Self-Contained Success

There are moments in my self-contained (special ed. and ELL) class where I want to throw myself out the window. There are other moments where there is fantastic amounts of success. The swings are variable and span a great range in terms of lesson efficacy.

Today was probably the most successful I've had all year. A "new" student entered class yesterday. They cannot speak a word of English. We have our final exam on Monday... (Thanks, DOE).

I sat with this student one-to-one for most of the period (with an ESL teacher and a paraprofessional hovering around to keep others in line). What I did was I took the review sheet for the final and started pictionary-ing the key vocabulary terms onto blank sheets of paper. I threw in the occasional Spanish here and there to clarify things and used the Spanish-English dictionary to get the point across.

It's students like this that I work hard to recruit early. When they catch on that they're being ignored for one reason or another they'll be lost all year. So my attention was spent mostly getting this student caught up on some of the vocabulary. It was interesting using my rudimentary, high school level Spanish to explain things to the student.

Heredity (herencia) was the most interesting to explain. I drew a pedigree and labeled all the family members and myself at the bottom. I'd ask "Porque tengo pelo negro?" And she'd point to mi madre and mi padre on the pedigree. A sign that there's a conceptual grasp of inheritance going on...

Homeostasis was interesting too. I had to draw a variety of different images like eyes with various pupil sizes and how they change during the day and at night. How our bodies respond to a changing environment is hard to describe with my limited Spanish, but drawing them out was just as effective.

What I quickly learned was that there's one phrase that subject area teachers should learn to use, it's "Como se dice _______ en Espanol?" It's such a good way to recruit other students who are proficient in Spanish to help explain a term to others. So whenever I had trouble with my limited Spanish vocabulary, I'd turn to one of the other ELL students and ask, "Como se dice 'pupil' de los ojos en Espanol?" As shocked as some students were that I was able to speak Spanish, they are pretty eager to help in the explanation.

It's days like this that keep me going. This was the one time that in spite of seemingly insurmountable barriers, you get your message across by any means necessary. By the end of class, I felt like I could teach the desk to dance. :)