Working in Education through the Language Lens

It's that time of the year. School has started and new students arrive in your class. You've spent weeks making preparations and having desks, tables, materials ready for your students to dive in. Then in walks a student, or maybe two or three, and they are introduced as English Learners. Your first thoughts probably swing the pendulum from "oh s$&# - to - I'm up for the challenge". You might have an EL teacher on staff who immediately steps in and starts working with him/her/them/you. The reality is you now have this student in your class and you're accountable for making all content comprehensible, um BY LAW. You're going over procedures and reviewing what we should know and remember from last year, and this new student is: *Digging in their desk *Putting them head down on the desk *Poking their neighbor with a pencil *Rolling around on the carpet *Refusing to take papers you hand out *Doodling on um everything They are not doing anythin...

A few weeks ago, I planned a fun morning with my visiting niece and nephew. We headed down to the riverfront to ride inside the Duck Boats. Those are amphibian tour buses ~ anyway... While we were waiting for our tour time, I took everyone to an area where I had seen 'the hamster balls' many times before. I had walked passed these many a time, without stopping yet a few times secretly wishing I could go inside. It looked FUN! Today though was a perfect opportunity! Send the kids in and eat up some wait time. My three youngest boys and my nephew each climbed into their balls and onto the water they went - and fell, and fell again. Fall after fall the boys just couldn't keep their balance. Two of them finally gave up and just lay inside the ball. The whole time, as I was laughing and taking photo's, I was also thinking :~ "it can't be that hard! "I'm going to do this!" "They just keep falling!" So after the boys turn - it was ...

bar·ri·er ˈberēər/ noun noun: barrier ; plural noun: barriers a fence or other obstacle that prevents movement or access. synonyms: fence , railing , barricade , hurdle , bar , blockade , roadblock "the barrier across the entrance" a circumstance or obstacle that keeps people or things apart or prevents communication or progress. "a language barrier" synonyms: obstacle , obstruction , hurdle , stumbling block , bar , block , impediment , hindrance , curb "a barrier to international trade" the starting gate of a racecourse. British a gate at a parking lot that controls access by being raised or lowered. a long narrow island lying parallel and close to the mainland, protecting the mainland from erosion and storms. noun: barrier island ; plural noun: barrier islands Origin late Middle English (denoting a palisade or fortification defending an entrance): from ...

  I haven't had to use this expression before with a literal context. However this weekend, we needed all hands on the back decks. This picture was taken on Father's Day, as my husband was including all four boys in completing the hand rail and sides to our newest deck (back door landing). A great learning experience  Yesterday we all helped paint this deck and our pool deck with stain (hopefully for the last time due to our purchase of lifetime deck stain ~yeah, we'll see!). Two very different decks Two very different tasks Two very different parents Six pairs of hands My learning: The assignment of task to helper is critical. At one point I had my youngest son right next to me so that I could keep an eye on him, knowing full well that I probably have to follow up and check on his work. Having him in charge of a small section that was not a very visible section was strategic to having him feel like he was doing as good a job as the rest, but put my min...

We sure do hear that word a lot don't we? Reflect on your practice,                          reflect on your decisions,  reflect on your year. ~REFLECT~ During a district wide training for Project Based Learning I observed a team discuss the definition and meaning of reflection - as related to the essential design elements of PBL. The image they chose to depict for REFLECTION: was a student standing on a box (to elevate to teachers height), with the teacher at their side, looking into a mirror. The student was central to the reflective image, with just a hint of the teacher at the side. I've purposely omitted a photo of the actual drawing so that you can conjure up your own visual. (Forcing you to visualize? - yes I am :) At the time and since that group interaction, I've been thinking more about the process of reflection than it's purpose. I trust t...

Tonight I stood on a bridge on a relatively cool night in Austin, Texas. I stood in eager anticipation for the sun to set, and for the dark night sky to invite thousands of Mexican free tailed bats to emerge for well, the start of their 'day'. Around 500 bats are nested within the cracks and crevices of one square foot of bridge, and from my vantage I may have only spotted a few hundred. There is such a calm and stillness when the sun is no longer visible, right before the sky is darkened. It's by far my favorite time of day, and I hear from my mom, that it was also her father's favorite.  The peace that comes from the sun being out of sight, the instant temperature drop...and a period of renewal that sometimes seems to last far longer than it does in reality. All of this cannot be captured in the simplistic marker of "dusk". It was within that stillness, that my senses seemed amplified for action. I was conscious of the road noise, the chatter ar...

