Bowerbirds

Student Tag-along

For our Literacy class, we had to follow a student for a whole day and live through their experiences as best we could.

My observations are in ‘regular typeface’ and my thoughts and inferences are in CAPS. (The formatting is a little funky, sorry)

I followed an ELL girl from across the pacific- lets call her Julie. Here is my day with Julie:

Kyle Lange
Tag-along Assignment

Julie is a seventeen year old girl from Jejudo, South Korea. She uses an Americanized name that she picked herself. She has been in Oregon for two years, but has been in the United States for six years with her mother. Julie and her mother came to Oregon and Rex Putnam High School from Las Vegas because, as Julie told me, her mother felt the schools were better. She is an ELL student at Rex Putnam, but her file says she has never had a formal ELL specialist to help her learn English. Her spoken English is very good, but she still speaks with a noticeable accent. She is very proud to be recent American citizen as she received her citizenship a few months ago.

Her hair is cut short, lightened, and styled in a manner that is common among many American girls, and she wears clothes very similar to her friends. ON THE SURFACE SHE SEEMS LIKE A TYPICAL AMERICAN-BORN ASIAN GIRL, BUT SHE HAS ELEMENTS ABOUT HER THAT BELIE THAT ASSESSMENT. SHE HAS A HELLO KITTY BACKBACK FORM SOUTH KOREA, A HANDMADE SILK PENCIL CASE, AND PICTURES OF ‘FT ISLAND’, HER FAVORITE KOREAN POP GROUP ON EVERY BINDER SHE CARRIES WITH HER. SHE IS NOT ASHAMED OF HER HERITAGE AND MAKES NO EFFORT TO HIDE IT.

She loves to go shopping with her friends at Clackamas Town Center when she has time, but as she is an International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate, Julie says those moments are few and far between. FOR JULIE, SCHOOL COMES FIRST. SHE IS A HARD WORKER, AND IS A VERY CAPABLE AND CONFIDENT STUDENT IN MOST OF HER CLASSES. NOT FULLY AMERICAN, BUT NO LONGER FEELING LIKE A COMPLETE OUTSIDER, JULIE IS A COMPLETE HYBRID. SHE SEEMS AS COMFORTABLE WITH HER CAUCASIAN FRIEND AS THE GROUP OF ASIAN STUDENTS SHE ALSO SPENDS A LOT OF TIME WITH AND WHOM SHE SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH WHEN SHE WAS NEW AT SCHOOL.

Here is my day with Julie:

1st period- IB English 11

When I walk into class, Julie is already at her seat. She is working on her microbiology homework. I ask her if she has a test today and she says yes. Once class starts, she stops and pays attention to my mentor and her teacher, Michael Jarmer. There is a poem-of-the-day by Ron Koertge and Julie and the other students write a response in their reading/writing logs. Julie writes with a Kuromi pencil (Kuromi being from the Hello Kitty fame.) After this entry, students are asked to turn in their logs and Julie looks at every page to make sure she has all her entries completed. SHE IS VERY CONSCIENTIOUS ABOUT MAKING SURE SHE HAS ALL HER WORK DONE.

The rest of the class is spent in small group then whole group discussions about a book of collected stories of the Native American tribes of Oregon called, Coyote was Going There. Julie speaks very little in the group discussion and not at all in the whole group discussion. SHE SEEMS TO DO MORE LISTENING THAN TALKING- I THINK THIS IS BECAUSE SHE LEARNS MORE ABOUT THE STORIES THIS WAY.

After class, I ask her about this and she admits to having a hard time reading the stories. I ask her what she does when she doesn’t understand. She says, “Ask a friend, ask a teacher.” SHE SEEMS TO SEE IN MY FACE THAT THIS WASN’T A SATISFYING ANSWER. Julie says after a pause, “I don’t like to talk about myself.”

Final Thoughts:
She tells me this is her hardest class of the day. This is also the only class where she doesn’t have a friend in class. THIS COULD ALSO BE A FACTOR IN HOW QUIET SHE IS. This makes sense to me as literature often deals in inference, symbolism, and craft that, according to the (look up) is the last thing ELL students master.

