Blurry - Language in the Classroom

Since the moment I decided I wanted to be a teacher in the US, I took for granted that the language barrier in the American high school classroom would be nothing in comparison to what I worked against overseas in China. I saw that students who actually tried in my classroom in China could follow along with my lessons and engage in my activities, whether it was group work or individual creative exercises. The uphill battle was convincing the kids who didn't want to try that they should. Some of the "worst" English students at that school did try in my class and succeed beautifully.

I found that using language only works on those who are willing to listen. I saw the language barrier as an illusionary wall that existed only for those who let themselves acknowledge it. To those who sought to transcend it and learn, the barrier was never a problem. I knew that in America, there would be no invisible barrier to hide behind and students would at least understand me. With some help from my student teaching this year, I have learned that I was wrong.

One of the requirements in my program at the University of Michigan is videotaping lessons. This allows for us to watch ourselves (and our colleagues) in the classroom from the eyes of a mentor, a peer, and also a student. I have already learned a lot after videotaping only two classes!

A clip I shot yesterday was especially difficult for me to watch, as found myself really displeased with a lesson I thought went well. This was my first week taking over the General (Not honors or AP) English 10 classes while relying on my own lesson plans and preparations. I taught both Tuesday and Thursday. My agenda was to get through a bit of The Crucible in class (students read the lines and perform the parts as enthusiastically as they can in front of the class of 35) while teach the vocabulary words “explicit” and “implicit.” I gave the simple definitions on Tuesday along with brief explanations. I followed through on Thursday with an activity that had questions from examples and two photographs I took while in China.

My mentor teacher also asked me to practice my assessment by giving a real quiz at the end of the class. The class seemed to get my questions really easily but one of the photographs did not go as well as I planned. The first photograph is of an ice statue in Haerbin, China. The picture had fish frozen in a large block of ice. Pretty explicit, right? There should be no doubt in the eye of the beholder that this photograph shows fish. The second photo is one of my many weird abstract photos I take for fun. It is of logs at the bottom of a lake in Jiuzhaigou, China. My purpose was to demonstrate implicit by having the students recognize that the photo is of logs, although the windswept surface of the lake obscures the shape of the logs. It should be common sense, right? Eventhough the logs are distorted by the water, it is common sense that rippled water distorts the image. It is also common sense that the objects are not fish, as they are too long. Here are the photographs:


My classes nailed the photograph of the Haerbin ice sculpture. They had trouble deducing that the Jiuzhaigou picture showed logs. It didn’t even occur to them! They kept thinking it was fish. Consequently I had to provide that there was no life in that lake (the same minerals that beautifully color the waters of Jiuzhaigou keep them mostly lifeless) and still, the idea I took for common sense of logs being in the shallow lake just did not dawn on them. Eventually a few students figured it out, but this was not helpful to constructing a solid explanation of the word “implicit.”

My explanation faltered and I found myself struggling to keep the students on a simple, straight path to understanding this word. I let it go when some of the students gave a satisfactory definition of the word, but I knew my image was not the hit that I had hoped it would be. In editing the videos of two of the three classes yesterday I found myself thinking it was even worse than I had originally thought. Not only did my photograph miss my intended purpose, but my explanation clumsily struggled to get back on track from the confusing image. I was speaking what I thought was clear English to fellow English speakers and they were not getting what I was saying. The quiz at the end of the hour also suggested this.

I am not saying my students lack common sense for not seeing what I assumed was THE perfect (and beautiful) photographic representation of implicit. I am not saying they were dumb or slow for not getting the word after so many different demonstrations and explanations. These kids are intelligent and many of them were actually trying. The problem was my language. I wasn’t speaking their language.

Only now am I realizing how sarcastic and implicit my everyday speech patterns are. I have so many subtle jokes and implied meanings in my everyday speech! I don’t like being direct, naturally. I like to play with my language like a toy and use it creatively. People who know me well understand my meaning (or at least I hope), but I can’t assume that my students will too! This is a big lesson for me! They have not been exposed to my language. Sarcasm and implicit references are in some ways another language, and they take time and experience to understand. I HATE when colleagues and instructors say “dumb it down,” because I refuse to consider that I am talking down to dumb people. When I did not understand slang about Michigan geography and areas around the U of M campus, it was not because I was stupid. This is not too different of a concept. Acquiring language is a process. Part of assessment is figuring out what “languages” my students are able comprehend in the classroom and I have much more to assess than I thought.

A difficult complication is drawing the line between attributing misunderstanding to my speaking a foreign language in the classroom and students’ tuning out. I was not pleased with the quiz scores after I graded them, and many students seemed to define “implicit” as “vague.” I take this as my fault and I curved the quiz. Still I couldn’t help compare the scores of my quiz to those of other vocabulary and reading comprehension quizzes. After all, I DID give the correct definition many times and those who seemed the most engaged in my class made no mistake on the definition of “implicit.” Some earlier quizzes yielded even lower averages. I even remembered grading some of them for my mentor teacher a month ago and feeling my heart sink a little in my chest. I can’t help but wonder how much my muddled attempt at photographic representation actually hurt my students’ quiz scores. I AM NOT denying that I need to control my speech patterns a little more and work on giving solid clear instruction in the classroom, but I know there are other challenges present as well.

If I were to compare my instruction from that video to my mentor teacher, there is no comparison. He speaks the language of the local high school classroom quite well. I have a long way to go and much to think about!