From Many, One



centercenterFrom Many, OneMy Culture PortfolioUnderstanding one anotherMadeline MillerCISL 552, Fall 20169410077300From Many, OneMy Culture PortfolioUnderstanding one anotherMadeline MillerCISL 552, Fall 20161073785839470The Nature of Culture can be compared to a puzzle. There are many pieces that come together in order to form the big picture of what is deemed as one’s “cultural identity”. Individually these pieces are unique but are able to be shared among various cultures. When examining cultures, we must remember that while we have differences, we do share some common ground in regards to some aspects.00The Nature of Culture can be compared to a puzzle. There are many pieces that come together in order to form the big picture of what is deemed as one’s “cultural identity”. Individually these pieces are unique but are able to be shared among various cultures. When examining cultures, we must remember that while we have differences, we do share some common ground in regards to some aspects.THE NATURE OF CULTURE(Lustig & Koester 2013)Ex: I am an Italian- American Roman Catholic. (Lustig & Koester 2013)Within cultures there are specific roles defined that affect every aspect of one’s life. The culture often determines the one thinks, feels, interact, react, and view certain aspects to their daily lives. The role of culture often sets these unspoken, sometimes spoken rules to the people living within the culture. Social Roles are defined by who gets to do what based on traits such as age, socioeconomic class, situation/context of the communication, and gender. For example, in the United States students are expected to treat their teachers with respect. In interactions, cultures set aside rules on what is appropriate and inappropriate during communication. For example, in the Arabic culture it is considered rude to shake with your left hand. Gender roles are the expectations of each gender that is defined in each culture. For example, in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to vote because it is not considered part of their role as a woman. Health care is the culture’s way of defining things such as what and who should be covered under health care, medicines deemed acceptable, and even cleanliness. In many Arabic speaking cultures cleanliness is held to a high standard for religious reasons. Culture has a role in business such as the way businesses are running and what are appropriate standards of doing business within one’s culture. For example, in the USA child labor laws are heavily enforced. Education varies across cultures in the sense of student-teacher relations, the importance of education, the right to education, who is allowed to go to school, etc. In China education is highly competitive and if you are not “good enough” you can’t go on past middle school. Identity is how one defines themselves. Values are a set of principals held by an individual. These can be influenced by family, life experience, religion, politics, and more.The Cultural Impact on Student LearningA student’s culture and sense of identity deeply affects every aspect of learning and their overall education experience. These are many different factors that play in an ELL student’s success that classroom teachers, principals, ELL teachers, and everyone that interacts with the child must understand. When we work at a school we create the learning environment for every child, with specifically ESL students we must understand their cultural background to create the best environment for them. If we understand their background, we will be able to create a smooth transition for the child. Heritage, ancestry, and traditions play a major role in regards to identity but it can also affect a student in the classroom setting. These things can affect absences for their culture’s major holidays and other celebrations. The student might not understand concepts such as Halloween and other cultural lessons that occur during American holidays. It may confuse a student to walk into a classroom and not know why there a pumpkin, skeletons, turkeys, trees with ornaments, bunnies, four leaf clovers, etc. Last year I had an Arabic student struggle during the Thanksgiving Unit because he had zero background knowledge of the concept of Thanksgiving. It is our role as educators to provide these students with background knowledge through strategies such as scaffolding.Social structures and values affect a child’s learning experience. We must be mindful and sensitive to other cultural background’s values. For example, we must understand that it is difficult for some girls to talk to male teachers because it is inappropriate in their native country. We must be patient and not push too hard. If one’s values differ from our own, we must be open minded and nonjudgmental. If we do not respect the differences the student will shut down and we failed at creating a warm and welcoming learning environment for these students. Some students also come from a background that has no religion, we must teach them from the bottom up on these subjects to create background knowledge for the students. Last year it took me an entire week to teach one of my Chinese students about Jesus. In America, even if you don’t believe you have probably heard of Jesus. She had no idea, so we worked on the background knowledge of various religions so she could be successful in her social studies classes. Language is a huge part of one’s culture. ELLs are often trying hard to learn English while holding on to their native language. This is very tough for many of them. Some of our ELLs come from backgrounds where their language has a similar alphabet to ours and some have never seen our alphabet. It is important to note these differences among languages. Classroom teachers should never penalize students for their lack of English language either through a grade or completely excluding them from the lesson or content. These students can still learn your concepts even if they don’t have an entire grip on the language. This is why less is always more with these students and when an ELL is in one’s class we must stress on the main idea of the lesson. The main idea should be the focus for these students.ELL Family Cultural Activity: Day of the