Page Comparison

Before class

• Complete reading
• Work on upcoming assignments

During class (ppt)

• Conceptual work – culture & acculturation; language
  • To get us started and ground us in a concrete educational context: "Leaving Midland" case study
  • Immigration
    • Historical orientation: History of immigration to United States
    • Personal history of immigration 
    • Overview: 1820-2007: http://vimeo.com/2424744
    • Pair up and inspect decade-by-decade, country of origin by country of origin: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
    • Contemporary situation: Map from the 2000 census. If you want to see the source, it's here: https://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas/pdf/6_Place-of-Birth-and-US-Citizenship.pdf
    • What were you familiar with? From what context – classroom instruction? Media? Interaction with family and/or friends?
    • What about the gaps? What do they tell us? What was happening?
    • Context of immigration into the US: pushes, pulls, pushing back...privilege?
  • Culture & acculturation
    
    • Cultural profiles activity
    • Acculturation
    • Another lens on multiple cultures (stemming from multi-racial individuals): "swirl" concept
    • http://swirlinc.wordpress.com/about/
    • http://www.swirlsyndicate.com/About.html
    • See also Beat Nation, blending indigenous and urban cultures (from Canada, but I assume there's an American analog...somewhere) 
  • "Multiplied challenges" of under-served ELLs
    • Significance of language
      • Who here has studied a language other than English? Who here speaks one? (And how can you tell if someone's American?) 
      • Who here speaks a second (or third? Dare we hope for fourth??) language? What was the context of learning it? Using it? 
      • The challenges of learning another language: mental, physical, emotional – even perceptual! See Ta-Nehisi Coates on learning French; his commenters are even more useful!
    • Examples of things we don't think about
      • Class roster exercise
      • For more in that vein: See pp. 3 onwards in Language Transfer Supports.
    • Language is more than words; hearing is more than de-coding sound waves – think about language and culture via Amy Walker's 21 Accents video. (Spanish accents video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlK-neOypDM
    • The significance of English – it's not easy to acquire
      • ESL stages, time-to-mastery
      • Dual coding (Triple coding?)
      • Spoken vs. written (vs. txt? Chat? LOLspeak?)
      • Slang vs. 'marketplace' vs. academic
      • Formal vs. informal writing, genre writing, concept of 'voice'. Example: Mark Twain's writing of Huck Finn's father
      • Think about how you learned it. Example: 'If I was president' / 'If I were president' – formal instruction? Modeling? Or did you never learn it? Could you explain it to someone who was learning it for the first time?
      • English as a high-stakes language (and set of cultural conventions) to learn
      • Example of 'push back': English-only laws via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement
    • Flipping the script: We are now in class in Haiti, and I will be speaking Kreyol...very badly, but I'm thinking I'll get away with it....
      
      • (If you were interested in our source text: http://www.amazon.com/Dis-moi-chansons-dHa%C3%83%C2%AFti-French-Edition/dp/2916046119
      • How did you feel? How did you react? What if you were the only student in the class who didn't understand? WHAT IF YOUR LIFE WAS LIKE THIS EIGHT HOURS A DAY?
      • (And if you want a more thorough, complete treatment of that teaching technique, see Vanderbilt's module on working with English Language Learners: http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/ell/, particularly the series of videos that do the same thing I did: https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf_activities/independent/IA_Understanding_Sheltered_Instruction.pdf)
    • Working with ELLs
      
      • Awareness – who are the ELL students / families / communities in our area? What are the trends nation-wide? 
      • Standards: Meet (if you haven't already) the PA ELPS
      • Resources
        • http://delicious.com/tchammond/ESL – anything you can contribute to this?? 
        • An emerging area for consideration: Mobile tools, such as http://jibbigo.com/
        • Hopefully your school provides access to these
          • https://www.wida.us/index.aspx
          • Culturegrams. Here is their sample country report, to give you an idea of the scope of information provided.
      • MIND-SET
        • Out-bound (teacher-to-student) action: Translation as a human right. Think about it. 
          
          • Book that may be of interest: Found in Translation, particularly the anecdote about a mis-translation of 'intoxicado'
          • And look at this! Exact same name, and in fact addressing the exact same topic! Found in Translation.
        • In-bound (student-to-teacher) action: Teach me your language (or culture, pronunciation, etc.). Think of this as a form of 'reciprocal teaching' – see entry in Wikipedia or this article from Education Leadership: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar97/vol54/num06/Why-Reciprocal-Teaching%C2%A2.aspx
  • Closure: Meet people! Go new places! Try new things! Keep growing your cultural competence! An interesting concept: http://www.language-exchanges.org/

After class

• Reading

  • Grant & Ray, Ch. 9 & 10 (culture); Ch. 11 & 12 (ELLs)

  • Gonzalez, 1995

  • (I encourage you to check out some ELL resources from our bookmark list; start building your own! http://delicious.com/tchammond/ESL

• Assignments

  • Private WTL: something or nothing; up to you
  • Group WTL: Brainstorming for our teacher resource projects
  • Work on other assignments