Top Takeaways from a Bilingual Classroom Experience
In my current placement, I have the opportunity to work with an entire period of students who are at the beginning of the English language learning journey. Many of them are from countries throughout the world and there are at least 4 languages spoken among the 14 students in the room. This experience makes me passionate about learning how to best support these students in their journey to assimilating to school in a new country in a new language. So when I found an article on Edutopia called, “Supporting Newcomer English Learners as a General Education Teacher” by Sarah Elia, I knew I had to use it for my final journal entry in Methods 2. When I found out that I would be placed at World Language Middle School for the semester, I was nervous. I took three years of high school Spanish, 20 years ago, but I was never very good and learning a new language. Would I be able to connect with these students? Would there be ways to overcome the language barrier? But in doing research a...