***
In between classes, Julie introduces me to three of her friends saying “This is Kyle. He is my teacher I was telling you about. He is going to be following me today. It’s not weird. He’s doing it for a class.” I bust out laughing. THIS WAS VERY SWEET OF HER TO DO THIS. Julie and all three of her friends have the next class together.
***

2nd Period- IB Biology

There is a test in this class and the teacher primes everyone’s brain with a few questions. Julie raises her hand and answers the second question. IN THIS CLASS, JULIE IS ALMOST A DIFFERENT PERSON. SHE IS MORE EXCITED AND COMES ALIVE IN THIS CLASS. They start to take the exam. Julie writes quickly. SHE SEEMS TO KNOW THE ANSWERS. She skips questions and goes back to them later. Most students raise their hands for clarification, but Julie does not.

While she takes the test, I look around and take stock of the room. The school was just renovated and this science room looks pristine. I open a drawer and all the glassware and equipment looks well used. The students have been working on proteins and artwork of triglycerides, amino acids, and other things hand all over the room. THIS SEEMS LIKE A CLASSROOM WHERE THE TEACHER HAS TRIED HER LEVEL BEST TO MAKE SCIENCE FUN AND VISUAL. The teacher of this class (whose name I didn’t get) is a graduate of Lewis and Clark.

Julie finishes her test right in the middle of the pack of the other students. Not early; not late. As she sits, she gives a small thumbs up to the girl next to her. All three friends Julie introduced me to before second period are in this class. THIS HAS MADE A NOTICEABLE DIFERENCE IN HER DEMEANOR. SHE IS STILL A QUIET PERSON, BUT SHE SEEMS TO HAVE MORE VIBRANCE, MORE ENERGY. After she finishes the exam she puts on her earbuds and hits the play button on her iPod while she waits for the rest of the class to finish.

Final Thoughts:

After the test I asked Julie how she did and she said, “I did okay.” On the way to her next class, I asked Julie what she plans on doing when she finishes school. “I want to be a Doctor Without Borders because I want to give care to people that can’t pay for it.” SHE IS VERY HUMBLE AND HAS A BIG HEART.

Lunch:
LUNCH IS GREAT. Julie has invited me to eat with her three friends at a small table by the window of the commons. Although Julie is very quiet, she laughs and smiles often as she talks with her friends. We have had many conversations already about being a quiet student in class. For whatever reason, she brings this up at lunch. PERHAPS SHE HAS BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS? She admits to me that her friends ask more questions of her than she does of them. SHE DOES NOT SEE HER QUIETNESS AS ANY KIND OF DISADVANTAGE, BUT AS AN ASPECT OF HER PERSONALITY.

3rd Period- Algebra 2:
As we enter the class, this is the first room I have seen that has rows of desks in straight lines. One wall of the classroom is a huge bank of windows and this is the first class where I notice sparse hangings on the walls. I ANTICIPATE A STRICT CLASS. Before the bell rings, Juile talks with the girl (another friend) in the desk behind her. SHE HAS SEEN HER FRIENDS AT LUNCH AND THIS IS THE MOST ENERGY AND EASE I HAVE SEEN HER SHOW ALL DAY.

As the class starts the teacher tells them they will have a pre-test today for thirty minutes to help the teacher anticipate which sections of the unit to focus on. ANOTHER TEST!? I WOULD HATE THIS. A TEST AT THE BEGINNING, A TEST AT THE END, BARF! I FIND MYSELF STARING OUT THE WINDOWS AS THE STUDENTS WORK AND REMIND MYSELF TO LOOK AT JULIE.

