A Little Above the Ears

 

Over the past week my ESOL students and I have been working on Beauty and Hair Salon vocabulary.  Even though my mother’s a hairdresser, I don’t think it’s a vocabulary unit that I would have come up with on my own.  Because I believe my students should direct what they learn in all my classes, ESOL or GED, I asked my students to take a look at a list of vocabulary words that I’ve been using and choose which one they wanted to learn.  It’s usually interesting to see what they pick out. 

Also, because I want to put my students in real-life situations (well, as much as I can make them) I try role pay as much as possible.  Over the next few days I’ll be posting several recordings of our Hair Salon role play to give you a taste of what goes on in my class.  Hope you have as much fun as we did in making them.

Kolter

Workin’ with My Students

This past week, I have incorporated some new strategies in my class.  To begin with, I’m having my students choose and bring in some short articles, songs, short chapters of a book, etc. to use to practice their vocabulary words and discuss topics that interest them.  Added on to that, I’m having my students actually write up the discussion questions for the articles they choose in order to discuss things that are relevant to their perspectives rather than just mine.  Now, no student is ever excited about more work, but I think they’ll get the hang of it.  Plus, this will give the opportunity to think about a text they’ve chose in more detail and also let them practice their vocab.

Next week, we’ll also start using the essays we write in class as grammar/essay teaching tools.  I’ll pull mistakes from their essays as examples to correct during our grammar lessons and also provide anonymous copies of their essays to discuss how to improve them.  I’ll also be writing essays from now on with my students.  Not to provide good examples:  I don’t want to be setting myself as the end-all-be-all expert, but I am trying to develop a sense of community in class–and I’m a member of that community. 

While high school was not something I particularly enjoyed and I can’t remember to many life-lessons, there’s always been one that has stood out in my mind.  When I ran cross-country (that’s right, for all you people who know me, I actually participated in a sport), no matter how many miles we ran and no matter what crappy running activity we were assigned–and mind you this is miles upon miles–our coach always ran with us.  I’ve always respected him for that, and it has generally been a rule-to-live-by in my classes, ESOL or GED.  I never ask my students to do something I won’t do myself, and generally, I model every activity first.  I’ve found that all my students are more willing to take risks if they see I’m willing to participate and risk making a fool of myself first.  Activities usually work better that way.  We’ll see how these  work and how long they last, but it will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

 

Kolter

The Attendance Blues

I started this week a little discouraged.  My students attendance had done a swan dive and–I don’t know–I might’ve scared away some of my new students.  I don’t know why–maybe I’m just intimidating.  Okay not likely.  I’m not exactly sure what the deal is.  I know my students have a lot going on in their lives, but some students think it’s okay to only come every 2-3 weeks.

Needless to say, this kind of attendance has really sapped most of my motivation.  It’s kind of hard to really get enthused about lesson planning when you’re not sure if people are really going to show up.   And…you can definitely not try to work on a project on a long-term basis.  That will never work out.  But as I was helping my 4-5 regular students work on math, I had an epiphany.  I told them that I was a little discouraged in class but not with them. 

One students said, “Because no one’s coming to class”.  I said that pretty much summed it up.

But I told them that I wasn’t going to worry about the people who barely show up and focus on getting them to move up to the GED class.  Now, that might sound harsh.  I don’t mean I’m going to ignore the bad-attendance people, but I’m not going to fret it if I can’t get them to come on a regular basis.  I don’t want the fact that many of my students have bad attendance affect how I teach those that are faithful.  They’ve got their business together and deserve the bulk of my attention and time.

Almost all of my students that come regularly move up to the next level class.  When you do the work you progress.  If you don’t come regularly, you won’t make as much progress.  It’s simple math.  It’s just time to work with those who are ready to work with me.

Kolter

No English, No Work

This week all of my classes started back up.  As it always when we have a break, my students attendance would not be called great.  I’m not sure what the problem is, but they never ever seem to get there on the first day or the second even.  Heck, sometimes I’m lucky if I see them within the first three weeks.  Either way, the week went off without a hitch, but I did get a sad revelation on the first day of my AM ESOL class.

Before we went on break (so, three weeks ago) my student had got hired at a local convenient store.  They interviewed her (key point is that they interviewed her) and told her that they’d hire her once she got her social security number from the government.  Well, when she did they did hire her but for only five days.

On her fifth day, my student was stocking the shelf and a customer came up to her and asked where the produce section was.  The problem is that she didn’t understand her, and because of this, after they had interviewed her and spoken to her on numerous occasions, they fired her.  First of all, I want to know what kind of person goes and complains to a manager that one of his or her employees couldn’t speak English.  With all the ridiculous (and ,in my opinion, bigoted) hype of illegal immigration in this country, I can’t believe someone actually went and complained about someone who was trying to work (and learn English) legally in this country.  She went through the right steps; she’s just trying to make a living.  She worked in a human resource department in her country.  And let’s be honest, a shelving position isn’t that demanding. 

The second point:  you’ve spoken to her.  If you felt her English was up to snuff, why hire her in the first place?  Why make someone go through that.  And, she speaks rather well.  I mean she won’t be take turns on the presidential debate circuit, but with a little patience and understanding, she can definitely be understood.  The only thing that I can think of was the person must have been completely insensitive and had absolutely no experience working with or talking to people from a different country. 

To me, (completely my own opinion) when things like this happen I tend to wonder why people would want to immigrate here from another country.  Sadly, she’s more understanding than I am.  Maybe she’s just used to it and that kind of treatment.  If that’s the case, then, it’s a sad, sad day for this country.

Kolter