Summer Reflections

As I think back over the past months, beginning graduate classes was a great decision for me as a teacher. When I finished my undergraduate degree and began teaching, I wasn't ready for what I have learned in my first few graduate courses. Although I had hoped to finish my Masters much sooner in my teaching career, I am now glad that the timing worked out as it did. Personally, I needed some time to learn, make mistakes and figure out who I am as a teacher. This experience, however, has been just the push I needed to challenge myself as a teacher and rethink my routines.

I have really enjoyed learning more about how learners acquire another language and then using that knowledge to establish sound teaching strategies for my classroom. I have learned so much that applies to my foreign language classroom, but, more importantly, I’ve become so aware of the struggles the ELLs in my school community face in the academic environment. I hope to share my knowledge with the teachers I work with to improve the ELL experience not only in my classroom, but in many rooms throughout our building.

There are many strategies that I will implement this fall in my Spanish classes that will benefit not only ELLs, but all of the different learners in my room. As a language teacher, I have always struggled in reading instruction. Two strategies that I anticipate using as soon as possible are the Cloze procedure for evaluating vocabulary knowledge and literacy levels and the use of Anticipation Guides and other metacognitive strategies for reading. These scaffolds will allow me to introduce many more authentic texts and more literature into the beginning levels of my classes. Another area that is often a struggle for me is oral language development. I really have trouble getting students to practice speaking and I think that Choral Readings may be the perfect tool to develop my students’ phonemic awareness and pronunciation. Although I have used readings and movie clips as a point of departure for writing before, I enjoyed creating the Writing Prompt and will use this method more in the future. I can also see myself using the SDAIE method to introduce cultural concepts and integrate outside content areas into my lesson planning.

Since I am not yet an ESL teacher, I don’t have a great deal of wisdom to impart to those that are beginning the ESL teaching journey. However, I would encourage any general education teacher to consider a Masters with an ESL concentration. After speaking with others how’ve completed other programs, I feel that I am learning so much more through this process than some of my colleagues learned in a traditional Curriculum and Instruction program. What I’ve loved about this journey, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the techniques and strategies I am learning don’t just fit the needs of ELLs in my classes. They are what all learners need: reflective and thoughtful planning, scaffolded instruction and presentation and practice that considers all learning styles. I am so looking forward to planning for the new school year and applying what I have learned to my classroom practice.