Dead & HalloweenHalloween specifically is a holiday I go over with many of my students. This is because many of the families do not understand the concept of “trick or treating” and get scared during this experience. I can understand because it would scare me too if people were dressed in scary costumes knocking on my door with no background knowledge. At one of the elementary schools I work at there is a very high Mexican American population. At this one school there are 13 families that are from Mexico and practice the traditions that are in Mexican cultures. For Halloween I was able to teach the families and their children about Halloween and we were lucky enough for some of those families to come into multiple classrooms to teach about Day of the Dead. We used this cultural lesson to show that there are many different holidays across the world. In the upper level classes, the students compared and contrasted Halloween and Day of the Dead in a short paper. Many of the families brought examples of sugar skulls and skeletons as visuals for Day of the Dead. For the kindergarten class I carved a pumpkin and had the students get all the pumpkins seeds out of the pumpkin. We then designed it as a class and did a mini math lesson with it. One of the teachers ended up carving the designs and displayed it on her front porch so the children could see during trick or treat. I was able to also practice trick or treating with the kindergarten class and their parents. This helped the parents who didn’t know English or have never experience trick or treating understand the concept. After I did the pumpkin activity I taught about the Day of the Dead. The students designed sugar skulls and had a lot of fun learning about this holiday. In this class one of the students and her family had just moved her from Mexico two months ago and this was a really great way to help them feel welcomed. They showed pride in their stories of Day of the Dead and felt included in the school environment. The goal of this activity was to show that even though our cultures may have some differences, we all share common traits. I think the students were able to understand my ELL students culture and identify with it. Often times during the Day of the Dead lesson the students would say, “My family does something similar to that!” Learning about tolerance can be done in more discrete ways sometimes.From Many, One ESL Quilt ProjectUnit Plan Overview: The Keeping Quilt is a cultural unit plan. Students will learn about Patricia Polacco’s culture through her book entitled “The Keeping Quilt”. Students will be able to compare and contrast their culture with Patricia’s. The students will also be able to recognize the importance of maintaining their culture even when they are put into a new culture. This is a collaborative Unit that will involve all ESL students in the county. The squares will be sown together and presented to the Board of Education in an Expo in March 2017.Prior to the full expo there will be a mini expo for the adult class in which all ESL families are invited to attend November 3, 2016.Summative Assessment: The students will be designing a fabric square that represents their culture. Upper level students will write about their square and describe how it relates to their culture.Instructional Plan:Day 1: Read the Keeping Quilt with the students. This can be done through listening to the story on the iPad, using the elmo and having students take turns, or the teacher simply reading it out loud.Day 2:Have a discussion about Patricia’s culture and overall experience in America. Compare it to the students (especially if they have lived in another country for a long period of time)Day 3:Have a discussion about what things are considered cultural. (family holiday traditions, school life, expectations in societies, clothing, verbal/ nonverbal communication, religion, the list goes on.)Day 4: Have students design a square that represents them and their culture. Allow students to express themselves. The squares can be all writing, drawings, a mixture. The squares can be written in English or their native language. The squares can be focused on a holiday, or their specific family. This part is VERY open ended and student centered. There are no rules so that students can be completely genuine in their self-expressions.Day 5: Extension for Higher Level students: Have students write about their square and what it means on a sheet of paper. Allow the students to write about their square in their native language (if they are fluent in it) and below translate it into English. This will be used to make a scrapbook.Day 6: Allow students to present their square to the class or other students *This may only be appropriate in high school or if you work with small groups. Reflection: The students really enjoyed and embraced this activity even more than I expected. The students loved learning about their classmates culture and teaching others about their own. The students stated that they felt “important”, “special”, and “valued” during this project and they cannot wait until the product is finished to tell the Board how much ESL has helped them throughout school. Allowing the students to express themselves and create a product with students from many languages is something extremely special to me. The students understand that they all have differences, but they are going through a common thing being an ELL. I will send the photo when the quilt is completed. We sent it to a special quilt maker who said it will not be completed until February because there are over 125 squares on it. Photos from “From Many, One”1. 2. 3. Japanese Culture Saudi Arabian Culture Mexican Culture4. 5. 6.Mexican Culture Mexican CultureChinese Culture7. 8. 