Why is EVERY Conversation about School???

"Oh, I had a student in class the other day do something similar to that..."

I am pretty sure that every conversation I had in my first two months of teaching began with this phrase. I couldn't leave school behind. I was in school all day, and then I would go home, lesson plan a little and watch a little hockey or television until it was time for bed. This meant when I saw my friends I didn't have much to talk about EXCEPT school. Unfortunately, unless it's a funny story, no one really cared about my school stories.

It was during this time that I no longer knew how to relate to my friends. I wanted to talk to them, to be engaged in conversation, but I had nothing to talk about that interested them. I even spoke to my best friend on the phone and found that it was easier to just let her speak while I remained silent on the other end of the phone. This was the sign. I needed to really push to have more to talk to my friends about.

This was when I started ensuring that I make plans with at least one friend, or family members every weekend. This way, I will always have something to talk about outside of school. Of course, there are some weekends when this is not possible. However, I do whatever I can to find someone to spend my time with. In one instance, I instead decided to go shopping for a new pair of pants. Even though I did not spend time with a friend, I still had quite an adventure that day. Sadly, I did not end up with a new pair of pants.

So, in order to remain what I call a "normal" or "sane" teacher I am making it a point to not discuss school at times when it is not necessary. When it is the weekend, I focus on enjoying myself, relaxing and finding ways to connect with my friends. When Monday morning comes I am fully back into the school setting, ready to begin my week.

So... How do Teachers Relax?

I have been teaching my own classes since August 15, 2011. That's just over 3 months now. The first month I found myself stressing over all the little details of teaching. Every time the weekend came around I panicked. I couldn't help but wonder "Do I have time to finish grading these essays? I really should hand them back as soon as possible." Let's just say, my first month as an official teacher was not-so-pleasant.

However, the end of September hit and I made a decision. I needed join an organized activity. At first I set my sights on fencing lessons. Then, as I was browsing Google one evening, I discovered a girls ice hockey league nearby. One thing you should know about me, I love to play hockey. My brother taught me how to play when I was just a little girl. We may have shattered a lot of windows, but I my brother and I have a passion that we can never be torn away from. We love watching hockey, playing hockey and even having our own fantasy hockey teams online.

It was at the end of December that I joined my first ever ice hockey team. I play in a league that does not have checking, which means it is an extremely safe version of hockey. We practice once a week and play a game once every two weeks. I have found that when I return home after a game my muscles feel relaxed for the first time since my last practice. Everything about school melts away when I play hockey.

In addition, I continue to watch my favorite National Hockey League team, the Detroit Red Wings, at least one night a week. I have found that the game relaxes me, and the two twenty minute intermissions are a great time to get a little grading done!

Tutoring Response: The Other's Point of View

The Other’s Point of View

Every week for the past three weeks I have been meeting with a ninth grade English as a second language (ESL) student for two-hour tutoring sessions. Four months ago this student arrived in the United States without any knowledge of the English language and is slowly getting more and more confident in his speech. In working with this student I try to encourage him to be more confident in his speaking abilities and help him with pronunciation skills, especially with some difficult English language sounds that do not exist in the Spanish language. During one of our sessions, this student shyly made a huge confession. He explained to me that he is afraid to speak the English language because he does not pronounce it very well; he believes his peers and even teachers might make fun of him if he does not say a word correctly. Then, later, as we were working on pronunciation and vocabulary I was able to remember just how hard it is to be in a foreign country, trying to speak the language.

In the summer of 2009 I spent three months in Lima, Peru, an entirely Spanish speaking country. I had taken two semesters of Spanish language study before arriving in Peru, but still found my Spanish skills to be stunted, especially in comparison to native speakers. By the end of the three months I was more than conversational in Spanish and had no trouble speaking to those around me. I had discovered that the most important factor of my growth and development in the Spanish language was my confidence in speaking the language with others and not being afraid to make mistakes. I remember many conversations with my host parents where I sat there lost. I didn’t know the subject of the conversation and would often times feel myself tired of learning new words or focusing on studying pronunciation.

