Observing English Language Learners

I had the unique opportunity this week to shadow a few ocean discovery classes and advanced animal sciences classes. I have taught both numerous times, but as I have been more focused on direct work with animals I was given the opportunity to shadow a few classes and see what changes have been made. I was in luck this week because the classes all happened to be high school aged students visiting from Argentina on an educational school trip. It was so refreshing to see large groups of teenagers here to learn and not to just run amuck on their summer vacation. We have a few Spanish speaking guides that generally work with these classes because they can communicate more effectively, but the groups actually asked for English speaking guides to help further the student's understanding of the English language.

It was very interesting to see kind of a joint struggle between students and instructor in order to gain a mutual understanding from each other. I give a lot of credit to the instructor for going above and beyond and learning a number of phrases and sentences to help guide students. One of the things I really enjoyed was seeing the instructor not be afraid to get a little silly to get a point across. Sometimes expressions and body language can bridge a language gap and help get a point across. The students also came prepared with a lot of questions and taught the instructor a very cute song about dolphins they had made up and one that I hope can be shared with camp kids in the future. By the end of my observation it was clear that not only did the students learn a lot, but the instructor did as well.

A bit of an unconventional learning experience this week, but I'm quite steamed about the whole situation and learned quite a lot. To make a very long story short my mom broke her leg this week and I finally got to make a long trip to the ER that wasn't for me. The whole ER process is always frustrating, but this time even more so. After filling out tons of paper work I was told the wait would be 1 to 2 hours as they were limited on staff. I noticed quite a few people already waiting and thought that was a generous estimate. Well magically we were taken back not long after arriving while a waiting room full of people ahead of us still sat there. As I was trying to figure out why we were taken so quickly I thought about the people waiting and noticed out of all of them my mom and I were the only two white people. I asked the nurse why we were so lucky to be brought back so soon and she told me high priority patients get moved ahead. Funny because last time I went to the ER with a visibly dislocated shoulder I waited 3 hours to see a doctor. I'd like to hope we were high priority for reasons other than race, but when we got done and left I still saw many of the same faces waiting to be seen.

I learned a lot from this experience especially about what I can only think of as white privilege. I wanted to prod the nurse more, but I couldn't while trying to get my mom taken care of. I think there is a lot that we still need to work on in the area of race relations and perception. Not all things are equal and we really need to look at the macrostructure to get to the root of the problem.

Kids and Pop Culture

It's been a week with little opportunity for me to teach up until today. Between being a regular ole keeper for a few days and coming down with a bad case of food poisoning it was nice to get back on my feet and actually get to teach. First thing I always notice about kids and the weekend is that their parents have very little control over them and your ear drums literally start to ring. I was rather inspired by the reading for this week and thought that I would take the opportunity to infuse some fun pop culture references into my narratives. I always have to survey the room and get a look at the general age level before I can plow head first into teaching because it is so easy to either oversimplify or to make it far too difficult for kids to understand.

I took the opportunity with a large group of teenagers to try out a new idea I'd been working on which is to simply liken animals to being Olympic athletes. Basically, I tell them about the animal and then what sport they would best fit into. For example, Manatees even weighing thousands of pounds only have about a 2 - 4% body fat percentage and are strictly herbivores. For us humans, that's pretty much the percentage you would see on a body builder or an elite Olympic athlete. In honor of the winter Olympics I decided they'd be pretty awesome curlers because they are slow, but gentle and always on point. I got some good laughs out of the group and I could tell they were following what I was saying. It made it very easy for me to tie in conservation messages because just like athletes get injured sometimes so do animals. There are so many ways to tie in different references that can connect students to whatever subject you are teaching. It is my goal to make a huge list of ideas and have them kind of tucked away so that I can use them as needed to hopefully more effectively teach in the future.