9. German Culture Thai CultureReading to my high school class “The Keeping Quilt”The Cultural Affects On AchievementVarious cultural aspects of each individual can have many different affects on their academic and social achievement for ELLs. Throughout my experience of teaching ESL and from my coursework it is pretty apparent that culture is one of the main aspects that cause issues in adjustment in American schools for these learners. Cultural is made up of various attributes that are sometimes not only obvious. Culture can affect the student’s learning through reading, writing, speaking, listening and overall social skills. One of the biggest components to culture is the spoken language that is present within their specific culture. Differences in language can affect a student’s speaking tremendously. The student could have a heavy accent that would make it difficult to socialize with peers because there might be a lack of understanding. In many of my older students, they struggle with spoken language skills in their classes because they have not developed the muscles in order to make the sounds that are present in American English. One prime example of this is my Chinese students. They have a very hard time with pronunciation especially with their l’s and r’s. This stems from them not developing the muscles in order to make these sounds. This can affect their academic achievement because they might be nervous to ask questions because they cannot properly pronounce words in English or even their teacher might not understand their questions fully. Language also affects the student’s writing and reading. One issue with writing is a student might come from a language that does not use an alphabet like we do in American English or their alphabet is completely different than ours. The Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese languages are examples of this struggle. The student will have a hard time at first because they will have to “start from scratch” in order to become fluent in writing. Another issue is some languages have no punctuation. I found this to be a struggle with my Arabic students because they do not have punctuation in their native language. This affects their academic language tremendously. Also many students come from a language that they are used to reading up and down or from right to left. This is hard for some students to adjust to and it affects their academic reading.The student’s native language can also affect listening skills which also affect their classroom achievement. The first language a child hears is deeply imbedded into their brains that sometimes they cannot even hear specific sounds that are present in English. My Arabic students all struggle with the “b” and the “p” sounds because they literally cannot hear it. This will affect them academically because they will have a hard time spelling with these deficiencies. Other cultural aspects can and will affect a child’s overall school experience which will transfer to their academic achievement. Students will come from classrooms that are structured completely different than the traditional American classroom. The student might come from a classroom where boys and girls were separated because it is inappropriate for them to learn in the same environment. A student may come from a classroom where in their cultural it is against their social norms to talk to a teacher for clarity. A student might come from a classroom where they share everything, including answers and what would be considered cheating, with their classmates. As educators we must keep in mind all these cultural differences and have an open mind to our students’ differences. The student might not intend to not meet the expectations, that is why we must teach all school expectations explicitly to our new students. It might seem silly, but we must model what is expected and teach step by step to these students. More often than not they probably don’t understand or they aren’t used to the classroom structure. Once they get used to it and truly understand the culture of the American classroom it will help them tremendously in order to get on the path of success. Mini Culture ExpoLocation: Cabell County Career & Technology Center in Huntington, WVTime: From 8am-12pm. Who was invited: Principals of the school, members of the adult ESL class (many whom are family members of our ESL students), teachers, ESL teachers, and all staff present at the school. This is the best time for the ESL families to be involved because many of them work hours that conflict with an afterschool expo.For those who could not make it: PowerPoint that was created by the ESL students, their writings, and pictures of the quilt squares were sent via email to the administrators at various Cabell County Schools.Preparation: I partnered with my ESL coordinator to schedule a day I could come to the adult class to present my mini Culture Expo. Once we set a date I was then able to prepare my expo. The first thing I did was plan the quilt activity and do it with my students. I did this activity with all the different grade levels of my students and I specifically taught “culture” to my high school ESL class for two weeks. In my high school class, there are Chinese, German, Thai, Spanish, and Libyan students. We all compared our cultures to one another and this became our “research”. I had the students learn from one another with each student presenting their culture to our class.Student Responsibility: Each student had to teach the class about their culture. We did a journal topic entitled, “What I wish people knew about my culture” and the students went from there. As a class we read the Keeping Quilt and students wrote down similarities and differences between Patricia’s story and each of their classmate’s stories. Student designed a quilt piece (represented above) and then wrote about their quilt piece in their native language and then in English. The students recorded themselves speaking about their quilts in both languages to be used in the Expo. After that section of the expo was completed by the students we then worked on the PowerPoint. The students researched online and with each other about differences in Nonverbal Languages between cultures. This presentation is called “Actions Speak Louder Than Words.” This PowerPoint is even going to be presented in the homeroom lessons at the high school! The Mini Expo:After completing the quilt project, I brought the quilt pieces the students had made to the ESL Adult Class located at the Career Center. With the adults I read the Keeping Quilt like I did with the students and we had a discussion of what culture is and different aspects of their culture. As I was showing the different quilt pieces to the adults