learning.

This week has been all about learning. Surprise, surprise I know seeing as how I'm a student-teacher and all. Last Friday, I learned how to handle conflict with students and send them to the office and converse with the principal. Monday I attended the student teacher Fire Up! Conference held at Aquinas College and learned all kinds of useful information in sessions such as: Can I Take my Christian Faith into a Public School?, Special Education and the General Education Teacher, Reducing Teacher Talk (which was hilarious), Supporting English Language Learners, and Parent Communication Dos and Don'ts. I got to practice the Parent Communication tips on Wednesday when I had to sent a certain student back to the office... this time, his mom came in and wanted an explanation from me why her son keeps getting sent to the office. So, I sat in the principal's office with the principal, the student, and the student's mother -- talk about slightly intimidating for a student teacher who has barely gotten her feet wet! This little "meeting" went well. The mother has unrealistic expectations for what she wants to happen with her son (example, she wants him in special ed. even though he's really smart) and she is in denial that he needs testing for ADHD. She's one of those parents who you have to take by the hand and lead towards every step in a process because she is not proactive. She expects everyone to come to her and cater to her so she doesn't have to lift a finger.

I guess I could rant and rave about ridiculous parents all day, but for me the highlight of this little experience (yes, there is a highlight in all this mess!), was that the whole thing took place in 95% Spanish conversation. The principal, mom, student, switched in and out of English and Spanish and I knew exactly what was going on the whole time. Knowing another language is SO COOL! I loved sitting there listening to a conversation about one of my students while the parent and principal spoke in Spanish. I could even tell that the principal is from Puerto Rico because of the way she speaks her Spanish (I later confirmed it with another teacher). It's amazing to think that the human brain can learn a whole new set of vocabulary, phrases, sentence structures, and sounds and actually communicate in that new language. It's amazing. What's more amazing is that there are students who come to our schools from various countries in Africa who can speak 5 or 6 languages!!! LANGUAGES!!! This boggles my mind. I'm convinced that learning to speak multiple languages is its own intelligence.

What's hard at Burton Elementary, and probably every school with 2nd or 3rd generation Spanish-speakers, is that the students begin to lose their Spanish by middle school. They are so pushed so hard to learn English (which is a great skill, especially if you live in the United States) that they forget their Spanish. They can no longer communicate with parents and grandparents and it's really sad. It creates a generational breakage, a language barrier, that separates families. I compliment them whenever I can that speaking two languages is a great skill to have and not to forget their Spanish.

Here's a couple of my little intelligent students.