Newcomer EL's are a specialty area for me. Not just because I have worked with EL's for several years, but because I have adopted 4 boys from Taiwan (each came with a various degree of English Language Development). Newcomer EL's have a very personalized set of "go to's" both in behavior and language, that can often be mistaken for misbehavior, rudeness, lack of understanding of non-compliance. Edward, my 13 year old son, has been with us now in the U.S. for 5 weeks and 3 days. With a very short list of fully comprehensible words, he has had to rely on his new big brother (18 yrs old) and Google translate installed on his kindle. We are still in the short phrase listening and speaking level of understanding, with a growing list of vocabulary. As I said, behavior and language "go to's" with vary from learner to learner, I believe sharing Edward's will shed some light on what you may see with EL newcomers you encounter.  Let's start ...

As always I feel this post could go in 20 different directions.  I spent the last hour and a half emptying garbage bags from the dumpster behind my youngest son's school (with the help of his brothers) - and yes I have already showered (sorry TMI- but that smell ~ kinda sticks with you like peanut butter on the roof of a dogs mouth). Who was missing from the dumpster diving fun? - the reason for the dumpster diving. My youngest - who doesn't like talking to adults - came home hours after lunch, only to tell us then, that he had accidentally thrown his retainer away with his lunch tray. Had he told the teacher (and not his friends) - he could have gone down to the lunch room and rummaged through ONE bag of trash.                          .........and had a great day! So he calls dad first, telling him the grim news. Then he calls me (notice the order of those calls) - to which I answer "no problem, I'm on...

I've seen this tree a thousand times! That's not an exaggeration. I live on the same street as this tree - about a mile or two north and either with a glance and sometimes even a nod of appreciation, I have noticed it's odd shape. I've even thought about blogging about it before - with themes like "resilience" or "determination". I've never been the passenger in traffic long enough to capture it - and from this angle it's a little difficult to see -  what's so perfectly inspiring is that the branches have continued to grow in-spite of power lines running directly above the trunk (and dead center). You could say it' kept growing "against all odds". I guess the timeliness of this story is that we just brought our 4th son home from Taiwan. Before I frame the relevance of that personal story - let me me share something my youngest said to me last week. Michael is 12, and was adopted when he was 7. He struggles...

So my husband got a really fun game for Christmas this past year. "Exploding Kittens". It's not as hostile or vulgar as it sounds - in fact it's quite fun, and leads to some interesting family alliances. Anyway - one of the cards you an play is the "nope" card. It negates any other card anyone plays. So this is not a game tutorial - the story continues....... We were sitting all together watching a movie/tv last Saturday night - and my eldest son James - said something under his breath and the boys laughed. Brian and I both asked what the joke was - to which he replied - no nothing... but I had heard the word 'mom' so we pressed on. The joke was on me - that he was referring to the fact that I say NO a lot - like a hand full of nope cards. SO:  1) I didn't take it personally because it's true - I do - at home. It's my mom personae - the rule regulator. I tend to catch mistakes instead of good and I'm working on t...

I returned this past Saturday after spending one week in Taiwan and experienced two of the most emotionally difficult days of my adult life, as well as spending Christmas on a 14.5 hour flight and New Years in a hotel room with my son sleeping beside me. #1: Meeting my new son (Edward- aged 12), sitting in court and committing to be his legal guardian and then having to say goodbye for two or so more months before he joins our family. #2: Then visiting a women's prison a mere 15 minutes away from our hotel with my middle son to see his birth mother. Watching tears stream down first her face, and then his - and having to leave that tiny bleak room, knowing that he may never see her again. It wasn't until Sunday morning when we were taking down our Christmas tree, when my eldest adopted son (James-now aged 18) responded to my almost rhetorical question with a nugget of wisdom I needed to hear again. I nonchalantly asked: "how come it takes so much longer to put this ...