While sitting with my tutee the other day, I had a flash back to my time in Peru. I remembered the frustrations of intensive lessons. But more than anything, I remember wanting to speak English whenever I could. My tutee tries the same thing with Spanish. He knows I am semi-fluent in Spanish and will always try to answer my questions in Spanish instead of speaking English. I believe making this connection has allowed me to think more creatively and effectively about the best ways for my tutee to learn English. I try to remember the activities that I found exhausting and the ones that I found interesting. By remembering which activities were engaging, I am able to help engage my current tutee and encourage his growth and development of the English language. He knows that I understand the difficulty of what he is experiencing and he also knows that I am willing to make mistakes. These two key points allow him to be more confident in his speech which after enough time will lend itself to better pronunciation.

As I am looking into a masters program in teaching, I have been thinking about becoming an ESL teacher. Having my own intercultural experience, and coming away from it with a massive increase in my Spanish language abilities encourages me to help others to learn a new language and culture as well. However, I know that many students are forced to come to the United States when they would rather remain in their home countries. These are the students I want to help. I chose to go to Peru for three months and still struggled with the language and knew that at varying points during the trip I wanted to leave. There are many students in the United States who will get the same frustrations, but they are being forced to stay in this country for a longer time period than they want. My intercultural experience has encouraged me to help these students grow and develop in the many of the same ways I did, and even in ways that I would never be able to fathom.

Journal #11 -- Apr. 6th, 2011

Journal #11

April 6th, 2011

9:30-10:30 (1 hour)

Today, Oscar and I only had 1 hour to work together since the first hour that we typically work together he needed to make up a test that he had missed on a previous day. When Oscar and I met today it seemed normal. There was no extra excitement or frustration – it was simply a lesson that took place. Oscar and I once again looked at the Fairy-Tale he had written a few weeks ago. Today, I asked Oscar if he thought his story was interesting. He said he liked the idea but didn’t think it was interesting enough for others to read his story. So, Oscar and I worked through what I consider to be a fun lesson. First, we talked a little about 6 important questions every writer should ask when trying to make their stories more interesting – Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Once Oscar could recite these questions back to me I pulled out a deck of cards. I told him to come up with any character name. He decided on Luis. Then, I told asked Oscar what it would mean if Luis had this particular deck of cards. Oscar said it meant Luis liked to play cards. Then I asked him what card game he most liked. He chose war. Then, Oscar and I set up the cards as if we were playing war with each other. I asked Oscar to answer the 6 questions about these cards. Who – Luis and his friend Marco, What – playing war, Where – in a school library, When – during lunch time and How – excitedly and with their hands. Oscar determined all of the above factors on his own.

Once this was complete Oscar was able to create a more interesting sentence saying “Luis threw the red ace on top of Marco’s king and swept the two cards into the enormous pile lying next to him.” Oscar thought this was a very interesting sentence and much better than saying “Luis and Marco were playing war.”

Once this was done Oscar and I walked around the library. I would occasionally see some people and give Oscar a simple sentence like: “The girl is chewing on gum.” Oscar would then try to create a more interesting sentence answering the five questions above. For this particular example he came up with “Lisa noisily smacked the tough pink ball between her teeth.” Oscar was easily coming up with easier sentences. Once we did this for about 20 minutes the lesson was almost over. I asked Oscar to look over his paper and try to make some of these changes during the week and we would look over his story together next week.

Overall, I enjoyed this lesson and found it to be valuable. Oscar definitely caught on to the idea very quickly and was thriving with the concept. However, it he wasn’t ecstatic about the lesson – like I said before it just felt like another day with just another lesson – but I enjoyed it and I feel that Oscar definitely learned how to write a more interesting story – I guess I’ll be able to see if that carries over from a spoken story into a written story when we review his story.

