Penny+Lawrence

This page is for Penny to post her goodies :D

July 22 (Tim Conrad): Penny, what a pleasure to meet you and to enjoy your top-quality teaching skills! You really care about your students and know how to reach out to them to help them understand and also to figure out what they need and want to learn. Sorry it was a little "sink or swim," but you reacted like a real pro!

Penny Lawrence I have very much enjoyed participating in the teaching of the Adult ESL Community Class. I have to admit at the beginning I was very apprehensive. We are going to bring in adults and I am going to teach them English, wait a minute, I thought you were going to teach me how to teach English, but no you are going to give me a sink or swim experience…YIKES!! I should just have faith, it all turned out and as usual you learn a lot by doing something. Also there is not a set method that can be taught for teaching each language learner. They are as different as the sands of the beach. I like that just getting to know the person/people was a major part of teaching them. I love people and so that came very easy. Then talking is also a major element. Our adult students are very willing to talk. They are worried about being good enough with their language skill, that is why they are here. I was so impressed at their eagerness to learn! I guess this is because my sixth grade students are frequently reluctant, but they eagerly did homework and there is not grade attached or consequence if they did not do it. But I guess they are coming to class of their own choice. I was just very impressed with Palo that even at his age he was so eager to work so hard at trying to learn the correct way to write. Last class while we were having the cocktail party, I was paying attention to Sunny. She was one of the few students that were there at the beginning and I, Monica, and Brandy were sitting around having a conversation with her. We would pose a question, let her respond, talk around on the subject, try to get another response from her, and then repeat the process. It was going pretty well until another couple arrived and joined the group. I noticed that Sunny became very quiet and even when I tried to engage her she was unwilling and just shook her head. I thought this was a really good example of class/group size. When the group was just 4 all the participants were engaged, but when the size rose to 6 it was too much and because of the impromptu nature of the activity it did not self correct when I tried to fix it. This is not a terrible problem I noticed that Sunny still listened, but I was trying to get her engaged like she was at the beginning and I was unable to. I feel that the biggest ah ha I have taken from this class is that all the things they have taught me to do for ELL are all the same things they have taught me work for all the rest of the kids. I guess when I signed on to take the ESL endorsement classes I figured I was going to be learning some new technique that I did not know so that I could better teach these students. It is actually a huge relief to know that I can plan one lesson and it will be excellent for all the students. I need to make sure that there is talk in it. ELLs need to talk! I love group work and this is a great place for student to share their ideas and use their talk. They need to be reading and then talking, listening to each other, and then thinking about it and recording their thoughts in writing. It was very validating when we learned about building background knowledge, because I do this. It is a must if you want the students to be engaged. I think the nice thing about teaching ELL is that they are so eager to learn and when you teach them something the frequently get it. With learning disabilities you frequently teach and then have to teach it another way, and then another and they often do not understand. Students, who do not understand because they do not understand the language, seem to actually grasp the concept once they have the vocabulary and background knowledge. I think working with the adults was not nearly as scary as I feared it would be. They were all very nice people and I am impressed by their coming to class in an effort to better themselves. I really respect those individuals and the courage it would take to go to a country where you did not speak the language and try to gain the skills to go to college. The only reason someone would tackle a task so difficult is to try to a better life for themselves or their family. It was a pleasure to get to meet these individuals.

July 11, 2012 Well neither Palo nor Teresa was here today. I was glad for the “cocktail” starter. It gave me a chance to know Sunny a bit better. She was pretty actively engaged in a conversation when Arturo and his wife sat down. I noticed that she became very quiet at that point. Too bad! I noticed how eagerly each of the students signed up for the next class and they seemed genuinely sorry that we would not be the teachers.

July 9, 2012 Palo was here, Teresa was not, and Ben was not, so it all worked out. Palo is such a good student, but I notice that he is old school. He believes that he should be working some sort of grammar type drill, and when you give him one as homework, he diligently comes with it completed. I like to talk through his answers and give him positive feedback when possible. If he has made an error I try to say what he wrote and then stop and let him think about it. He has been in the United States and speaking English long enough when he hears me say it out loud he can hear that it is correct. I try to let him come up with the correct way that it should be, but if he seems to be struggling I then just throw it out and maybe another way out, giving him a choice. I always try to redirect and put a positive spin on things, it is always ok to make and error if we are willing to correct ourselves. I enjoy Palo’s attitude about learning and willingness to keep working at his language acquisition. I enjoy when Dr. Conrad stops by to check on us. When he joins the group a conversation ensues and from what I have learned during this ESL journey, to have a conversation involves listening and speaking. These are two of the skills that our ELL students should be working on. (Thanks for the compliment Dr. Conrad)

July 7 (Tim Conrad): You're such an encouraging person, and you give the people you work with such practical ideas for ways they can work on their goals and also develop their language abilities. We're lucky to have you filling in with different students with your quality, professional approach.

