CUIN 4361 Blog Entry 3

Today, I interviewed with Professor Monica Gonzalez, who taught ELL students in elementary schools before teaching at UH. Some of those students come from many different cultural backgrounds, including those who can speak Spanish, Vietnamese, and/or Turkish. The school she taught in do not have a dual-language program, but they do have pull-out ESL programs for ELL students and they focus on vocabularies, how to read and use visual aids to guide the students throughout the materials.

Keep in mind that Dr. Gonzalez teaches math, and she said that it can be challenging to teach the ELL students this certain content area because of the vocabulary words that can be confusing to the concepts and that she has to understand those barriers and try to find the solutions to help those students. According to Wright (2010) "ELL students who are highly skilled in math will have difficulty demonstrating those skills until they attain enough proficiency to handle the linguistic demands of math instruction and assessment in English" (Wright, 2010, pg. 247). This shows the challenges that ELL students will face when trying to learn a new language through the content area, such as math, and it'll be the teacher's job to make sure that their requirements and needs are met through the instructions.

Another thing that Dr. Gonzalez pointed out is that regardless of the different levels of proficiency from the ELL students, it's important to understand that we shouldn't discourage the students from learning the content even if it's evident that they are struggling. According to Wright (2010), teachers can make judgments based on language behaviors of students that can lead to consequences in their lives. This includes "everyday judgments and responses that affect students' sense of themselves as learners, as well as decisions about reading group placement, promotion, and referral for evaluation" (pg. 25). We have to be careful on the decisions we make to know what's best for the students and trying to avoid consequences that can degrade them based on language barriers.