In the US, we have something called ESOL - English as a Second or Other Language - and every year the district's ESOL teacher would have to give several presentations or talks to all the teachers, about sensitivity and how to handle ESOL students. Even if you didn't have any ESOL students, you were required to attend. Not much, but something.
Well, now I'm teaching ESOL and what I'm concerned about is RSOL - Russian as a Second or Other Language - students. Every class has at least one of these. Sophia is one.
I've mentioned before that the foreign students are LOST. Confused, perplexed, bewildered, scared, sad, upset, lonely, you name it.
According to the local teachers, these kids understand them when they speak Russian.
Really? Sophia's wide-eyed, dumb-faced look seems to convey to others that she understands, but I know that she doesn't. Not only by her look (she doesn't even pretend to understand when she doesn't) but also because she tells me. Many kids aren't so open-faced as she, they try to look like they fit in. (Perhaps she does this, too, I'm not with her all the time.) No one wants to look like the fool. No one wants to stick out as the "other". So nodding your head when a grown-up is talking gibberish, really fast and without expression, sounds like a great idea to a kid.
How often these RSOL kids are stuck in a class that's going on in Kazakh or fast Russian, and they are expected to sit quietly and do nothing, or, worse, to understand! I would like my ESOL kids to understand, but I understand if they don't, and I am quickly learning how to make myself more understandable--gestures; slow, articulate speech; repeat, repeat, repeat!
Today during Etud (Study Period) they were reviewing Kazakh as usual. My Korean students--who are not in the class for the Kazakh lessons but rather are in Beginner's Russian--were sitting in the back, bored. My Korean girl must have said or done something--she is a quiet, timid girl, with a very soft voice. Whatever she did caused my Kazakh teacher to yell at her--not overly harshly, but enough to put this timid girl to tears. The Korean girl then put her head down and cried softly. What else could she do? She was sitting in a classroom, completely lost and confused, the lesson was in a language she did not understand, about a language she understood even less, and she was yelled at by the teacher.
I felt miserable for her.
From what I've seen and heard, the other RSOL kids are pretty much in the same predicament. The local teachers aren't mean, just clueless as to what it's like to not know the language. These kids can follow some basic commands, can say "da" and "nyet", and so they think they understand.
They do not.
We need RSOL sensitivity training, because this is supposed to be an international school! Even if it were just a local school, the teachers should be sensitive towards the needs of all the children, not just the locals!
No comments:
Post a Comment