Read Aloud.

I enjoyed Gillander’s case study of Sarah’s prek classroom. I was impressed by how much effort Sarah put into connecting to her ELL students. Building a good, trusting relationship with all of her students, despite language barriers, was very important to Sarah, and I think she provides an excellent example for English-speaking teachers with Spanish-speaking students. Sarah really took the initiative with her professional development. She attended Spanish classes, checked out books and tapes, and incorporated bilingual materials into her classroom. Because she was trying to learn a new language, she got to experience how difficult and stressful it was for her ELL students to be in an English-speaking classroom. I think that Sarah’s ability to empathize with her Spanish-speaking students was invaluable, and I think more teachers would be able to effectively work with their ELL kids if they could understand what the students were going through. I also liked how Sarah’s efforts helped the ELL children gain social status in the classroom. Because they could do something the English-speaking students couldn’t, the ELL kids became interesting and cool, and everyone wants to hang out with the cool kids right?! Most importantly, I think Sarah created a learning environment where the ELL students were appreciated, nurtured, and encouraged. I’m working with an Ell students on my kidwatching project, and one day I dredged up my memories of high school Spanish. Just my saying, “My name is Megan” and asking “how are you?” in Spanish really excited my kid. We had our best session that day because she was attentive and eager, and she got a huge kick out of teaching me something, like the Spanish word for “cake.” You don’t have to be fluent in Spanish to teach Spanish-speaking kids; in fact, sometimes allowing your ELL students to teach *you* something can give them enough of a confidence boost to really foster a desire to learn.

I wonder, and some of you teachers may be able to answer this for me, how many opportunities North Carolina provides for teachers to take professional development classes in other languages? I mean, teachers and librarians have to take classes every few years to keep them up-to-date on technology and emerging problems and methods, so why not throw in some language classes? Sarah went out and found her own Spanish class, but what if there was a class specifically aimed at teaching teachers Spanish? I mean, teachers don’t need to know how to conjugate irregular verbs or read Don Quixote in Spanish, but they should know some basic grammar and vocabulary. Even such basic knowledge might help them understand why Spanish-speaking students are making spelling and phonological mistakes (like using “ll” for the English /y/). I know UNC and other education programs offer classes on teaching ELL kids, and I think that teachers should really consider taking them.

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