The Ways Minority Teachers Can Help English Language Learners

EDU 2015
Yukari Jewkes
December 4th, 2014

INTRODUCTION
I had my service learning project at Hillside Elementary School in West Valley with Ms.
Stacy Tanner as my cooperative teacher. Her class was first grade that consisted of 22 students.
According to Ms. Tanner, the ratio of minority students is 46% in this school. While it does not
mean all of them are English Language Learners, most of them speak other languages at home,
and from the first day, I could see their reading and writing were not equal to students in other
areas. The objective of my service learning was to help students who were competent in oral
communication but not in reading. More specifically, I found and introduced an interesting
activity with which students could learn sight words they were working on as homework. In
addition to that, I wanted to see how students would react to a minority person teaching
something to them. I introduced myself, talked about my culture, and taught them a few Japanese
vocabulary and a game.
My hope was to learn how to work with students who did not speak Japanese, since I had
had experiences of working with Japanese and half Japanese students but not American children.
By American children, I mean both mainstream White Americans and American minorities, such
as Latinos or Black Americans. Also I wanted to experience reality of American education
firsthand because I did not experience it as a child. I myself was an ELL though I was much
older than the students I met during this project. I taught English to Japanese students in Japan,
and also taught Japanese to Japanese and half Japanese students in Utah. These experiences were
interesting and intriguing at the same time because there is always so much to learn, and teachers
need to be effective in class management and in understanding students who are learning in more
than two languages. So they made me wanting to learn more effective ways of teaching and
deepening my understanding of student learning process.

BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY/ REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

In 1974, Lau vs. Nichols mandated all school districts to provide for linguistic and
cultural diversity. And schools started to teach in students native languages and provide English
as a second language programs designed for each specific group. Then in 1999, bilingual
education was now seen as handicapping students from being competent in English (Tiedt &
Tiedt, 2010). And in the article written in 2012, immersion programs were becoming popular;
American people are now ready to implement education with diversity. (Galles, 2014) The needs
of ELLs probably have been changed over the time. At first, the first generation immigrants and
their children needed to survive in this new country. Their jobs did not require to be fluent in
English, and they lived within their own communities that were formed with the people of same
cultures. But then, minority communities began mingling with mainstream American culture,
and for better opportunities, they had to speak fluent English. And now, we are at the stage of
mainstream culture including minority cultures.
Through this project, I intended two things: helping ELL students to make progress in
basic reading and ensuring them that they should be confident with simply who they are. The
sight words activity serves the first intention. It will be helpful for ELL students to be able to
read and write efficiently, so that they can have more opportunities in future. Secondly, having a
minority person in a classroom who are trying to be a teacher may open their eyes that not only
white people are in charge of American society or in its education field. I was hoping that ELL
students will see, although my English may have some errors and mispronunciation or accents
from time to time, there are something different that we, minorities, can contribute to American
society.

The sight word activity is a game that students play in a small group. Students take turns
to pick cards and if they can read the word, they get to keep it, if they cant, they need to put it
back in the basket. There are two special cards. One is return card. Students who draw it must
return all the cards they have back into the basket. And another special card allows children to
pick another card one more time. These tricky cards enlarge the chance to win even for ELLs.
Therefore, the game can be played by integrated groups of both ELL and non-ELL students. This
kind of game is one example of cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is suggested as one of
the effective instructions in many sources because it draws ELLs and non-Ells together and they
can learn from each other. (Haynes, 1998-2010)
Moreover, once students learn how to play it, they can do it without adult guidance. That
means the game can be played in recess or any spare time at school. The difficulty I imagined is
(I only imagined because I did not ask students about their parental involvement) that students
might not get enough help from their parents at home. When I first helped them go through sight
words, some ELL students did not really show much progress in two days whereas non-ELL
white students cruised through the lists of sight words. Since the sight word assignment was
solely homework, the different level of parental involvement was a plausible conclusion, and
homework is an issue for parents of ELLs for many reasons. (Hill & Flynn, 2006) So I wanted to
introduce something that students can do at school and by themselves.
By observing the class, I noticed that some non-ELLs are still eloquent even though they
made mistakes or were behind in what they were working on. (This is an indication of
socioeconomic effects on child education other than ethnicity-based classification.) On the other
hand, ELLs are less confident to speak up in general. How students feel about themselves does
not always correspond with their English competency. After I had some time to talk to the class

about myself, my cooperative teacher told me in recess that she was amazed one ELL student
actually volunteered to count one to five in Japanese which I taught them. The student was
always shy and hardly spoke up before the day. I think this is one of the benefits to have minority
teachers in elementary education. My presence served in two ways. One was I was atypical
model for students to teach them something. Another is I taught both something new (about
Japan and its location and culture) and something they already knew (how to count) in a different
way. This is an evident of teacher diversity will function well and is wanted more in schools with
more ELLs and diverse student body. (Bireda & Chait, 2011)
It was fascinating to see these ties between my experiences and research. All the reading
provided a big picture of where we should lead students in the social context, and the
environment they live in. And the experiences in the project helped me figure out what
individual students need and how teachers can help them. And most of all, I could see the great
outcome in such a short time.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RESERCH CONTEXT

