At school, during an off moment, - the beginning of class, maybe, while the teacher is taking roll, or waiting for a group to make their way to the front of the room - there is a functional chatter that comes over the classroom. I love this chatter, one, because it means my students are alive – which, in the middle of a compelling lecture on Chaos Theory, I am not always sure is true – and two because it shows that they are caring about something – which is my dream for them. But the chatter carries with it, also, for the teacher (at least the new teacher) a hint of anxiety. What you don’t realize when you are a student that you do realize as a teacher (I could definitely write an entire book on this topic) is that any nervousness you might have over the teacher overhearing the things you are trying to tell your friends, is only possibly one one hundredth of the nervousness the teacher feels over possibly overhearing you. If all my students were polite, they would keep their inappropriate comments, gestures, and noises to a dull roar, so that I, in turn, could politely pretend I didn’t notice them. But there are always a handful of future politicians among the bunch who are already in the habit of using their brains only subsequent to using their mouths (loudly and without attention to who is nearby), and ignoring these students would make me a terrible teacher. So when the functional chatter picks up, I must begin a careful tight rope walk of both hearing and not hearing everything taking place in the classroom. (Hence the hint of anxiety.) This is all the more true in a middle school classroom where you never want to hear anything they say, but almost always must address it. Because while high school students say inappropriate things that are also entertaining and interesting, middle schoolers say inappropriate things that are merely inappropriate and often downright mean.
So there is something special and almost relaxing about being in an EL classroom, where the functional chatter is still there, but consists of languages that are mostly not English. Do I know you’re talking about me behind my back? Yes. Do I have to pretend to care? No. Diminished anxiety. I currently have a class of 36 EL students who come from 13 different countries. 13! This simply fascinates me, especially because I haven’t heard of at least two of the countries and couldn’t immediately place a handful of them on a map. It’s a class of students who all know each other, and only a small minority take the class seriously. I won’t even get into my many opinionated hypotheses about why this might be true. Whatever the reason – or reasons – it means that I spend a disproportionate amount of time on behavior management. I admit I have become fairly cynical about the maturity level of most of these students, which means that I focus – perhaps two heavily – on sticking closely to my (brilliant) lesson plans – instead of telling them what I really want to tell them.
What I really want to tell them is that their native languages are potentially one of the greatest natural assets they have in America.
What I really want to tell them is that if they learn to communicate well in English – combined with their native languages – they can get themselves into any job or school they want in the country.
What I really want to tell them is that they should spread the beauty of their own cultures all around them, and take in the beauty of the new culture all around them, any chance they get.
What I really want to tell them is that it is this combination of cultures that is shaping who they are right this moment, and that is reason enough to love it.
I do not – have not – told them any of these things. I am busy, day in and day out, with the ordinary teacher struggles of a rowdy class: getting them quiet and print-equipped for SSR; monitoring their excessive use of hand sanitizer; repeating the day’s page number – or pointing to where it is written on the board – a hundred times in the hour; trying to avoid overhearing commentary I am loath to address…
But the fact is that all my reflection is only any good if I can apply it to practice. And I hope that a time will come in my teaching career when I will have the class organized, and managed, well enough that it becomes a place for all of these things to be said, and discussed. A place conducive to the real point of my lessons, the real value of an English class, and all those small truths about life that you can only really understand from thinking about them yourself. That will give them something to talk about!
-R.E.A.
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