July 2, 2012 Teresa was here today, I was so glad to see her. After what she had told me I was afraid that he would not return to tutoring. I know she has a desire to be better at her job and ambitions of doing more. Teresa works as a teacher’s assistant. She has previously had troubles with a colleague making fun of her pronunciation of words. I think Teresa has quite a good command of the language, she needs to work on vocabulary, but as far a speaking she has very few difficulties communicating with me. I guess the communication problems would happen with people who were unable to spend the extra time listening. One of the things that I think I have to give to Teresa is confidence and some tools. I told her that she should prepare her lessons a bit ahead. That she should read it before she taught it to the students. I showed her //dictionary.com// on line, and how the little speaker would say the word for you so that as the teacher, it might look like you knew everything, but you would have practiced ahead of time. I told her that I use that website when I am preparing a lesson, I am not learning a new language, I don’t just **KNOW** every word. It is preparing the lesson that makes it run flawlessly and makes it appear that the teacher knows all the information.

n.

June 27, 2012 Today I tutored Paolo, from Brazil. He had been given some homework Monday by Ben and so that was where we began. I noticed that he was very serious about his learning. One of the questions that were asked was about his past. He freely shared that he had had psychological training in Brazil and then later when he made a remark about understanding Dr. Phil on television better than most of the other programs I tied it back to that. I always try to make the tutee realize that their lack of knowledge of speaking English is not a lack of intellect. They always want to apologize for “being dumb” and that is very much not the reason that they do not understand the vocabulary. I am also gaining an understanding of what a difficult language English is to learn with its multiple meanings of words and exceptions to rules. I think it is very brave to immigrate to a country that does not speak the same language that you speak and I really admire these adults to seek out a language class to try to be better and improve their skills. One of the questions asked in the assignment was, what are your goals for the next 5 yrs. I was a little worried because I see Paolo as being a retired man. His goal was to sell his home that he and his wife share and to move into a condo in South Ogden. As I contemplated his goal for his golden years and how close it was to the goal of my parents I realized that he really had lived the American dream. He owned a home. He had worked hard, but was able to retire. He was working as a volunteer to stay busy and fulfilled. He was also seeking education to better himself. He told me he had traveled back to Brazil many times and he really did not want to go back there again. He had places in the United States that he wanted to see. He wanted to see Chicago, Washington D. C., and San Diego. Paolo really liked to look over the materials that he was given and then ask a question when he did not know the answer. We were working on a lot of vocabulary that way. It was move of a discussion rather than a lesson and since I have learned that conversation is important for learning English this seems like a pretty good strategy. But upon coming home to reflect on this stuff I realized, he was reading the book, asking questions and having a conversation about what he did not know, he would listen to my examples and we would discuss more, then he was writing (and he writes in cursive) the answer to the questions. One time he was struggling with a spelling, so I told him, then he would say, “Is that correct?” and since it was not I would tell him again. After about 4 or 5 attempts of this and he was still not there I grabbed a pencil and wrote it for him to copy and then erased it. He is very meticulous and has a great desire to be correct. I am anxious to hear the guitar on Monday!

June 25, 2012 I am saddened to say, but I have forgotten my tutee’s name, I will work on that I am thinking Sandra, but not sure. She and I hit it of right away. She works in the school as a teacher’s assistant and I did that job more about 10 years so we have some common experiences. Her husband is not always supportive in her endeavors and I went through a divorce so we could speak a different type of the same language. She has suffered some ridicule from a co-worker concerning her pronunciation of words while she is reading. Ben and I had gleaned the books and found a speaking test. Since she was an adult and we were easily one on one I wanted to go through it with her more than give it as a test. I thought it would be better to just talk through the feedback right while we were on the questions. I found out that I had some knowledge of phonics skills, short and long vowel knowledge, which is taught in elementary that they rarely cover in Jr. High. We talked a lot about the stress syllable and I showed her a new way of telling how to separate a word into syllables that she liked. I was really worried about how on earth I was going to teach a language learner, but once we got to the topic and I could see what she needed in relationship to what she wanted to learn, I realized: I can do that! And I relaxed and it became a good learning atmosphere.

une 20, 2012 The student that I interviewed was Jisook. She is a Weber State student. She had come to class with her boyfriend and looked to him for vocabulary when she hesitated. I asked her about her relationship with him and she told me she was not sure if they were serious because he had a military commitment and apparently women did not have to serve in the military, they could but it was voluntary but not so for men. She feels that she speaks English most of the time with her peer group because some of them are from China and Thailand, so she feels they communicate mostly in English, but it is obvious that she is still conversing in her L1. She told me that when she left home to go to school she had originally gone to Canada and then she followed the boyfriend to Weber State because it was less expensive. Jisook wants to work on her listening and speaking. She feels that she gets lost in the conversation sometimes because she is translating what the person said in her head and they are already going on to something else and she get lost.