Reflections on Mini-Conference
Review
The cultural mini-conference began
with an enlightening presentation by five Gwinnett County interpreters who
represented five different cultures. The first presenter was Vesna Vujinovic,
who is originally from Bosnia-Herzegovina. She gave a brief history of her
former homeland and explained how many of its citizens came to America as
refugees in the early 1990’s (personal communication, September 29, 2012). She
spoke of the necessity for teachers to be sensitive to the needs of these types
of students and families who are coming from traumatic circumstances and now
must learn a new language, make new friends, find a new job and learn new
school expectations. She emphasized how different the American school systems
are from those in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Parents are accustomed to having more
face to face contact with teachers regarding their student’s progress; however
they are not used to being asked to volunteer or help out in the schools like
we do here.
The second presenter was Beatriz
Uribe, a Spanish translator for the county. She discussed how important it is
for teachers to remember that not all Hispanics are Latino and especially that
not all Hispanics are from Mexico (personal communication, September 29, 2012).
Our schools have Spanish speaking students from many countries and their
culture and dialects can be very different. It is important not to make assumptions,
in particular, that all Hispanics are poor or uneducated. Many of our students’
parents are educated in their home country and have brought their children to
the U.S. to be educated. She did,
however, bring up an excellent point about our families who are poor and
uneducated. We rely so much on
technology now for things like: registration, e-class, Mypayments, and simply
checking a child in or out. Many of these families do not have access to
computers or do not know how to use them. We need to be mindful of this and
provide help or other means to these families.
The next three presenters, Eunsook
Lee, Yisu Brasel, and Lun Schlect all represented three different Asian
countries. They echoed Ms. Uribe in emphasizing the fact that while they are all
considered Asian, their countries and cultures are very distinct and different
(personal communication, September 29, 2012). Ms. Lee is originally from South
Korea and explained that most Korean immigrants who come to America are from
South Korea. Education is very important
to their culture and a current trend is for one family member to remain in
Korea and work to provide for the family, while another brings the children to
the U.S. for their education. Ms. Lee provided lots of useful insight into some
of their traditions that if unknown can cause a teacher to insult someone from
their culture.
Ms. Brasel is originally from China.
She led us to understand that not all Chinese speak the same language. Mandarin is the official language of the
country, but many people speak Cantonese. Even within these two languages there
are many different dialects. Ms. Brasel
also discussed some commonalities among Asian languages, not just Chinese, of
which American teachers need to be aware. In many of their languages, they do
not use pronouns like he, she, and it, so when writing or speaking our Asian
students often confuse these words. They
are also not used to adding verb tenses or making nouns plural. Teachers need to be prepared to spend extra
time working with our Asian students on these and other grammatical
differences.
Ms. Schlect is originally from
Vietnam. She brought her mother to help her demonstrate the importance of
tradition to their culture. Her mother wore a beautiful garment representing
the kinds of clothes they wear when they want to put forth their best self.
They wear these clothes to special occasions and even to school. She said they
are often very surprised when they come to the U.S. and see how casual we are
at school. She also showed a tourism video of her beautiful country so that we
could get an idea of what her home country looks like.
A commonality among all three Asian
presenters was that their cultures’ beliefs about the importance of discipline
in education are very different from the U.S. Students in their home countries
have longer days at school and it is much more strict. There are no parties or
pajama days, etc. They agreed that often parents are frustrated by this
difference, and feel that they need to have their children practice more
outside school. They also agreed that in
their countries teachers are seen as authority figures and thus are
unapproachable. As a result, they often do not feel that they can come to us
with concerns.
The two breakout sessions I attended
were also very thought-provoking. The first session I attended was called
Culturally Sensitive Quality Teaching lead by Lisa Homann. In this session, we
became the language learners and experienced what it was like to have to try to
learn when the lesson is not in your native tongue. She demonstrated the importance of using lots
of visuals, repetition, and choice of answers when presenting a student with a
question. She also showed us how unreasonable some of the tasks are that we
give our students, for example, having them read an article after only teaching
a handful of words.
The second session I attended was led
by Elizabeth Webb and was called Bridging the Divide Between the GCPS Culture
and the Cultures of ELs and Families. She spoke of understanding the
definitions of culture and how GCPS has its own distinct culture (personal
communication, September 29, 2012). We need to be aware of how different other
cultures may be and find ways to thoughtfully work with parents and students to
express our systems’ cultural expectations. We also watched a video by Jeremy
Rifkin (J. Rifkin ) that made us
think about the possibility of creating an “empathic civilization.”
Reflect
I have always enjoyed learning about other languages
and cultures. I actually have an undergraduate degree in French, and when I first
decided to become a teacher, my plan was to become an EL teacher. Once in the
classroom, however, I enjoyed teaching all students and never went on to pursue
the EL specialty, until now. Today’s
experience reminded me of why I originally wanted to teach students of other
cultures.
I found the presentations by the
interpreters to be fascinating. I was left wanting to know more about each of
their countries and people. One of the most difficult aspects of being an
elementary, regular ed., classroom teacher these days is lack of time. We are
pulled in so many different directions and have so many expectations handed to
us, that there is not enough time to really get to know our students’ families
the way we would like. Whenever I meet
and conference with my international families, I almost always wish that I
could spend more time getting to know them personally. Taking this course is
making me aware that as enjoyable as it would be for me to do this, it is
really also vital in many ways. It is really the only way to bridge the gap
between our culture here at GCPS and the many other cultures that are merging
with us.
Revisit
I’m still unsure of how to squeeze
more time into the day to really get to know my international families the way I would like, however, I
took away many ideas from the day’s
experience that I want to try and incorporate into my teaching and my school.
First and foremost, I realized that I need to do a better job of communicating
with the parents of my EL students. I am thinking especially about our upcoming
parent-teacher conferences. I have two direct students who are different Asian
nationalities. After listening to Ms. Lee,
Ms. Brasel, and Ms. Schlect discuss their different Asian cultures, I realize
that I need to be thoughtful with my phrasing and how I word things so that I
am not misinterpreted. I am also now aware that they may have questions or
concerns with what and how their child is learning, but may not have asked
because it goes against their culture to initiate communication with teachers. Instead of just discussing continuums, data,
and their child’s work samples, I plan to show them more and various work
samples of other (unnamed) students so they can actually see what I am talking
about when I tell them their child needs to include more detail or better
organization, for example, in their writing. According to almost all of the
interpreters, many other cultures think that we play too much in school
here. By showing and telling my parents
what we do, perhaps they will have a better understanding that we do actually
work and learn here too!
I also really connected with what Ms.
Uribe addressed when discussing the current surge toward making everything
electronic. We have a large Hispanic population in our school, as well as,
several gypsy families who I know many may not have access to home computers to
be able to go to e-class and Mealpay, etc. For the past several years my school
has hosted family nights related to language arts, math, and science, I’m now
thinking that I will talk to our technology people and administration about
hosting some form of a technology night with a session for our EL population on
where and how they can access these newest forms of communication.
I think, however, the most important
thing that I took away from this experience was that I need to be sensitive to
the needs of both my students and their families, especially when it comes to
home/school communication.
J.
Rifkin (2012, Aug.). The empathic
civilization. (Video file). Retrieved
from www.TED.com.
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