Blog # 17

Blog # 17

Post any data in addition to your transcript that you will use for your essay (additional interview materials, observational notes Blog 17: Identify sections from your transcript that you might use to develop "answers" to the questions you set up in your research plan.

 

I chose to use the same excerpts from blog 13. I want to dig a little deeper and see how I can use these excepts to prove my point and my focus.

Excerpt 1

Flora: Yea.. so what about the um, the Portuguese student
Teacher: Hahhaa
Flora: Is she still in your class ?
Teacher: She's in my class!
Flora: Yea and how are you dealing with it
Teacher: Now she talks too much Hahhaa  they absorb language its amazing ! and like the difference btw September and now she’ll carry on conversation's
Flora: With other students?
Teacher:  with everyone yea!  she’ll even do the writing with us , like the other kids, you’ll see the students that are fluent in English they’ll just shut down with the writing and she's attempting it even if its spelled wrong I'm like I don’t care even if its spelled wrong get your ideas out  I just want to see what you know
Flora: right
Teacher: Just to really see if she's understanding what's being taught and she does. So that’s I think that’s….
Flora: So your basically telling her even though your answers may be incorrect just write your ideas down
Teacher: Yea if its writing I don’t care if your sentence structure is off , like if you're missing a comma I just want to see if she understands the question being asked and if she can give me some details.

 The teacher shows that how her ESL student attempts writing and she encourages her to write enough though her writing is not perfect. She notices that this girl is not crying like the other students who do speak English perfectly. The teacher identifies the issue and solves it by encouraging her students. ( things she looked for were The facial expressions on students, the crying, exc.) These are the things that allow her to identify that there is an issue. Children crying, they don't want to do the writing. Later in Excerpt 3 she fixes the issue...


Excerpt 2

Flora: Yea it is , pause so, so my other question for you was Can u tell me about a challenge you’ve faced and how you were successful in overcoming it, and that right there seems like a challenge , with the learning
Teacher: The learning, I think that’s um One of the main things is that they gave me a student they thought I was Hispanic so they gave me a student with like a Spanish last name then we found out she was Portuguese and I’m like well I know nothing about that um so teaching a student who doesn’t know a word of English that was one of my challenges but even more challenging is working with the students who I think have a disability but I’m not qualified to determine that  so talking to the parents about it, talking to the child study team about it , presenting my case , talking to the guidance counselor and just all the paper work that goes with it. Oh my gosh. 10:12
Flora: it’s a lot right
Teacher: Um I fill out tons and tons of paper work for just one student so keeping record of all of that and just documenting the different strategies I do with them on a daily basis it’s A LOT!

Before I started the interview I had advised the teacher that my focus was about how a teacher uses observation in order to indicate that there is a problem in the class room. Here she talks about having a non speaking student in her class as a challenge she was faced with. Then she states that threw observing her students progress she comes to a conclusion that some students may have a learning disability and how challenging it is for her to work with the students and take that extra step to advise the parents and other professionals.

 


Excerpt 3

Teacher: Oh yea they love video games, they love it. I told them Mrs. Castillo plays mind craft, I just said it , I don’t play mind craft. Hahhaa I uh made myself learn because of them.
Flora: Oh really? Hahhaa
Teacher: Yea just because they are obsessed with that game, they wrote about it .they wrote about it in their essays. I’m like faking it, oh yea I love it Hahhaa
Flora: Hahhaa
Teacher: Then I told them to write me a how to essay, like how to survive in the game and
Flora: Oh that’s a very good idea
Teacher: Yea and I actually took some of their steps and I tried to play the game then I’m like you missed a step because I died Hahhaa
Flora: Hahhaa that’s amazing I think that’s a good way to get them to write

I love that the teacher knows her students. She knows that they like mind craft (video game) and uses that topic as a writing assignment. She talked about some students shutting down and having a melt down when it came to writing, but this strategy helped her students over come that fear and sparked their interest.