In some ways it is hard to know where to even start as there are so many barriers that students face in and outside the classroom. What’s more, many of them are interrelated. In light of the assignment, though, I’ll focus on two barriers that I see in my own classroom as my perspective on those is obviously deeper. The first is internalized oppression.
For context, though my regular teaching responsibilities are at SDSU, I also occasionally adjunct at Palomar College. Emerging bilinguals (i.e., ESL students) at SDSU and at Palomar are made up of entirely different populations. My SDSU students are in the U.S. from various countries (Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Colombia, and Germany to name a mere few). They are typically from middle-income families in their home countries and are studying in the U.S. as part of their undergraduate or graduate degrees as a means of improving their job prospects once they return home. In other words, they see English bilingualism as a commodity. By contrast, my students at Palomar are largely undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. These students face entirely different challenges and have life experiences far different from those of my SDSU students. They also, I have discovered, often see themselves in a different light. By way of example, a few years ago I had a conversation with some of my Palomar students in which I was encouraging them to continue in ESL and eventually aim for an associate’s degree. One of my students looked at me quite earnestly and shook his head: “Oh, Kelly, no. We can’t take classes with the American students. We aren’t as smart as them. Even when our English gets better, we won't be that smart.” He believed that. And so did the other students surrounding us. In fact, they argued that point with me for a solid twenty minutes. This is internalized oppression. If we hear long enough that we lack ability or are lazy or unintelligible or provide less to society… eventually, we’ll believe it and it will affect our sense of belonging and intrinsic motivation. This is what Freire believed we must change. This is why we must all seek liberation, the oppressed and the oppressor. Language barriers are the second issue I’ll address. Around the world, students are marginalized, miscategorized, and misjudged as a result of preconceived notions surrounding language acquisition. This is especially true when students are educationally isolated from their first language (their L1). One of the problems this creates is that students who are taught in a second language (L2) without appropriate linguistic access to their L1 often fall behind where content knowledge is concerned. Imagine if you are brilliant at math and your L1 is Spanish. Now imagine you arrive in the U.S. and are placed in an L2-only classroom absent adequate linguistic support. How are you going to manage word problems in math class? Even if you are phenomenal at math, how will you follow instruction in an L2-only classroom? Statistically speaking, you won’t. Instead, you’ll fall behind in your content areas as a result of your still emerging L2 fluency. There are alternatives, but we’ve been depressingly slow to adopt them on a global scale. My group's PPT for this week can be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i1XK_2xECtH-8oBI3rZzViPQAsC_rIhpg6pACliEyb8/edit#slide=id.p
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AuthorI'm Kelly. I teach English as a Second Language, business English, and writing. I eat poems for dinner. Archives
January 2019
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