Mentoring Teachers

By teacherayala · Jun 22, 2011 · 405 · 2
  1. So right now I'm working in a small bilingual school, trying to help some of their teachers improve classroom management and work in a multi-level classroom.

    By multi-level, I mean that the classroom age-wise is, let's say, 7th grade. But the students themselves range from a couple of kids who don't speak or understand hardly any English to a couple of students who are reading at or above grade level.

    I don't know if any of you can fathom how difficult it would be to orchestrate a classroom so that the needs of all of these students are being reached. Thankfully, the school has provided some resources for the teachers, so they are not confined to ONLY the grade-level book.

    Basically, what I was working on the teacher with yesterday was flexible grouping. There may be moments when you can pair a high level with an average level and a low level English learner, but then eventually you need to break them out and have them accomplish different tasks depending on their skill level. The high levels need to read longer passages, write longer journal entries on more specific topics. The average learners can start forming paragraphs, while the low learners write sentences or learn new vocabulary for writing.

    The poor classroom teacher ends up having to separate into groups (in a fairly small classroom), walk around checking work and making comments, make sure students aren't getting out of their chairs randomly, and basically plan three different lesson activities for one lesson! Crazy stuff!

    The other options end up only helping the high level students, the average level students or the low level students but ignoring the needs of those who don't fit the criteria for the lesson.

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  1. Cogito
    Focusing on reaching only one level is the cause of many of our problems in our educational system.

    "No child left behind" means teachers must put all effort into keeping the most disadvantaged students at their peak learning ability, and not letting the rest of the class advance faster than that rate (or else the special needs students are left behind). Although it is the best way to make sure special needs students are not discarded as a lost cause, it's a failure to the education of the school population as a whole.

    Focusing primarily on the most gifted students may be better for society as a whole, by fostering achievement among those students best suited to change the course of history. But such an elitist approach leaves far too man y students in the muck.

    Perhaps the most gifted students could be encouraged to mentor others who are struggling. That encourages them to increase the depth of their knowledge AND to communicate it well. Also, it means the disadvantaged student will have the opportunity to learn from two or more modes of instruction - that of the teacher, and those of one or more peer mentors. Students have different modes of learning, and exposing them to more than one teaching mode increases the chance of them learning effectively.

    For example, some students learn best through visual communication, others by hands-on practice, and still others by reading.
    Cogito, Jun 23, 2011
  2. teacherayala
    That's definitely been one of the criticisms of the No Child laws, which supposedly is on its way out. The field of education is such a tricky business. It's easy to make laws or theorize, but it's another thing to make it happen in the classroom. The practice of teaching is both a science and an art when it's done correctly.

    This woman had a big heart--she saw that she was working with an ESL class with perhaps 5 or 6 exceptions, and she taught the way she knew how. I think she has some food for thought now and she's going to see some better results. The students are also responding. She had a native speaker in there stagnating and doing basically nothing. Now the girl has chosen her own novel to bring to the class. If she's not reading, she is expected to write using the grade level book. I went to the library to help her pick a book out, and I told her that when she finished it, she needed to at least write a book report on it to turn in to her teacher. Previously she was just sitting there or helping the really low-level students.

    The super beginning ESL students are using leveled readers from elementary and picture dictionaries until they can learn enough vocabulary to get through. This forces them to become more independent and also gives them the tools they need to read in English on their own until their vocabulary improves. They'll still get the ESL support from their mainstream teacher as needed.

    The average learners (who are more like 1-2 grades behind due to ESL,) are reading from a literacy reading program textbook that is a grade or two below the supposed level of the class.

    Unfortunately, many bilingual schools in Panama have this problem because they are small and do not have strong admissions requirements to keep the student body a bit more stable in terms of English level. Also, since this is a small private school, it can't really afford to import English teachers from the U.S. and has to choose mostly local hires. Finding a native speaker living in Panama is ideal for them, but it doesn't mean that the person will have a load of teaching experience.

    The lessons themselves will bridge to all three groups. For example, the lesson on compound sentences can be understood by all three groups as well as the lesson on character and setting. They're just going about it in different ways. That way they are still learning the content, just showing it differently based on their ability with the language.
    teacherayala, Jun 24, 2011
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