This teaching thing is going to be harder than I thought!
Over the past two weeks during my short practicum I had the chance, like the other teacher candidates, to observe what goes on in classes and how teachers interact with their students. One observation that I found particularly interesting happened in my drama 9/10 class. Each of the Drama classes that I will be teaching has a handful of students who are ELL at different levels. During one of the exercises a student had a hard time trying to understand the concept that the teacher was trying to run. The student doesn’t have an aid to help with language barrier difficulties in class and it seemed that most of the students weren’t willing to help either. My SA had noticed this and walked over to see if she could be of any assistance. The student made it clear that she did not understand the instructions and the teacher tried to explain the steps again. For a student who can comprehend english easily the instructions sounded pretty straight forward but I don’t think that the ELL student had a concept of some of the terminology the teacher was saying. However, the teacher persisted but continued with the same language and slowed her voice down and over emphasized what she was saying in hopes that the student would eventually understand. It was evident that the student still didn’t understand and I could tell that she was becoming frustrated with the teacher. It seemed as if the student was feeling patronized by how her language barrier was being handled. She looked uncomfortable for a few more moments before she saw a student performing the exercise, understood it ,and then went and did it herself.
This incident provided me with the thought that even if I come up with a lesson plan and have key words, brick words, that I want to teach to students I should have a back up list in case I have students who have trouble understanding the original word that I am trying to teach. Hopefully by having a list of back up words I will be able to properly communicate to a student so that they aren’t feeling left out and can contribute to the class as well.