Final Reflection

Although I have been an English teacher for the past five years, my decision to pursue a Master's Degree in TESOL was motivated primarily from my experience teaching students over the past several years. Whether it be entirely different languages like Tagalog and Spanish or prominently different dialects of English like the "Village English" I was exposed to during my time in Alaska Native communities, I recognized that, in order to be a truly effective educator, I should endeavor to acquire some ability to teach English to students whose heritage language is different from my own. It was only a matter of time that I began this quest, so given the free time I currently had available and some prior experience working on a Master's Degree with my Master's in Library and Information Science at Louisiana State, now more than ever was the perfect time to fill in this required niche in my pedagogical repertoire.

 

To begin, one thing I can say about the readings and activities provided in this course was that the topics covered here were not entirely foreign to me. Especially in looking at Module 1, while our discussion concerning the lives of migrant students did expose me to some new perspectives at least as it pertains to Central American migrants living in the Continental United States, I also had some ability to compare this population to the predominantly Filipino population here in Unalaska, AK - most of whom work for the food industry as well (in this case, fishing rather than livestock). Likewise, as previously mentioned in my introduction, even various dialects of English may be something that an educator has to familiarize themselves with, as these dialects which are readily spoken in social settings  can have considerable differences to the academic language we teach them in school (Fillmore and Snow, 2000, p. 20). Despite my formal training in TESOL, I can attest that I have some experiential familiarity with the subject.

 

With that being said, that is not to say I did not learn anything new in this course. In fact, especially in regards to pedagogical methods, I discovered many things that I can apply even right now in my standard English instruction. Of the things that really stuck out to me, perhaps the ones that affected me the most came from our readings revolving around maintaining EB students' bilingualism.  For instance, in Gibbons' (2009) article, he described some before-reading activities that I could incorporate with my students, whether that be simply having students read a page or two to understand the contents of the reading they will be working on or hone in on any vocabulary they might be currently lacking or having students write a personal narrative about something which they will be reading about today (pp. 87-88). Likewise, Davis et al.'s (2005) description of Hawai'i's SHALL project, while definitely an ambitious effort on its part, might work well with the multilinguistic background that even my ELL students have, especially if that allows students to learn English without having them feel as though they must sacrifice their heritage language to make it in America (pp. 10-15).

​

This latter point leads me then to my overall feelings towards the course work and how I might choose to implement some of these activities into my instruction. To begin with, I definitely liked the linguistic autobiography. While it initially felt a bit daunting to recall my experience dealing with and learning foreign languages, it allowed me to better grasp my personal motivations for learning a language and compare that to my students' motivations. If anything, not only did I like this enough to perhaps have my students write a similar narrative for a beginning-of-the-year writing project, but it also helped me empathize with my students more - as, for most of them, learning English was not something they did to pass a class or join an academic expedition, but for mere survival. This feeling only doubled in my interview project, as especially when I was interviewing Lance, it became painfully apparent when listening to his story about learning English in Iowa how compelled he felt to sacrifice his language and culture to fit in. If it was not for Unalaska having such a large Bisaya-speaking Filipino population, I imagine he might have felt alienated as he grew into an adult. Finally, as I was designing my Thematic Unit around poetry, while I will not lie and say it felt familiar to planning my standard English instruction, the care and attention to ensure students understood the language and had materials in their own heritage language to support their understanding of poetic analysis felt beyond what I would typically due if I were to teach poetry in a standard Language Arts class. 

​

To conclude, there is a lot that I took away from this course. While much of what I learned reinforced my prior knowledge gained from years of teaching - whether it be in preparing to be a teacher or working with ELLs on a regular basis - this did not simply feel like review. Whether it be in providing me with some ways to teach my students in a way that preserves their bilingualism or opening up my mind with potential resources that I can easily incorporate in my pedagogy, I definitely can attest that this experience has been quite rewarding. Even this portfolio, which as Yao et al. (2009) indicate can be a useful means of saving items for future reference and preservation, could even be useful as a method of providing students a means of authentic assessment (pp. 32-33). Overall, I enjoyed this course, and I look forward to seeing how I can take these to benefit my craft for the future.

​

References

​

Davis, K., Cho, H., Ishida, M., Soria, J., & Bazzi, S. (2005). It’s our kuleana: A critical participatory approach to language minority education. In L. Pease-Alvarez and S. R. Schecter (Eds.) Learning, teaching, and community Download Learning, teaching, and community(pp. 3-25). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

 

Fillmore, L. W., & Snow, C. E. (2000). What teachers need to know about language. ERIC. [Special Report]

​

Gibbons, P. (2009). Ch. 5: Building bridges to text: Supporting academic reading. In Gibbons, P. English Learners Academic Literacy and Thinking: Learning in the Challenge Zone (pp. 80-105). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

 

Yao, Y., Aldrich, J., Foster, K., & Pecina, U. (2009). Preservice teachers’ perceptions of an electronic portfolio as a tool for reflection and teacher certification. Journal of Educational Research & Policy, 9(1), 25-43.