Saturday, June 12, 2010

Final Week's Reflections

When you come to the end of a very difficult struggle, you’d like to think that you learned a lesson that you will never forget. I have struggled, though I’ve tried not to show it and stay strong for my students. The lessons I have learned through these past 19 days are many. It was my intent to be able to come home speaking Spanish. Although I have learned so much about Spanish, I still struggle to put the language together in conversation. The effort that it takes to learn a new language is tremendous for me. It’s been 35 years since I took German and Latin in school. Thanks to Latin, I can at least read some Spanish. I’ve learned to congregate verbs, present, past and future. I’ve learned sentence structure, question words, words for time, prepositions, articles and conjunctions and mucho, mucho verbos y nombres. Throughout my Spanish classes and homework, I recognize that I can understand conversation when it’s slowed down and when I can ask questions about terms I don’t understand and have a restatement, a drawing, or to see the Spanish word written to help me make the connections. The more my instruction is related to my interests, answers my questions or occurs in the context of my experiences, the easier it is to make connections and to understand.

As I’m learning in class or struggling to communicate outside of class, I never stop thinking about learning, language learning, and how children learn language, learn about language and learn through language. I am only needing to learn a new language, but children who are English language learners need to also learn about language and through language----so much more, especially in the primary grades!
I can’t conceive of truly learning the language with just repetition, drill, and practice without personal meaning. Our first teacher repeated words, wrote them on the board, insisted that we copy them, and then were given homework to memorize the verbs and nouns. I could do this over and over and still not have any understanding of the words. The past two weeks, I’ve had a teacher who has broken with the standard curriculum and has begun allowing us to ask questions of interest to us and she will sometimes speak in Spanish for 3 hours explaining the answers to our questions. This explanation is supported with restatements, defining in context in Spanish, drawings, writing the Spanish word on the board, and as a last resort, the use of English. Although there is no pressure for me to ask my questions in Spanish, I’m finding more and more that I want to form questions and freely translate what is being said into English, even if it is not a literal translation. I’m not to the point of carrying on a conversation in Spanish, but continue to push myself to talk to my family in sentences in Spanish instead of the one word responses I was giving last week with lots of body language!

After yesterday’s visit to the Cloud Forest School, a bilingual school for local children, I am even more convinced that we have tipped the scale too far toward learning about language rather than learning through language. Children attending this school are quickly fluent in English with an emphasis on theme teaching and teaching language through conceptual learning. Our students are certainly seeing the value of this as they pursue their inquiry projects on topics of their choice in English and Spanish.

Professor Richard and I had a wonderful debate today concerning learning, one of the themes of the course. The debate is on-going and is also involving our students. The debate is over the term “fun.” The Spanish word for fun is divetido. This word has the same root as the English words divert and diversion. The first dictionary definition of fun is “to amuse, to entertain.” Dr. Huber says that learning must be fun. I argue that fun isn’t the correct word because it gives our students the wrong connotation of what learning really involves. We both agree that learning must be engaging. I believe that learning involves a bit of tension or even a struggle. Learning is the learner’s use of strategies to break through this difficulty or challenge and which produces a feeling of exhilaration and self-satisfaction. This risk allows the learner to take bigger risks in future learning experiences. Each success builds toward new successes in learning. Generally, the only way learners will stick with this process long enough to experience true learning is if they are engaged or have a need to know. The argument is if we tell our teachers that learning must be fun, do they miss the point of true learning and what engagement really involves. Can teachers think that children are engaged because they are involved in an activity and seem to be enjoying it? Does this equal learning? When we shift our emphasis to “learning involves some struggle,” it becomes an unpopular view. However, our students here in Costa Rica are celebrating the struggles and breaking through them. Having this debate sets a good example for our students to think through what they believe and why they believe that. It demonstrates that we may not always agree but we can be civil about those disagreements and learn from each other. Mostly, this debate is semantics, but it has caused us all to reflect more deeply on our own learning.

The beauty of being in Costa Rica for this immersion is that the students are also learning so much science and social studies. Rainforests, cloud formation, cloud forests, biodiversity, concern for the environment, alternative energy sources, earthquakes (we’ve experienced 3 so far), volcanoes (we’ve been to two active ones), Latino culture, fair trade, how exports are critical to a nation’s economy, etc., etc. are all topics discussed and experienced throughout the three weeks. Our guides have all been so knowledgeable. Dr. Huber had added to these rich experiences with more explanations.

This morning we had a discussion of poverty and resiliency. We have all seen poverty through new eyes. We have lived in homes of families with incomes much lower than we are accustomed to in our own families. We talked to one young man who was shot as a child and dumped in the street by the man who shot him. The child was placed in a home for years for mentally retarded children, though he was handicapped only from the waist down. His mother eventually abandoned him. Yet through the help and hope of an individual, he has become an artist. We have had numerous opportunities to learn about how difficult a life some people have, yet they find joy. Our service learning projects have allowed us to experience what people living in poverty experience. They often work together as a family to achieve a better life. They often take enormous risks, some life threatening, to provide a better life for their children. Most toil for long hours for little pay. Despite many stresses, sometimes abuse, sometimes single parenting, most children can find hope. All it takes is one adult in their lives—this might be a teacher.

Although we continue to have discussion about learning and language learning, our topics have shifted in the past few days to teaching strategies. I am confident that this experience has changed all of us as teachers. I hope that at some point all of our Watson professors can participate in this or a similar experience in some way.