Se Habla?

Forth grade teacher, Mysha Farmar, has been gracious enough to let me spend time with her reading and writing students at Mike Davis Elementary School, in Naples, FL. MDES has a diverse population, with approximately 61% of the students being Hispanic. English is the at-home language of only 30% of the students (Collier County Schools), which puts a great need for bilingualism on the teachers. This is especially hard on Mysha, whose teaching focuses on reading and writing with two groups of nine and ten year old students. 

While observing her class, I noticed a few of the students were on computers, with headphones on. Upon asking, I found that those students know little to no English and that they were doing English learning exercises online. I also found out that there is a new student in her class that knows no English, hasn't before been to school, and is legally deaf. That student was only in class for a few moments before being pulled out by an ELL teacher.

According to EduGuide, academic difficulty and failure is the number one reason that children dropout of school; being held back is number three (EduGuide). The inability that many teachers at Mike Davis and similar schools have to simply talk to a student takes a great toll on not only the affected student, but their teacher as classmates as well. 

Mysha does a good job of including students of every background by focusing lessons on things that they can all relate to and closely monitoring students who are learning English. One day the students read a story about the movie Oz, which the vast majority of students couldn't wait to see. When I asked her why she chose a story about a movie instead of something more traditionally educational, Mysha said that she wants to keep the fun of reading in the front of her students' minds. She accomplishes this by assigning a few lighter reads but sticking to the same comprehension review that she would with a more typical assignment. 

My experience at Mike Davis Elementary School solidified my resolve to one: learn Spanish and two: get creative with my lessons. The simple act of assigning something fun can sometimes make all the difference.