Reflection #5
Danica Finlay (200402114)
Faculty of Education University of Regina
ELNG 200-010
Professor: Dr. Rubina Khanam
Due Date: March 28th, 2021
Over the past two weeks as a class we discussed the two topics of Gender & Language, as well as Transnational students and families. The ELNG 200 course excites me every week as I am constantly learning new things! I feel like each topic in this class includes things I have never even really thought about up until now. Before, during, and after classes I am constantly thinking about ways I could accommodate students in the future who do not speak English as a first language. On my e-portfolio I have an I Believe… section and within it I have stated that “Teachers need to understand and acknowledge different cultures” and “Teachers need to create an inviting, open and safe environment for learning”. I believe that this ELNG class is helping me become the future educator that I want to be, by teaching me how to acknowledge, understand and support my students. This class has brought insight to me on how students that speak more than one language may feel in a classroom setting. I believe that this is very important for me to learn as I know English as my first language and have no idea how it feels to know other languages. I feel that as teachers we need to always continue to educate ourselves to ensure our students are provided with the safest, most comfortable environments possible. Within my learning philosophy posted on my e-portfolio I have written, “I believe that learning environments need to have a sense of comfort and warmth. School should not be a scary place for children, but a place that they look forward to attending”. The more I educate myself, the better support I will be for my future students.
During the week of March 15th to 17th we read a pdf file provided by Dr. Rubina Khanam titled Indigenous Languages in Canada. Within the article, key facts were provided on Indigenous Languages in Canada. One fact that I learned was that the “Indigenous language proficiency tends to be higher (44.9%) among those living in reserve communities compared to those living off reserve (13.4%)” (Mclvor, 2018, p.1). It is interesting to see how big the difference is between people living on and off the reserves. After reading this fact I am left with the question of why. Are Indigenous languages incorporated within the classroom on reserves and ignored off reserves? I think that it could certainly be easier for teachers to incorporate the use of Indigenous languages on a reserve, due to the fact that the population of schools are made up of Indigenous peoples. When teaching off of a reserve other cultures and languages are brought into the classroom by students, which I think can make it more challenging for teachers to focus on all of the languages and cultures while teaching.
On March 24th I had the opportunity to co teach along side my fellow classmates. During the one hour and fifteen-minute session my group and I played a game called the name game with some of the students from Mexico learning English! We played with two different groups of students and had each group for about half an hour. The name game I think was very fun to play with the students and we all felt very comfortable throughout the activity. Sydnee DeCorby shared her screen with us and we had a slide show put together for the students. Each slide had a theme. One slide had sports on it, so as a group we had to name all of the different kinds of sports we knew. Another slide was about school. The slide asking about school was fun to do with the kids because some said different subjects in school and some kids talked about the actual physical objects within a classroom such as pencils, markers, a teacher etc. when reflecting on the experience I think that it went very well. Each person in my groups participated and were enthusiastic about doing so! With the first group of Mexican students our activity went by really fast so we had some time at the end where we asked each other questions to keep the conversation going. For the second group of students we adapted by talking more on each slide so we had less time at the end of the activity. Overall, I was very happy with how the sessions went. I definitely will miss the kids but am so thankful that we were provided with this amazing opportunity!
Resources
Finlay, D. (2020). Educational Philosophies. Edusites, https://edusites.uregina.ca/danicafinlay/teaching-philosophy/
Mclvor, O. (2018). Indigenous Languages in Canada: What you need to know.https://urcourses.uregina.ca/pluginfile.php/2480561/mod_resource/content/1/IndigenousLanguagesCCUNESCO.pdf