You learn something new everyday. Today, the thing I learned
was perhaps one of the most profound things I could ever hope to learn as an
English teacher and educator.
Recently I watched a video online of a slam poem performed
to criticize America’s “No Child Left Behind” policy, specifically in regards
to school children who are in American classrooms as ESL (English as a Second
Language) students. I agreed with all the criticisms the young man argued from
an educator’s perspective. But, just as he is, I am an American-born Caucasian
whose first (and possibly only throughout compulsory education) language was
English, so for us to criticize the system, we come from the winning side
arguing for the losing side. But today, I came to understand this plight from
the losing side.
I am an Assistant Language Teacher at a junior high school
in Tome City, Japan. I got this job through the Japan Exchange and Teaching
(JET) Program. I applied for this job because I took three years of Japanese
language courses at my university, and am very interested in Japanese culture.
I wanted to live here for an immersion setting, with the original goal of
becoming fluent in Japanese.
Today, my second period English class with our 7th
graders was cancelled and replaced with men’s morale education, but the teacher
invited me along. The lesson was “Learn by Losing,” and as it was not English
class, it was entirely taught in Japanese (our English teacher is also the
school’s morale education teacher). The structure of the class went like many
American classes: opening lecture, handout/reading of a passage, more lecture,
another reading passage, a little more lecture, and then finally the student
response in which students write their personal opinions about the two passages
and lectures. As such, there is no “right” answer to the response prompt, so
long as the students supported their ideas with logical claims. But despite
three intense years of study, and over a year of immersion in the country, I barely
caught a few words here and there. By the time the response papers were passed
out, I panicked. After all, I was a straight-A student growing up, and I never
failed an assignment. But suddenly I found myself being asked to write my
opinion about something I could not understand (indeed, it was a miracle I was
able to deduce the prompt of “write your opinion” in the first place).
At that very moment, the slam poem I’d watched so many times
came to me. And then I remembered growing up in Southern California, where our
classrooms had ESL students, mostly from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds, whose
first language was Spanish, and they consistently scored lower on tests,
assignments, and in grades until finally they were weeded out by junior high
school and placed into the “lower” classes, and I into the “advanced” classes.
They were not given special consideration for the fact that they may have
scored poorly because they could not comprehend. In order to uphold equality,
they were held to the same standards as all the Caucasian children who natively
speak English.
In one brief class period, I came to realize the plight of
second language learners in classrooms. I didn’t know what to do. So I thought,
if I had been an ESL student growing up in a real classroom, where I wasn’t
just a teacher sitting in but was actually being graded, what would I do? I
stressed as the realization that I would completely and utterly fail no matter
what I did set in. Despite that, I was interested in learning, and also wanted
to show the teacher that I cared. So I did the only thing I could do: I copied
the prompt question from the board onto my paper. I hoped to take that paper
with me to look up the kanji/words and attempt to answer the prompt later, when
suddenly all papers were collected and class was over. The only thing I took
away from that class were the reading passages, but my chance at completing the
assignment was gone.
After three intense years of study at the collegiate level, and
a full year of immersion into the Japanese language, the only thing I could do
for this 7th grade assignment was copy the prompt. A prompt that I
could not comprehend. I learned by losing today, but I don’t think it was quite the lesson the teacher had in mind.
"Rigged Game" by Dylan Garity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo3KFUzyMUI
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI began to understand English one year after arriving to the US thanks to my dedicated teachers and my peers. But I was at an advantage since most were already bilingual. I did not speak until a year after that, when I was transferred to an all English class. It was quite the challenge! And even though I was able to speak, I was often lost when conversations turned to idioms, pop-culture references or historic or local subjects.
I remember a specific day where I was ridiculed for not playing "cooties" but I had no idea what that was or how to react. I cannot comprehend the difficulties children will now face as their teacher is forbidden to asses them in a language they can understand!
Brilliant lesson K2. And that's something ALTs need to consider as well, for our students in English class. I had a habit of using vocabulary that my students just never learned, and it made understanding my stories difficult. But many told me that they got the gist of it. By the way, moral education is taught by all of the homeroom teachers to their own homerooms, isn't it? At least, that's how it was in my school. Hope you're well!
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