Blog Post 4

I am sad to say this was the last week in the classroom for now. This week I was very focused on enjoying the time with the students and looking for new perspectives. In relation to the focus question, I noticed a lot of diversity in the school. On the first day, the principal told us that 65% of the school was EAL students. Knowing that it was very interesting to see how it didn’t matter how well the children spoke English they were all excited to be learning together and found ways to communicate and help out their friends. I noticed a few kids helping each other by speaking another language to each other after the teacher explained their assignment, when I asked if they had any questions one of the kids told me she had just been explaining part of it to her friend because she was still learning English. I thought it was amazing that these children could interact and help each other in ways that unfortunately some teachers can’t. The teachers all try very hard and do a great job of helping the children succeed and helping each kid in a different way. Many children work with an EAL teacher assistant a few times a week to get some extra help and stay caught up.

This knowledge and experience made me think about how we previously learned that there is no official EAL curriculum right now. This is insane because we have so many students in the school systems that would benefit from that curriculum. I understand it is an important process that shouldn’t be rushed, but watching all these students made me realize just how important it is that we work towards getting one.

 It is crazy to think about how far we have come in a short amount of time, when I was in school we had few students who didn’t know English. I remember clearly in Grade 6 we got a new student who didn’t know how to speak very much English and the teachers had to talk to us all about being kind and helpful. It was so rare for someone to not have English as their first language that we all had a formal talking to about it. Now it is so common and I see my siblings having all sorts of friends who speak other languages and are from different cultures I think it is truly amazing to see the diversity within the school system.

I very much enjoyed my time in the school and I can’t wait to eventually get back into the school to continue helping and working with more students. I hope everyone had a great experience and is excited for the rest of the semester and the rest of your education journey.