Field Experiences: NCHS

February 16, 2011

First visit at the school, I worked with 3 Kareni girls from Burma. They have been here

for three years and are probably in Level 2 of EL. They were working on a presentation that was

for homework. They had been reading a book in class and had to make a powerpoint in response

to questions that had been asked in class per each chapter.

The school is supposed to be running under “sheltered instruction” but their teacher did

not really understand this idea. The questions were confusing and worded with complicated

phrases. Also, the ideas in the questions/ book were not relatable to what the girls knew- partying

and PDA- things not allowed where they are from. Married people do not even kiss on the lips

The girls knew how to speak English, Burma and Thai languages and they were

Christian. I thought it was ironic that the powerpoint was about a Mexican in America and

searching for his identity. The girls said that they still thought of themselves as Kareni girls, not

American. For one question, they had to talk about what things in America were confusing to

them; they said it was computers, cars, speaking, and food.

What I learned:

- To not plan exercises like that

- To make sure all my students have written down the notes in class

- Need to speak in simple sentences

- Explain things slowly

- Give them extra time to think

Feb 21, 2011

I worked with Khadija who has been in the country for 3-4 years and when I first met her,

I didn’t believe that she was an ELL student. She was working on a speech for her speech class,

in which she already has an A. Her speech was a demonstrative speech in which she was going

to teacher her classmates the different commands she learned in her ROTC class, such as present

arms, order arms, attention, etc. She spoke very well and seemed very sure of her English. We

worked on the speech for about 30 mins and she presented it 6 or 7 times. The only issue is when

she got nervous she would repeat the commands and do the actions 5, 6, and 7 times in a row

which is obviously not the best idea.

Khadija is on the luckier side because her mom speaks English to her at home. I am not

sure where she is from or why they moved to Indianapolis but Khadija seems to be thriving here.

Her and her friend Koji were very interested in college, which I was just thrilled about. Koji

aspires to go to Harvard because he watched Legally Blonde and believes it is easy to get in

because the “blonde girl did it.” His classmates had also bet him $100 if he got accepted. He

also believed that Notre Dame and other elite schools couldn’t be that hard to get into. I think it’s

great that he is driven and believes in himself, but at the same time I think it’s good to have more

realistic goals, especially since he is only a freshman.

March 1, 2011

During this field visit, I was able to work with two girls on math. One girl was working

on the slope-intercept form and the other on corrections of a math test. It was hard to help the

girls on their work when I have not taken algebra or geometry in 5 years. The girl correcting her

test was a senior and from Mexico, I am not sure how long she has been in the United States but

her social language very easy to understand. The math test seemed tricky, even for me to

understand and I can only imagine how she felt when she was taking it. We worked through each

problem making the corrections, some of it she had done very well on and other parts she had

received zeros on the questions. The questions were even more complicated because they used

measurement of different types in them; such as feet and inches or meters and centimeters; this

can be fine for students from America, but for students who are not familiar with these different

types of measurements can be easily fooled by the questions.

MARCH 22, 2011

Worked again with Koji on a paper for his English class

He had to have an intro, 3 paragraphs and a conclusion- had some typed up notes of what he

wanted to take about- direct quotes from some sources. It was interesting to see this side of him

since I had previously just had a casual conversation with him.

It was interesting to see him typing on the computer. He was able to type on the keyboard

with both hands which a lot of people still cannot do. He did not have a hard time with words

and he knew how to spell them. He had a very high level of social language but he mentioned

that he had previously gotten a bad grade on a paper from this same teacher and so I question his

abilities for educational language/ written language. He has circled elocution; when working

with him we had to focus on sentence structure and new vocabulary. He seemed to have lots of

ideas and wanted to say so much but had a hard time organizing his thoughts; which is a problem

a lot of students have and is not just because he is an ELL student.

