In Connecticut and the United States as a whole, just over 20% of children speak a language other than English at home.
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In New Haven, the percent is much higher: 32.8 percent. This number gives us insight into the number of first and second-generation immigrants in our classroom. It also justifies the need to address this topic as educators.
Immigrant children come to us with a wide variety of educational backgrounds. Some who come fluent in English and are on par (or better than) American-born students in other subjects. Some are completely literate in their native country come with strong content knowledge. And others walk through our doors who have only attended school intermittently- or not at all. Students with unique linguistic and cultural backgrounds provide the rest of the class with a rich lesson in diversity.
Strengths of Immigrants in the Classroom
As educators, we know well that our students are unique and have different strengths and needs. Yet, immigrant communities do tend to share some characteristics. The courage needed to leave ones country and many times the trauma motivating it, often creates stronger communities as well as individuals with motivation to succeed. What follows are the strength and needs of the majority.
The challenges faced by immigrant students, and the obstacles we face as their teachers, are daunting. However, their strengths are a powerful force. Most of our immigrant students have two parents at home. Many times, they also have extended families either living with them or residing in the same neighborhood. They are also more likely to have at least one adult working fulltime. Immigrants often have a strong work ethic and have overcome great odds in order to accomplish their goals. They are resilient in the face of obstacles. These factors combine and create children who are less likely to engage in risky behavior.
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Challenges for Immigrants in the Classroom
When people emigrate from their native country, they often arrive having experienced profound trauma. This may have been the impetus for their move, but simply leaving the place where you were born, family, friends, and people with a shared history is also difficult. Many immigrants come to this country with skills that are not transferable to the job market here in New Haven. For example, most people who come from Mexico are farmers, yet agricultural work in our city is rare.
Fear of deportation, if immigrants are undocumented, can cause a huge amount of stress on a family. Parents may not know their rights in many areas but particularly in education. Anything having to do with the government is feared in many households. This is known as "stranger danger."
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Adapting to a new culture with different norms is harder for adults than children. Children often acclimate faster than their parents and this can create a wedge in families. Additionally, when children acclimate faster than adults, the children become the link between two worlds as they help navigate through adult matters. This creates a kind of role reversal that is stressful for many parents. Some families are blended, meaning that at least one of the children is a citizen by birth.
Discrimination and dealing with resentments of some native-born Americans takes a huge toll. Blatant and subtle prejudice is easy to dismiss if you are not experiencing it. New Haven county in particular, has dealt with profound example of discrimination at very high levels in the government. (More on that to follow)
Finally, lack of healthcare is a major problem. Under the best of circumstances the system can be hard to navigate. If you are not proficient in English, do not know your rights, and are fearful of government institutions, expensive out-of- pocket preventative care is something easily overlooked.
Stages of Second Language Acquisition
There are five predictable stages of second language acquisition. How quickly a child passes through these stages depends on a variety of factors such as family involvement and stability, as well as the length of time in their native country.
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Preproduction: Many ELLs are mostly silent when they first come to the U.S. They are listening and may repeat, but not produce words. The students will have minimal comprehension and should be asked simple yes or no questions. This stage can last up to six months.
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Early Production: At this stage have both a receptive and active vocabulary of about 1,000 words and can speak in chunks of one or two words, in the present tense. This stage normally lasts from six months to one year.
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Speech Emergence: ELL students in this stage have a vocabulary of about 3,000 words and can communicate in simple phrases or short sentences and will begin to initiate conversations with their classmates. They will struggle to master complex English grammar. This stage lasts from one to three years.
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Intermediate Fluency: At this stage, ELL students can ask questions to ensure comprehension and have a vocabulary of about 6,000 words. They are speaking and writing in complete sentences and gaining confidence in their ability to express opinions. They will make few grammatical errors. This stage lasts from three to five years.
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Advanced Fluency: ELLs at this stage are close to performing at the same levels as their classmates. They can understand jokes and question idioms and have good to excellent comprehension in content areas. This final stage lasts from five to seven years.
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Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
Before a teacher can create a strong community in a diverse classroom, he or she must first examine their own biases and preconceived notions on race, religion, and sexual orientation. Over 90% of teachers in public schools today are white and grew up in middle-class, English-speaking homes. Honestly examining assumptions one makes is the first step to building a classroom that embraces diversity. In the book, You Can't Teach What You Don't Know, (whose title is drawn from a quote from Malcolm X), Gary Howard describes his experience growing up in a predominantly white small town near Seattle, being accepted into Yale University, and moving to the predominately African American neighborhood called, "The Hill" during the race riots of the sixties. He describes four basics assumptions on social dominance:
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Human social systems are predisposed to form social hierarchies, with hegemonic groups at the top and negative reference at the bottom.
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Hegemonic groups tend to be disproportionately male.
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Most forms of social oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism, can be viewed as manifestations of group-based social hierarchy.
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Social hierarchy is a survival strategy that has been selected by many species of primates, including Homo sapiens.
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White educators need to understand how being born into the dominant culture influences our everyday actions in ways of which we are completely unaware. Students from minority cultures are hyper-aware, consciously or unconsciously, of any conformation of presumed superiority from the teacher or other students.
Best Practices
Teaching immigrants does not simply involve retooling strategies for other learners. It is important that teachers understand the role of culture and language in learning. Teachers will need to help students make connections to prior knowledge and build upon things they have learned in their native country. This constructivist view is not always practical, but the more it is done the more successful ELL students will be in acquiring critical thinking skills.
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Start with nonfiction. Fiction is full of cultural markers that make comprehension more difficult. Idioms, metaphors, and similes are more prevalent in fiction. Consider the sentence:
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"Chloe got a kick out of the tooth fairy pillow." The idiom bears no resemblance to its meaning and the tooth fairy is not universal to all cultures.
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Brainstorming ideas before a writing task will give ELL students a better understanding of what they will be doing and introduces vocabulary choices.
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Using graphic organizers can help ELL students to record their ideas without the stress of getting ideas down while they tackle structuring a sentence.
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Pair the student with a buddy who, preferably, speaks their language.
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Encourage students to write in one language. When someone writes in their native language and then translates it to another, verb tenses and word order becomes more difficult.
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Summarized text is preferable to watered down text in science and social studies classes.
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Math is a universal language but it is taught differently in many countries. In some places mental math is the norm and showing work is discouraged. The United States, Liberia and Myanmar are the only countries that do not use the metric system. And in South American countries long division looks quite different. For example:
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