[Note: I have an assignment for my Teaching English Language Learners class where I am to tutor an English Language Learner student for 10 sessions over a 10 week period. I'm putting some logs of the experience up on my website for anyone who might be interested in reading them. I have changed the names of students and left out some specifics to protect the privacy of the kids.]
Before I could tutor an English Language Learner (ELL) student, I had to find one. Initially I was thinking of tutoring a high school or middle school student because that is where I'm headed after I get my credential, but my wife reminded me that one of our friends and neighbors volunteers at our local elementary school, and that got me thinking that this assignment might be a good opportunity to try something different before I start into teaching teenagers for who knows how long. Long story short, I wound up volunteering to tutor in a fourth grade class at a nearby magnet school for some of the ELL students in our area.
The first day I showed up to tutor I was admittedly a little nervous and unsure of what I was supposed to do. My experience level with kids that age isn't very high (especially not in a real live classroom). I was also concerned about distracting the students and drawing attention away from the regular studies - so I suppose I might have come off to my assigned teacher and my student as a little quiet.
I was surprised that morning at how quiet and well behaved the students were. However, I think the fact that I got there at 8:30 AM had a lot to do with this. I've noticed in the middle school and high school classes I've observed that even the older kids are pretty subdued first thing in the morning.
I chatted with the teacher for
a few minutes before class. I
told her that I'm supposed to focus on one student for the assignment,
and she correctly guessed that this was so I could see progress in the
student over time. She had a couple of students in mind that
I
could help, but she decided to settle on Michael - whose family came
from Russia. As class started I got one of the tiny little
grade
school chairs and sat over by Michael - who was fortunately placed at
the edge of the class so I wasn't too conspicuous. I mostly
sat
there quietly while the teacher went through some class material, but I
took the opportunity to make suggestions on a couple of things during a
few brief periods when the students were asked to do some individual
work. To the most part Michael rather studiously ignored me,
and
I in turn didn't try to distract him too much.
After half an hour or so the
teacher suggested that I pull Michael
off for a time to work one on one in the back of the class.
Michael was working on a story for a class assignment, and I sat with
him for a while as he finished it. I was reading the story as
he
wrote it, and I was fairly surprised at how well constructed it was -
even if the story was of course rather simple. Although there
were a couple of rough transitions in the action here and there, it
followed a very clean narrative, it had a little bit of character
development, and it had a definite direction and some closure at the
end. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my writing at that age wasn't
that
good. Maybe he was retelling a story he had already heard or
seen
somewhere else before - I remember doing that when I was a kid (and
many adult writers unconsciously do it too) - but I still give him high
marks for it.
A few times Michael would write a sentence a little out of order or skip a word or two. In those cases I would just point to the sentence and say "that didn't quite make sense to me," and Michael would just erase it and write it over again, and in each case his second try was better. I suspect Michael is a very bright little boy, and I'm not sure at what level his language problems manifest themselves because his writing seemed pretty sophisticated to me for his age. This could be one of the things that I'm going to learn from this experience - how to recognize the problems that ELL students have when most of their surface abilities are pretty similar or possibly even beyond those of the other kids.
Michael finished his story just about at the same time the teacher started into her next activity, and he hastily scooted back to his desk on his own without giving me a second glance (I'm not really sure if he could pick me out of a crowd next week as little as he ever looked in my direction). I sat next to him as the class went through the next activity, which was on metaphors of all things, and I made a suggestion or two. He came up with one metaphor on his own that I thought was really great. The beginning was "The grandparents are..." and he finished it with "like statues." On second thought, that's technically a simile so I'm not sure if that was his exact wording or not. In either case I think it's very vivid and memorable.
Next week I'm going back to Michael's class during math time, and I think I might be able to make a little better contribution since I think I feel a little more comfortable with the right or wrong nature of math as opposed to helping with English. I plan to spend some time with Michael again, but I'm also planning to wander around a bit and help some of the other students if I can. I would like to get exposure to a few different ELL students if I can, and I feel like I might be more help if I spread myself around a little. To complete my class assignments I'm going to have to do some things specifically with Michael though. It will be interesting to see if I can get him to respond a little more, and I will be looking into the tools that I am learning and looking for some additional advice in that direction.