Education

Over the summer I took a class called TEFL from the TEFL Academy. It is Teaching English as a Foreign Language. This will allow me to teach English anywhere in the world, along with having my bachelors degree. My top places to go are Thailand, Spain and Japan. I look forward to exploring the world and being able to give children (and adults) the opportunity to learn a language that will hopefully help them further their career choices and friendships.

Part of my class was that I had to do at least 20 hours of practicum in order to get my certificate. I had to either tutor, teach or observe English as a second language, learners. I found a school in Lawrence, and for those of you who are not sure where that is, it is in the northern eastern part of Mass, north west of Boston. It is considered a small city and usually hosts a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds. Anyhoo, I have really enjoyed being at this school with these kids. They are just like any 7 or 8 year old but they come from living in the inner city. They have a small disadvantage over other kids when learning I think. Hear me out before you get all judgemental on me.

Seeing as these children are from a generation of parents who don't necessarily speak English on any level, sometimes these children are set up for failure from the beginning. Now I mean this with all the love in my heart. In the school system I was recently in, around 10 or so students in just this one classroom are at a first or second grade reading level, mind you this was a third grade classroom. The reason why these students are allowed to advance to the next grade is because the school system does not have the resources to keep that many students back each year. How are children supposed to get help from their parents on homework if their parents can't even read, or read well???? Most of these kids are the translator for their parents! Now I want you to clear all of your thoughts.....imagine that your first language is English and your 2nd language is Spanish. You are in a classroom where they teach in SPANISH ONLY. You are asked to take a quiz or a test and a teacher or aid cannot read you the question, you have to try and figure out what it says on your own, from knowing partial words. This is because they are trying to gauge your reading level OR you are taking a test in math and they are giving your equations to solve. You can ask what a word says if you don't know it nd they could define it but hat is where it ends. If you are anything like me, I have a hard enough time taking tests so adding another stress-er to my test taking would make this extremely difficult for me. I am not the kind of person who can read and then retain the information and then sit down and test me on what I have learned. I watched these poor kids sit through to different tests that were over two hours apiece between 40 and 50 questions. My heart broke when a lot of these children got their scores didn't meet first or second grade reading levels. The fact that they can't read the questions in order to answer them must be devastating, frustrating, annoying and embarrassing to them. Then not to mention a teacher in front of the whole class tells them that they are in first grade or second grade reading levels I'm not sure what the teacher is trying to gain from partially embarrassing them in front of their peers.

Now I know there are going to be some people that say sometimes students just don't try hard enough, they don't put enough effort into their homework or learning in class. I understand that, I get it and yes I do see it in some students. But there are students who struggle and "punishing" them like this is not going to give them the confidence they need to continue learning, wanting to learn and moving forward through school. I know this isn't a problem in just this one school it happens in every single school throughout every town, city, county, state and the world. As a whole the United States needs to put more money into education, I know this isn't news to a lot of people and it isn't rocket science. But don't forget these are the people who are going to be running our future, running our nation, taking care of us, and hopefully building a better world as we go forward.

This is not just a problem for kids who speak English as a second language. This is a problem for every child who starts in the school system in kindergarten and has to work their way up. We need more resources, we need more teachers, we need more money in order to do that. I don't like to bring politics into my blog but think about all the money that people hand over to politicians during elections. All of that money thousands to millions of dollars could be going into our education system but instead are being put into signage, commercials on TV, ads in newspapers and magazines, handouts from people on the streets, travel....Things that most people ignore and don't pay much attention to. This is money that should be put into something that helps people for a lifetime. Education is such an important part of life, each and every day, we never truly stop learning. So why should we make it difficult for people to start and start out right!?

Ok rant is over, but I hope you share this with other people

XO Noodle