teachers (elementary--whom I'm working with now, and high school) and a professor from the college who will be supervising my student teaching. That was brief and went well.
In between those two events, a lot happened: English proficiency testing of two kids; some planning for the first day or two of teaching; a special education meeting which I thought earned the translator a medal for just following the conversation (nevermind translating it!); a discussion of the problem of child abuse (or accusations of it) among refugees; another conversation about life in refugee camps in Kenya, during which I learned that our Somali translator had to move from one camp so he wouldn't get killed.
That's not all. . . there was one more very interesting topic of conversation. I'll save that for my next post. . .
posted by Lisa @ 5:26 PM
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