Journal #10 -- Mar. 30th, 2011

Journal #10

March 30th, 2011

8:30-10:30 (2 hours)

When I arrived to the high school today I met with Oscar’s teacher. She explained to me that Oscar has been having a lot of trouble in math this week. She said that she knew I would have a few other things planned but she requested that I work with him on math and help him through some difficulties he may be facing. I agreed, explaining that we had worked on some math before. She told me that Oscar seems to be doing better in his ESL classroom and is more talkative in English than she remembers. This was nice to hear. When Oscar showed up he was speaking easy and fun English. Normally, Oscar will not speak until we are in the library and he has trouble answering my initial questions like “how are you today,” “what did you do this weekend” and so forth. The last time I saw him he was even more flustered with this initial conversation than normal. However, today I could tell Oscar was on top of his English and was reveling in the fact that he was speaking well. He answered my questions with great ease and for the first time asked me questions in return such as “how was your weekend?” and “why didn’t you come on Tuesday this week?” These were great questions. I told him I didn’t come on Tuesday because I received an email from his teacher telling me she needed him to do some other work on those days. Oscar said he didn’t know I talked to his teacher so often. When we made it to the library, we talked a few more minutes and then Oscar pulled out his homework. He said very clearly “I’ve already done this side but will you check my answers?” In the past I told Oscar he had to ask me in English to check his answers or I would not do it. I was impressed that he did it so easily today. Normally he mumbles through this sentence as if he is afraid to get my help. So, I looked through and we went over some of the problems he had gotten wrong. They were generally simple math mistakes or placing a number in the wrong place. Once we got through these we moved on to the other side of the work sheet. The homework was working on slope – how to find slope, how to find y-intercept, and which equations to use to represent these lines. Each problem on Oscar’s worksheet was a word problem. So, I had Oscar read each question aloud. Then, in order to get Oscar to make less minor math mistakes I told him he had to write out the equation he needs (or draw a picture of a graph) and show where each number fits in and how he solved the problem. Normally, Oscar does a lot of work on his calculator and just puts the answer down. Today, our math work took even longer than normal because Oscar was doing everything visually. However, he did start to make fewer and fewer math mistakes on this side of the worksheet. He seemed shocked that he was getting more right. However, at one point he asked me if there was a faster way to do some of the problems we were working on. Unfortunately, I had to tell him no. I explained that sometimes you need to spend time on math, otherwise you will get the wrong answer. He accepted this and told me he really wanted to get good grades. He then asked what would happen if he took too long when test time came. I told him to ask his teacher if he could spend more time on the test. When I was student I was generally given extra time because I work through math slower than most of my other classmates, and my teachers generally allowed me the time I needed. Oscar said he would speak to his teacher. I even explained to him that if he practiced this stuff enough he would get faster at it. Then, the bell rang and Oscar needed to head off to his next class. He thanked me for helping him with his math and said that he would try to move slower and write down his equations on his next few worksheets – just to see if it really does work. Overall, I enjoyed today’s lesson, despite the fact that I hate math. I have been struggling with so many math lessons because part of me believes I am here to teach Oscar English, not math. But I realize that math does give us an opportunity to practice English. First, Oscar needs to read all of his word problems aloud and needs to try to make sense of this information. Then, he needs to work with numbers and critical thinking in English. Finally, when he does not understand a concept he needs to comprehend what I am saying to him and then apply it to the problem on which he is working. So while we are not working on specific English concepts, I know that we are working on some important aspects to English language learning such as pronunciation, reading, and listening. This makes me feel less frustrated to not be doing some of the lessons I plan, but the good news is that I now have a good collection of English Language lesson plans – some of which I know work and some of which I will get to try at a later date.

Journal #9 -- Mar. 23rd, 2011

Journal #9

March 23, 2011

8:30-10:30 (2 hours)

