Knowledge for Whom

Early in the chapter (page 164) there's a brief paragraph about "general education" teachers, and their hesitation to teach ESL students. Prior to starting this course, I would have also had hesitations and maybe for similar reasons. During my undergrad program, I didn't have a course on teaching English to speakers of other languages. I remember reading only one book, which I still have, on the subject, and if I remember correctly, it wasn't very helpful. After thinking about this, I began to think about our jobs as teachers. Isn't our job to teach every student? To provide every student with learning opportunities? If this is the case, and I believe it is, then teachers shouldn't be excluding some students because they speak other languages! It should be their job to provide any additional support these students need in their classrooms.

Later in the chapter, Wong discusses Chu Hsi's theory that we learn about the world by first learning what's in front of us. This reminded me of Piaget's stages and the shifts from learning and thinking about the concrete to the abstract. It also reminded me about a prior class and a discussion about babies learning about object permanence. We all learn very concretely (what's in front of us) as children. Children can be very ego-centric and focus only on their lives and existence. As they age, they're able to focus on the abstract and things they can't see. While I'm not sure if this is a perfect comparisons, there was definitely some overlap for me.

Lastly, I found Wong's brief paragraph about suggestopedia (Lozanov's method) interesting. This method, of creating a new identity for yourself as you learn a new language, was how I learned Spanish in high school. My teacher gave us all a list, and we were told to pick one from the list. He added the recommendation to choose one similar to our real names. I ended up choosing a name that was similar to mine, but not because he told us to. I chose it (Kristina) because my grandpa used to call me that. (I'm not sure of the story behind it...) I'm not sure if choosing a name similar to our name is a good way to create a new identity though. I had always felt that it was too much like my name to really reduce my inhibitions for learning and speaking Spanish. Of course, I'm not sure if choosing a totally new name would have been any different either. Either way, this provides me something to think about as I work on my project.