Review – What did you learn?
Listening to the Gwinnett County Public Schools translators was enlightening and thought provoking. I found the differences and similarities between the different cultures to be interesting.
Vesna Vujinovic discussed how schools can help Bosnian students and parents. It was interesting to hear how parents did not understand the concept of special education in our schools and how Bosnian parents are accustom to monthly meetings to discuss how their students are doing in school and how strange it is that our schools only seem to contact parents when a problem comes up.
Beatriz Uribe cleared up the difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino. It is nice to now know that Hispanic represents anyone who speaks Spanish and anyone from Latin America is called Latino.
Eunsook Lee explained that the majority of Korean Americans are from South Korea. She also explained the concept of Goose Family. Many Korean parents send their children to the United States for an education alone or under the supervision of one parent while the other parent remains in Korea to support the family. I have taught students who were alone in this country and had no idea it was a culturally supported method of educating their children.
Yisu Brasel is an ESOL teacher at Peachtree Elementary school and a Mandarin Chinese translator. She explained the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese and how Mandarin is the official language of China. She addressed the lack of in the Chinese languages. I found this to be one of the most interesting pieces of information relating to teaching our students. Even though I teach math I can see how not having tenses could interfere with students working on application word problems. Communication has been a major focus in schools for several years and with writing across the curriculum it is important for teachers to be aware that special attention must be given to Korean students in order to help them be more successful.
Lan Schlecht mentioned the similarities between Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese students and parents. She spoke of the Vietnamese traditions and the attire worn by students especially girls. Students coming to the United States often find our informal attire very different from the attire in Vietnam. Having never visited Vietnam I found the video interesting.
Reflect – What did it mean to you?
The one thing that keeps running through my mind is that all teachers need to be aware of the cultural differences presented to us and the differences in other cultures not presented. There are very few teachers at my high school who are not exposed to students from different cultures. Just because you don’t teach ESOL classes doesn’t mean you don’t work with students who are in ESOL classes or were served by our ESOL program. Gwinnett County has changed in the fifteen years I have been teaching. My high school was diverse when I began but has become even more diverse.
I must say I love being a teacher and contribute my passion to my mentor teachers in Maine and to my desire to learn as much as I can. I always approach professional learning as an opportunity for me to improve my teaching for all of my students. I believe that if we are to instill a love of learning in our students we must model this to them by continually learning ourselves. So why do I mention this? I think teachers are feeling overwhelmed at school and finding it difficult to fit professional development into their hectic schedules. If the county is embracing our ESOL population then then the county will need to find ways to compensate teachers to attend cultural awareness training.
Refine – How will you use the information in your classroom?
I will use the information gained at the culture awareness mini-session to be more open minded and aware of differences in my classroom and in the hallways when interacting with students. I will take time to find out a little more about my students and their backgrounds and cultural traditions. We all know showing interested in students is key to building a strong relationship and relationships help student achievement. I’ve already learned that just a few seconds of my time can change a student’s perception of a class and the knowledge gained from this session will help me engage in conversation with my students at a different level and hopefully improve their performance in my class and others.
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