Today was an interesting day. When I first saw Oscar today he looked a little angry and flustered. As we walked to the library I asked him the same questions I always ask him on this short trip. How is your day so far? What did you do this last weekend? Do you have any homework you need help with? Oscar kept responding in Spanish to each question then would shake his head, make a frustrated sound and then try to respond in English. When he did get to his English sentence he would intermix Spanish words – notice what he was doing and then get even more frustrated. When we finally got to the library he sat down and pulled out his English homework. Then, he looked at me expectedly. At the start of every lesson, especially when Oscar has other homework to work on, we have been making it a point to first review the tongue twisters Oscar learned a few weeks ago. Today did not go so well. Oscar had a lot of trouble with some tongue twisters that he had mastered in the several sessions before this one. After he attempted to read one he is normally good at I asked him to read it again – to which he frowned and grunted a little because he knew he had only needed to read it once in the weeks before. Obviously, I decided to be more encouraging to Oscar rather than draw attention to the fact that he was making mistakes. So, after reading through the rest of the cards once we moved on to the English homework he needed help with. The homework he had involved reading a small excerpt and then answering some comprehension questions about the passage. I asked Oscar to first read the passage in his head and then to read it aloud. When it came time to read aloud I noticed he was having more difficulty with pronunciation than normal. He really seemed to be struggling today. I remembered having some days when I was on SST when I was just tired of the language and couldn’t seem to put it together properly. It was on these days I just wanted to be by myself and forget that I was learning a new language. It was difficult to understand others and I just needed to sleep before I could be good at the language again (at least so it seemed). Unfortunately, I had no clue what to do to help Oscar through this situation. So, he continued reading and when he came to the end, we tried to work through the questions. I showed him how to look for some key words, which I’m pretty sure he already knew how to do – and we tried to work through the sheet together. We spent the rest of the time working on this in a frustrated state and I felt horrible because I did not know what to do to help Oscar so just tried to keep encouraging him. I reminded him that it was okay to make mistakes and to just keep working on it. I was also careful not to push him too hard today. I didn’t want to create even more frustration for him than he already seemed to be having.

At the very end of the meeting I decided to tell Oscar that my professor would be coming to visit and observe during one of our sessions. Generally, Oscar is a little insecure about letting others see that he is working with a tutor and we will go to a silent corner of the library to do our work because it’s what he prefers. So, I told him Skip would be coming. He seemed a little nervous at first but when I explained a little more that the professor was there to watch me he started to feel a lot better about the situation and said he was totally fine with it. I think it might be good for him to see someone else being critiqued (in a sense). It may actually make him even more comfortable because he will be able to realize he is not being critiqued. So, at the end of the meeting, Oscar agreed and stood up to walk away. Normally, I am the first to say Bye to Oscar but today Oscar said “see you next week.” Even though it was a tough speaking day for him, I was really proud he decided to take the effort to say this and I look forward to our next meeting – when, hopefully, Oscar will have recovered from his frustrated with English day.

Journal #8 -- Mar. 16th, 2011

Journal #8

March 16, 2011

8:30-10:30 (2 hours)

The first hour of today’s lesson focused on Health. Oscar has a test tomorrow in his health class and wanted a little help learning the definitions of some of his words. So, I looked through Oscar’s book and started saying words to him to see if he knew what they meant. When he did not, I pulled out a cue card and had him write the entire definition on one side and the word on the other. Then, we moved onto the next words. Once we had gone through all the words, Oscar had cue cards so he could continue studying on his own. I showed him the definition side of the word so he could try to guess the word and showed him how to look at the words to get the definition. He tried each way. Then, decided he would study more at home so we could get started on our English lesson.

Oscar came in with list of words that he overheard this week. These words included what he thought to be interesting new verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. While Oscar did have five words written from three of the categories, he only had one adverb listed. He explained to me that he did not hear adverbs very often and if he did he had trouble noticing them. So, we began the lesson reviewing the definition of an adverb. Once Oscar provided the definition I decided to give him a little practice listening for adverbs. I had Oscar pull out a pencil and a piece of paper. I then listed 3 words, with one of them being an adverb. I asked Oscar to write down which word he thought was the adverb. We did this for about twenty minutes before Oscar started to feel more confident. Then, I asked Oscar to think of a few other adverbs on his own. He came up with about three of them. Next, we pulled out Oscar’s story from last week. He first asked if he could add more to the story. He wrote another 4 sentences onto the four he already had and then said he was finished. After this, I asked Oscar to use his list of words and add them to places where they might fit to create a more interesting story. Oscar changed one of his nouns and verbs, then added a few adverbs into the story. It was definitely starting to get more interesting. Then, Oscar asked if he could add a few sentences. I told him he could do whatever he wanted to. So, he rewrote his story on a separate sheet adding a few more sentences. Once he did this we ran out of time. I told Oscar we would only spend a little more time on his story next week and then it would be final unless he wanted to keep working on it in his own time. I told Oscar to listen for interesting words again this week and come with three words in each category for next week, more adverbs if possible. He agreed and walked away pretty excited.