I read the description of the quilt pieces that the students wrote so they could “be there with me.” I also played the recording of the students’ voices on the iPad so the adults could hear the different languages. After the reading I invited the adults to make a quilt piece to be added onto the quilt I am planning on sowing together. After the adults finished they quilt pieces each adult shared their quilt piece and what it means to them and how it relates to their culture. We all had a discussion on how each culture is different but there are still many similarities between them. In this adult class many of the learners are the parents of the children who made these quilt pieces. At the end of the expo I went over the current laws and policies and what problems these can cause/ how they affect the students. We all had a discussion of solutions to these problems. The adults were handed the papers and filled out solutions for the discussion. As an extension I invited all the other ESL teachers to do a quilt piece with their students so we could make a large quilt to be presented at the board office in March 2017. This will be a large expo where parents are invited and students in our ESL program will be invited to speak about our program and their quilt square. I think it is very exciting how much interest our program is gaining from this project!Photos of the Mini ExpoMe presenting a visual of my culture, Italian American, to the parents and family members at my mini expoMe talking about the diversity of our students in our program.These are the writings that were presented at the expo. The students wrote in their native language about their quilt squares then they wrote about them in English. I presented these and the recordings of the students speaking in their native languages. These are written in Chinese, Thai, and German.Current Local and State Educational and Legal Policy Issues That Affect ELLs and Their Families.***Solutions came from the discussion from the mini expo with the ELL parents. I provided this as a worksheet and compiled the answers from the discussion for the purpose of this project. This was then printed for each parent to have to help them remember and understand the laws that affect their children. We are even going to put this in the annual newsletter we send home to parents (before Christmas Break).No Child Left Behind – Created in 2001 NCLB greatly affected education for ELLs. ESL is now under Title III which is funded by grants. Problem: “Under Title III, funding for LEP students nearly doubled, and for the first time federal funds for LEP students went to nearly all eligible schools. But because these federal funds are now spread more thinly, fewer dollars are available for each eligible LEP student.” (Wright 2010)Solutions: Vote/ Campaign for members in the government that have an interest in what is good for the ESL student. ESL teachers need to provide more professional development for classroom teachers because of the lack of funding the staff is not fully developed. ESL parents get involved in the schools in every way they can to create a presence and show the need for this program. Problem: “Thus, any program for LEP students must meet only two requirements:teach English, and teach academic content, as outlined in state English language proficiency (ELP) and academic standards.” (Wright 2010) This could affect ELLs if they come from a country that they don’t have the content background of American Schools or if they missed out on education in their countries (war, weren’t allow to go to school, did not have the money, etc)Solutions: Provide background knowledge for the ESL students as much as possible, work with teachers to provide accommodations and modifications, use supplementary materials, and any other means of support for the ELL to learn the content through learning English.West Virginia State Law and Title III (Come from NCLB but are specifically related to WV)Identify Students through a home language survey. Problem: Parents might not know how to fill this out correctly or that it is mandatory (at many schools it is not!) to fill in so students are not identified in a timely manner. Also Secretaries might not fax these to the ESL teacher.Solution: Provide training for secretaries on HLS, Have ESL teachers help with enrollment of new students, make filling out a HLS mandatory for all students at all schools and keep a list of students that have not done so.“Highly Qualified Teacher” Teachers of ESL students must be certified. Problem: Not very many teachers in counties are fully certified in ESL. In Cabell County there are only 4 teachers with the full certification. One way around this is through a cadre where teachers are working towards this, but there is not a new cadre coming up.Solution: Advertise the need for ESL teachers to college students so they may major in it, provide other ways for teachers to become certified.“Assessments” All students are required to take the ELA despite if they are ELLs on the annual Smarter Balance for grades 3-12. Problem: Students will get frustrated and not score very high on this section of the Smarter Balance which will affect the school’s score.Solution: Practice answering these types of questions or questions in this format with the students so they do not feel discouraged and they do not get frustrated and give up. Students must get all 5s on the ELPA21 two years in a row in order to be exited from the program. Problem: Students may be in the program for a longer time then necessary which in turn will create frustrations for the parents. Solution: Work with the upper level ESL students as much as possible to help them score all 5s for two consecutive years. Also communicate the process to the parents so they are aware and there are no surprises. Works CitedLustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2013). Intercultural Competence . Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: PearsonWright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Excerpt from Chapter 3, "Language and Education Policy for ELLs." (pp. 59-63). ? Caslon Publishing. Printed with permission, all rights reserved. Retrieved from: ................
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