This is the first time I have seen her struggle, but she never gives up. I BELIEVE THIS IS THE KEY TO HOW PROFICIENT SHE IS AT ENGLISH AND SCIENCE. Like in Biology class, she uses the same test taking method and starts with the ones that she knows. With problems she doesn’t know, she makes attempts anyway. JULIE SEEMS COMMITED TO ATTEMPTING ANSWERS EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS SHE DOES NOT HAVE THE TOOLS TO PROPERLY SOLVE THEM. I CALL THIS THE ‘WORKING GENE’. She works on the pre-test longer than most and finally gives up with about 5 min. to spare and puts in her earbuds for some relief via FT Island.

As the teacher reviews the answers, showing her work on the overhead, Julie erases her incorrect answers and writes in the correct answers and showing the work to get there. She smiles when she gets an answer right and claps to herself. SHE PRAISES AND SELF-MOTIVATES HERSELF. THE STRICTNESS OF THE CLASS WAS NOT AS BAD AS I HAD ANTICIPATED.

Final Thoughts:

I ask Julie what teaching strategy the teacher uses in this class that helps her the most. “The visuals on the overhead. Visuals in any class help me understand.” THIS IS VERY TYPICAL OF ELL STUDENTS; VISUALS ADD CONTEXT. While we walk to the next class, Julie tells me this class is her favorite. I ask her if she has friends in this class as well and she says that her friends from IB Biology are in this class as well. I WONDER IF THEY ALL PLANNED THIS. When I ask her why, she says the teacher makes the class fun and makes a lot of funny sound effects. MENTAL NOTE: USE SOUND EFFECTS IN MY INSTRUCTION.

4th Period- IB Chemistry:

In this class the students are reviewing a test they took yesterday. THREE TESTS TODAY! IN DEFENSE OF THESE TEACHERS, I DID MY OBSERVATIONS THE WEEK BEFORE PROGRESS REPORTS WERE DUE. Again, Julie corrects any incorrect answers. I take a moment to look at her binder for this class. Here are the divider labels: Warm-up/Homework/Graded Work/Notes with extra paper in the back.

As the class starts the next unit, the teacher uses video simulations from a website to demonstrate Rutherford’s Alpha Particle experiment that led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. VISUALS- I CAN SEE WHY JULIE LIKES THIS CLASS. Julie keeps her eyes on the teacher frequently when learning new material, only taking her eyes off to follow along in her chem. book to support the teacher’s words with the images/text.

As the class continues, the students seem to be having fun. There is a lot of laughing. COULD THIS ALSO BE ENHANCED BY THE FACT THAT IT IS THE LAST PERIOD OF THE DAY.

Conclusions:

She is a reserved girl with spurts of abandon. She never once raised her hand or spoke in class, but she talked freely with classmates that she was previously friendly with. I never saw her speak to a person who was only an acquaintance. When Julie knew the answer to a question, I would hear her say the answer quietly under her breath.
Throughout the day during lectures, she played with her nails- I wanted to ask her if she could understand the lecture or was she bored, but I never had a chance.
I’m overwhelmed by the different literacies Julie has to use to keep up with her classes. There were points in every class where I had no idea what the teacher was talking about, and English is my primary language! I know many of my colleagues said the day wore them out, but I was engaged in all the classes and actually had a lot of fun. I think this is a compliment to the teachers whose classes I observed.

True statements about my student Julie:

She does not give up. Whether in math or biology, Julie always took the time to try to get her answers right, even attempting problems more advanced than her training in Algebra 2

She is organized. All of her binders (including the IB Chemistry binder I talked about in this paper) are highly organized. My guess is that this organization has helped support her work in school AND her continuing mastery of English. When testing, she also has an organized method of skipping the hard questions and coming back to them

She is kind. I was flattered that she not only introduced me to her all her friends, but she had previously told them that she was going to do so earlier in the week. Her goal to not only be a doctor, but be a part of Doctors Without Borders is very commendable.

Julie’s friends help her stay happy. Without friends, anyone would be lonely. But for Julie, who is an ELL student and might still be a bit embarrassed when speaking with strangers and acquaintances, friends are crucial to her well-being. She was more comfortable in her classes where her friends were also present. In English, where she had no close friends, she did not speak at all.