Culture, Building Background, & ELLs

“Culture” is an important part of being able to build a background for ELL’s. But we can often focus on only one part or on the wrong parts of their cultures when doing so. Often times, we look at the surface culture of our students, we see their language and maybe some stereotypical aspects of their culture (how they dress, the food they eat, the music they listen too, etc). We often just look at the surface and exclude the deeper parts of their culture when trying to see and form their backgrounds. We miss their traditions, their history, their ways of living, and what they hold close to them traditional and culturally. We take it upon ourselves to form a background when instead this task is meant for them to build themselves. In both videos, we saw how the backgrounds of the students differed from what we may have initially guessed. In “Immersion or Submersion” we saw how a student’s difficulty in being able to do something he truly cared about because of a language barrier. We often think of ELL’s as students who can’t do things and that they need to be taught everything, but instead we are proven to be wrong. They have the knowledge, equal amounts to other students, and they want to succeed. In “Waiting on DACA” we saw how difficult it is for undocumented students to continue after school. ELL backgrounds represent a different side to our students than what educators often see, this contrast between home and school can be lessened when deeper culture is used when building backgrounds for our students.