April 5, 2011

I worked with a girl from Africa today but I am unsure as to how long she has been in the

United States. We were working on an article about World War I. She was definitely in Level 1,

she had very little understanding of English; barely understood what I was saying or what I was

asking. I read her the article pointing at specific words, but she still couldn’t comprehend what

was occurring in the article. She was filling in a time-line, the teacher had thankfully provided a

word bank of events she should be looking for. Even the boxes were already drawn in with

arrows pointing to the line and the student had a hard time deciding which box to put the phrase

in, couldn’t understand chronological order.

KOJI- got an A on his paper!! He was so proud and I was so proud of him. I also

worked with a girl on math. She was able to do it in the one format that the teacher had done an

example of in class, but was unable to do it in the opposite order. They are learning sin, cosign,

and tangent. She is probably a level 3 or 4, I have worked with her before on math and she seems

to understand a lot but struggles in some places, and it isn’t always because she is an EL student.

April 12, 2011 MORNING:

I worked with a boy Kwaki on his algebra this morning. He is from Burma and has been

here since 2006. It was really early and he did not seem like he wanted to be working on it. It

was a worksheet with 25 problems and he had already done 17 of them by the time I arrived. He

was very reluctant to do the problems, I would ask him how to do something and he would say “I

don’t know” when he had already done the other problems and understood it; I partially felt he

was just tired and being lazy and wanted me to do it for him. He had a hard time understanding

me when I spoke, but he seemed to know what he needed to do in his math class.

April 12, 2011 AFTERNOON:

I worked with Khadija on a debate; her view was against lowering the drinking age to 18.

She had a layout that the teacher had provided that she had filled in, very briefly. She had some

statistics, but when she was trying to organize them under the top sentences she had decided on

but her thoughts weren’t lining up well. She had a hard time organizing her ideas and putting

correlating thoughts together. She didn’t seem to understand the importance of a topic sentence

and then following it with support. I worked with her on connectors and speaking her ideas aloud

and trying to put them on paper. I had her first explain what she wanted to say and then ask her

to write that down how she wanted.

April 19, 2011 Morning:

This morning I worked with multiple people. Koji was working on a research paper on

how to write a research paper. I also worked with a girl who moved here from Mexico on writing

a paper. She was writing a paper on children who become violent and the causes and

consequences of the violence. She had a lot of great ideas and had an outline written down but

she was really struggling putting the phrases or words into whole sentences. However, when we

talked about what she wanted to write in relation to the words she had written down she knew

what she wanted to say and with a little help from me, she was able to write down exactly what

she wanted. When I would speak the sentences to her, she was able to listen and write down the

words and 95% of the time she spelled things correctly. I would say that her social language was

probably at a high level 3 or low 4 but her academic language was still pretty low; she had a hard

time putting her spoken thoughts into written words.

April 19, 2011 Afternoon:

This afternoon, I worked with a boy from Mexico on his algebra homework. I am

beginning to think that I don’t remember anything from my high school math days! He only had

to do a few review problems and he knew how to do most of them so I was there mostly for

moral support. He was most likely at a level 4 in English language learning. After he was done

working on his homework, his friend Alan came over. The two boys were both from Mexico and

were trying to get me to speak Spanish. I talked to Alan quite a bit about coming to the United

States and having to learn English and I asked him if he could write in Spanish as well as he

could speak. He said no, that he really struggles with the grammar, which is a very common

problem I feel for native Spanish speakers. The boy I was working with mentioned that he was

actually in a Spanish class, which Alan kind of laughed at but the boy defended himself saying

that he was learning how to write better.

- The boy working on his math homework troubled me that he had not understood the

material when his teacher first taught it and now at the end of the chapter, he still did not

understand. I feel something should have been done to help him

- I also loved that the two boys from Mexico were talking to me and that one of them was

in a Spanish class to work on their grammar skills- I had not realized how truly common

that was in classrooms these days.

Me and two boys from Burma:

Koji

Khadija

Alan (in orange, is from Mexico) / Imir (in black shirt, from Iraq)

Alan

Ziaet