Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers Who Are Still Learning English

Chapter eight was a chapter that I particularly needed to read. This was because I have spent my whole life in a small town in Maine with extremely little, if any, diversity, never mind people who couldn’t speak English. The part of this chapter that shocked me was when the students suggested that teacher “Share our goal to excel academically, not just get by.”

This shocked me because I had never considered the fact that when someone is still learning English they not only want to pass, they want to excel just like they would have in their last situation. I don’t think that as a teacher I would have thought like that without reading it first. Thinking now I don’t see why I wouldn’t have thought of it because it is true, these kids are not stupid, they just don’t speak the language. If these kids were in a school that spoke their first language they might be in the top of their classes, and just because they were thrown a curve ball, English, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to succeed in their new situation too.