coaching the growth mindset & LEADERSHIP

I have read three comments on growth mindset and teaching ELLs on our course website. Here are my take-aways to continue to work on my growth as an ELL teacher:

Author: Victoria Cortes, Principles and Roles

★ Direct instruction on language structures must be provided to ELLs to aid in their development of second language proficiency.

★ English Language Learners should be challenged to develop their language skills by exposing them to a slightly higher language level and authentic learning tasks that are practical and meaningful.

When I read these two principles in her newsletter, I remembered one of the principals that I worked with. According to her, direct language instruction was a "language center" activity that I should avoid in my ELL classes. She insisted on the fact that I should not be teaching grammar points and vocabulary explicitly. I tried to explain how "translanguaging" the structural knowledge and mechanics from one's mother language into the second one helps them to make better connections and comprehend the new language conventions much faster. In the article, it is stated that proficiency in the second language highly depends on the existing language proficiency in one's own mother tongue. That's why reading specialists always encourage students to read extensively in their home language to help them gain new reading skills in their new language. Showing the students some similarities and differences in verb tenses or simply the basic sentence structures have improved my ELL's language capacity. Although we fell apart with my principal in this item, the achievements of my students in the class spoke louder than my arguments.

Author: Tegan Taylor, Language Learning Journey

I have found lots of common points in Tegan’s insights as a language learner. We have survived through the same stages of learning a second language, and both of us used the wealth of these experiences as a guide for our teaching practice. When he was depicting the morning rituals reciting the same sentences over and over again, I could see myself sitting in that classroom, doing precisely the same things. Did it work, yes it did, but will it work in 21st-century classrooms? Not sure about that! Yet, still, many of the current instructional methods rely on the same foundational principles in language teaching, repetitive drills, and taking part in social contexts to apply the knowledge. I wholly agree with Tegan's remarks on setting a purpose for a meaningful learning experience, which will then lead to further engagement and motivation on the language learners' side.

Author: Camille Butcher, My Language Learning Journey

Camille shares lots of everyday experiences with me as an adult living and teaching in a foreign country by relying on her language resources. I must be honest that there have been some days that I questioned myself why I wanted this experience and how I was going to cope with the language barriers between my students and me. Not only my students but also their parents, even the administration to provide crucial information, couldn't speak much English. There was also this "special education" issue that I had to tackle, and hopefully, I was relying on the parents to provide me with more information about my students. At first, lots of frustration, but being patient and giving yourself time to adapt to unexpected situations pay off in the long run. Some broken English on their side, some broken Vietnamese on my side, lots of smiling with embarrassment, and many conversations lost in translation we finally found our way to establish a system of trust. What Camille has written in her article brought those days back and gave me another perspective to keep on doing what I am doing for the best of my ability each and every day for my language learners.