In the course of teaching world history the class encounters a snapshot of many of the world’s great cultures. Try as I might to educate myself about all of them I cannot escape that I am a white English speaking American. However this is actually an amazing opportunity as we shall see.
H2 – Honor student access to content material.
Teacher candidates use multiple instructional strategies, including the principles of second language acquisition, to address student academic language ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
H2 means that a teacher takes the care to do two things. First to discover what unique content areas a student has mastered simply by being the person that they are, and second, discovering how to help them become a teacher for a moment. How can a teacher adapt their curriculum to allow for guest teachers in many lessons, drawing from the student body itself? Is it possible to use a student’s linguistic background as a resource for the linguistic development of other students?
In a past observation, this year, my field supervisor identified a missed opportunity in my instruction. I was doing a unit on the ancient Chinese dynasties, and butchering all the Chinese names and terms. I had the good grace to take ownership of this and give the class repeated warning that, as an English speaker, I was going to do my best to pronounce these names, but that they should understand my struggle to do so.
After the lesson my supervisor asked me why I didn’t have the Chinese students in the class give a short presentation of terms and pronunciations. I was aghast at the missed opportunity. I had never thought of using student experts before.
I have since done this several times, making use of student experts for Chinese and Indian Units. Gathering evidence of this is a little hard since it is all verbal, which is why I have created a pronunciation guide based on these interactions, below. I have made use of the guide, but more effectively I have had these students address the class with their expertise. The guide shows a few of the more memorable examples, but I like using this technique as often as I can and especially if I trip up on a word or phrase.
Right now my use of student experts is focused around languages. I have a list of all the ELLs in the class and their native languages, so my research is rudimentary and easy. My goal is to develop more effective means of inquiry to discover the cultural knowledge of my diverse students, so I can have them teach more than just language. I am still thinking of effective ways to do this, but just this week an opportunity fell into my lap. A student approached me the enthusiastically inform me that he is well traveled in Europe and the near east. He has a specific interest in the Roman Empire and asked if I could call on him when we get to the Rome unit. I think I will use him as a student expert to describe ruins and their ongoing significance to the communities that maintain them.
Another area to grow this technique into would be student groups. Is it possible to have student groups, each with a student expert to work on mini-presentations of material that the class can then compare? Is it possible to have every student in the class have a turn throughout the course as an expert? I think it is.
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