Amazingly enough, I was able, by dint of two years of classes and monthly tuition payments, to convince the University of Houston-Victoria that I would make a passable teacher. So here I am, all graduated and degreed and certified, working as a sub while I look for a permanent position. This week and last, I have signed up to work with English language learners, kids with varying degrees of English fluency who need extra support as they learn academic content.
In Texas, students who receive this extra instruction take tests monitoring their progress, so that it can easily be seen if the extra help is....well, helping. And since kids are held responsible for writing as well as reading, part of the assessment is that they turn in a writing sample. So today we wrote. The topic? Not quite the "what I did on my summer vacation" that is the tried-and-true standby of teachers everywhere, but close to that: "The difference between living in my home country and living in America."
This does give a lot of opportunity to the kids writing. Lots of supporting details. Compare and contrast, which is the Holy Grail of expository writing. An automatic buy-in from the author, since everyone's favorite subject is....himself. Sure know mine is. I could write about myself for hours. Just look at this blog, for instance....
At the end of class, the kids all turned in their compositions, smeary pencil and misspelled words, run-on sentences and dangling modifiers. Just the typical junior high 6th grader stuff, to be assessed I suppose by some professorial type thoughtfully stroking his goatee and tugging at the black turtleneck peeking out under a tweed jacket. Or, more likely, to be read by a harried twentysomething jammed into a windowless cubicle, papers scattered and anchored in place by a Starbucks cup. As I slid the samples into the folder to send them in, I scanned them quickly and disinterestedly.
Epiphany: an experience of sudden and striking realization; a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning or something.
Sam, like many of the kids in the class, is spending his first year here in United States. I expected to read his description of the differences in food, culture, or geography. How Texans have a funny accent, how big Houston is, how many opportunities there are to go to a mall or a museum. Maybe about various styles of dress, or how the Lone Star can be found everywhere, from the concrete supports which frame the highways to the flag to belt buckles to tattoos to sheet-metal decorations screwed into masonry walls.
"Before I moved, I was lonely. Here in United States, I am not lonely I have lots of friends and all the kids are friendly."
America is the land of opportunity. We all say it, we all know it. People come here from all over the world for a shot at this opportunity. Especially to give their kids a leg up. So many people, in fact, want to come here that there is a constant discussion about just what to do with all the people that want to come here. Freedom, we say. Opportunity, we say. Wave that American flag, Old Glory, I still get a tightness in my throat, my voice catches when I say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning or sing the Star-Spangled Banner.
But all this pales at the significance of what Sam has realized, what he has pointed out. Here he has found not the opportunity that we are inclined to see, but rather his heart's desire. He has friends. Kids are friendly. He is not lonely. He belongs.
Thanks, Sam, for helping me remember that every student I teach is first a foremost a kid. That I need to find out what motivates them, that each person is unique with a different and intriguing story. That while the opportunity to succeed that all teachers offer to their students is a powerful inducement, some kids just want to be part of their group, to belong, to fit in some way.
Thanks, Sam, for helping me to see you on the other end of that stubby chewed up pencil....
In Texas, students who receive this extra instruction take tests monitoring their progress, so that it can easily be seen if the extra help is....well, helping. And since kids are held responsible for writing as well as reading, part of the assessment is that they turn in a writing sample. So today we wrote. The topic? Not quite the "what I did on my summer vacation" that is the tried-and-true standby of teachers everywhere, but close to that: "The difference between living in my home country and living in America."
This does give a lot of opportunity to the kids writing. Lots of supporting details. Compare and contrast, which is the Holy Grail of expository writing. An automatic buy-in from the author, since everyone's favorite subject is....himself. Sure know mine is. I could write about myself for hours. Just look at this blog, for instance....
At the end of class, the kids all turned in their compositions, smeary pencil and misspelled words, run-on sentences and dangling modifiers. Just the typical junior high 6th grader stuff, to be assessed I suppose by some professorial type thoughtfully stroking his goatee and tugging at the black turtleneck peeking out under a tweed jacket. Or, more likely, to be read by a harried twentysomething jammed into a windowless cubicle, papers scattered and anchored in place by a Starbucks cup. As I slid the samples into the folder to send them in, I scanned them quickly and disinterestedly.
Epiphany: an experience of sudden and striking realization; a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning or something.
Sam, like many of the kids in the class, is spending his first year here in United States. I expected to read his description of the differences in food, culture, or geography. How Texans have a funny accent, how big Houston is, how many opportunities there are to go to a mall or a museum. Maybe about various styles of dress, or how the Lone Star can be found everywhere, from the concrete supports which frame the highways to the flag to belt buckles to tattoos to sheet-metal decorations screwed into masonry walls.
"Before I moved, I was lonely. Here in United States, I am not lonely I have lots of friends and all the kids are friendly."
America is the land of opportunity. We all say it, we all know it. People come here from all over the world for a shot at this opportunity. Especially to give their kids a leg up. So many people, in fact, want to come here that there is a constant discussion about just what to do with all the people that want to come here. Freedom, we say. Opportunity, we say. Wave that American flag, Old Glory, I still get a tightness in my throat, my voice catches when I say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning or sing the Star-Spangled Banner.
But all this pales at the significance of what Sam has realized, what he has pointed out. Here he has found not the opportunity that we are inclined to see, but rather his heart's desire. He has friends. Kids are friendly. He is not lonely. He belongs.
Thanks, Sam, for helping me remember that every student I teach is first a foremost a kid. That I need to find out what motivates them, that each person is unique with a different and intriguing story. That while the opportunity to succeed that all teachers offer to their students is a powerful inducement, some kids just want to be part of their group, to belong, to fit in some way.
Thanks, Sam, for helping me to see you on the other end of that stubby chewed up pencil....
