Throughout the three years that I have been teaching in New Albany I have also been working with Indiana University Southeast to develop a program to train ESL teachers and eventually help to get these teachers licensed in ESL. We also have been trying to make a better ESL program for not just my school district and the surrounding school districts but also helping immigrant families connect with services in the community they may, or may not be familiar with, ie., libraries, English classes, food pantries, etc. Indiana University Southeast and Magdalena, the professor who Perry ran into while seeing Bill, wrote a federal grant to receive funds to help get the program started. Indiana University Southeast (IUS for locals) named the program the New Neighbors Program. Part of this program has allowed me to have about thirteen student practicum students this past fall. I assigned them to certain students to act as individual tutors while the students were in their mainstream classrooms. They also spent some time with me to learn how to help make modifications for students without "doing the work" for the students. The program has worked fairly well, with some exceptions.
Early in the fall I had several professors come to my class and observe a lesson with some of my higher level students. Today they were back to do a follow-up observation. Ironically, given that one of the professors is also an ESL parent, this was also the day that my fourth graders were presenting their class play that they wrote together as an adaptation of a Dominican Republic legend we had read several weeks ago. After the observation, which was rather boring since my students and I were only reading a story about the seasons, and after the observation debriefing (my planning time), the ESL parent/visiting professor was able to see her son perform three times for three different classes. Luke had a second part to learn today since one of our characters (the king) was missing and he needed to be a stand in.
The play went well the second and third times it was presented and the students ate their props from the play picnic. Tomo, the dad, brought fruit as props. Apples, bananas, and grapes were enjoyed by all the performers before they scuttled off to their regular classes and Luke's mom returned to IUS. The morning seemed to go well and since their was an assembly in the afternoon I was able to get in some planning time anyways.
With all this fun, I'm still looking forward to May 30th, June 2nd, and June 20th!
-- Stephanie
Early in the fall I had several professors come to my class and observe a lesson with some of my higher level students. Today they were back to do a follow-up observation. Ironically, given that one of the professors is also an ESL parent, this was also the day that my fourth graders were presenting their class play that they wrote together as an adaptation of a Dominican Republic legend we had read several weeks ago. After the observation, which was rather boring since my students and I were only reading a story about the seasons, and after the observation debriefing (my planning time), the ESL parent/visiting professor was able to see her son perform three times for three different classes. Luke had a second part to learn today since one of our characters (the king) was missing and he needed to be a stand in.
The play went well the second and third times it was presented and the students ate their props from the play picnic. Tomo, the dad, brought fruit as props. Apples, bananas, and grapes were enjoyed by all the performers before they scuttled off to their regular classes and Luke's mom returned to IUS. The morning seemed to go well and since their was an assembly in the afternoon I was able to get in some planning time anyways.
With all this fun, I'm still looking forward to May 30th, June 2nd, and June 20th!
-- Stephanie
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