How do I support a students first language when I don't speak the language?

“How in the world can you speak ALL THOSE LANGUAGES?!” I am asked this over and over again when I describe my teaching responsibilities at the ELI. I often smile and say, “What? You don’t speak Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean?” As an outsiders to the TESOL world, many of friends simply don’t understand how that works, nor do I expect them to. I think one of the main points I gained from this article is the importance of the SUPPORT (in all contexts) teachers must provide their students rather than the proficiency or fluency in the language.

I would like to focus my blog on the article we read for this week. I found this article extremely applicable to my future teaching career. I also found that Dolores is one teacher who practices what she preaches, which unfortunately, seems to be hard to find these days.

Throughout my education of learning to be a bilingual educator, it has been stated over and over again the importance of every single key idea mentioned in the beginning of this article. Dolores, as a teacher, does an impeccable job of including, consistently reinforcing, and encouraging students in regards to these main components in the article. For example, the first point states that it is important to establish a classroom community that celebrates diversity.  As a pre-service teacher I am always grateful to learn different ways teachers accomplish this community in their classrooms. Dolores does an incredible job of including almost all aspects of the diverse population and their lives directly into her classroom by inviting the primary language use, family members, and creating a cultural sensitivity & awareness in the classroom. I really enjoyed reading the creative ways in which she brings in first language, recognizes the importance of parental involvement, learns the new languages herself, and supports the primary language of each child. Just from reading such a brief article on her teaching techniques, it seems that she has applied many of the important aspects of bilingual education to her classroom.

I find this article to be extremely motivating to do the best for my students! I really enjoyed reading this article and seeing a practical application of bilingual methods in the classroom. I think Dolores classroom environment is a great role model for any learning bilingual teacher or TESOL candidate.