My study was conducted in Hillside Elementary School in West Valley, Utah. I spent 12
hours in total in a first grade class and three hours for researching and preparing instruction and
activities I taught in the class. The classroom was large enough for 22 students. Students could
spread around in the classroom to stretch or for a short dance time. Also additional adult can
have some students pulled out for short, specific instructions without disturbing the main
instructions.
When the cooperative teacher allowed me to directly instruct the whole class, I showed a
world map and talked to students where I came from (Japan) and about my culture by having

them guess and using question and answer style. Next, I sang some songs in Japanese that were
familiar for American children, and had them guess which songs they were. Then I showed them
how to count one to five in Japanese by using physical movement as clues. At the end of the first
session, I introduced a popular Japanese game, Fruit Basket, and played it as a class. I also taught
them origami in spare time they had on the day. And on the last day of my service learning, I
introduced Rotten Apple Sight Word activity. (Reading Resource.net, 2009)
I came up with the idea of sight word activity by helping students in one-on-one reading
time using leveled books. I had approximately 15 students in 30 to 40 minutes, both male and
female, and both ELLs and non-ELLs. When I introduced the Rotten Apple activity, the
cooperative teacher picked three students who she thought would benefit most from the activity.
They were a Black girl, a Latino boy, and a Latino or Asian girl. While the Black girl was a
minority, she was not an ELL, but she was behind in reading. The other two were ELLs who
were average in speaking and listening, but needed extra help in reading and writing. Then we
had the three students explain how to play the game for the whole class.
There was no need for permissions to complete this study. I explained to my cooperative
teacher about my plan in advance. We concluded the activities and instruction do not include any
possible physical harm. In preparing for singing Japanese version of common songs, however, I
researched the English lyrics to make sure the context and connotation of songs, and avoided
some songs because they had some religious value that I thought might be controversial in public
schools.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

I designed my project based on my personal observation in class, researching on the

Internet, and experiment in class. My project was intended to be used in classroom environment
with integrated student body, so this approach was appropriate.
The kind of data I collected were observation and experience at one-on-one reading
session with individual student and the sight word list obtained from the cooperative teacher for
the sight word activity. I did not plan thoroughly and introduced the activity on the last day of
my service learning, so I could not collect the data about the outcome on how much vocabulary
they learned from playing it. But I could see that students were very excited and enjoyed the
game, and another positive result is that students tried to help each other by whispering the
words. While it might not be an appropriate behavior according to the game rule, if it enhances
reading and most of all, cooperative, positive environment among students, I would say it serves
the purpose.
I also had the same three students who played the game with me as my assistants in
explaining it for the class. Even though they were less competent in reading, now they were the
experts of the reading game. They tried so hard to learn the sight words to meet expectation from
others.
As for introducing Japanese culture, I first observed the composition of the class: about a
half was white, another half was Latinos, and there were a few Pacific islanders and Asians.
There were no Japanese. They all were very curious about me, because I was someone whom
they never met before. It was like they had a new foreigner student in their class. So I decided to
go through the similar stages that ELL students will. At first, none of the first graders could point
the right location of Japan on the world map. But gradually, they began to find connections
between what they know and how it is presented in a different culture, in forms of songs,

greeting expressions, and numbers. Also with the appropriate prompting from the cooperative
teacher (e.g. You may know how to say it in Samoan.), some of the minority students could
refer the content to their own cultures and languages, and they had opportunity to speak about
them. It was successful. I was welcomed and included to the class immediately. And until the
last day, students remembered and proudly showed me how to count in Japanese. They learned
about another country and culture.
The two positive result I saw, cooperative behavior to one another and inclusive and
welcoming atmosphere that the class already possessed were created by the class management
and attitude by the cooperative teacher. She herself is an open-minded person who does not
hesitate to share what she knows, and she enjoys being with students in class. It is an example of
a teacher being a role model.

DISCUSSION/IMPLEMENTATION
I recognized the power and dynamic of diversity in classroom. If teachers do not have
understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures and effective skills to included them into their
instructions, those minority cultures will be buried within students. Including multicultural
elements is not necessary, at least at this point. Their core-curriculum based lessons will proceed
without any major hindrances. However, it can be major problems for ELLs. For them, all the
support I experienced and observed, being included and being recognized as someone who is
somehow different, will be motivation and accelerator in their learning. If the evaluation they
receive is only based on scores of English language efficiency, their self-evaluation and esteem
can drop. As in the stages and time required for Second language acquisition by Hills & F, it
takes years for them to completely catch up with non-ELLs. Until then, having secure and

meaningful position in class will help them to keep and develop their self-esteem and to have
positive relationship with other students.
ELL students interest was served by my research because they are now equipped for
learning sight words by themselves, and some ELLs gained confidence for being different and
unique. Also the cooperative teacher could see the change in some ELL students by different
approaches or simply having someone with similar background as an ELL. My research showed
the potentially positive effects of having minority teachers in class. My work at Hillside
Elementary School will particularly be valuable for white teachers who have not been exposed to
different cultures and are not sure how to integrate multicultural elements to the core curriculum.
The question and things I did not get to grasp in this research is how teachers can
encourage parents to be involved effectively to their childrens education. As in the sight word
activity, teachers can provide support and help, but the time we can spend with students at school
is actually limited. And I think this is one of the largest issues in working with ELLs. Wide range
of resources and information, along with experiences, are needed to understand not only ELLs
but also their parents. I will continue to learn about other cultures by collecting resources from
experienced teachers and attending educational conventions as much as possible.

CONCLUSION
This was my third service learning hours in collage. And it was the best because I could
actually get involved with students so deeply in such a short time. The needs of ELLs are wideranging. I could only introduce one activity for reading, but I am sure they need long-term
support and encouragement along with achievable specific goals. The second objectives was to
see how minority teachers would be accepted by students. And I saw ELLs can benefit from

experience-based support and the presence of such teachers. Thirdly, this project provided the
first experience of working with American students in classroom. While fundamental contents
taught in class are similar, I thought American teachers were given more freedom in how they
teach. Also instruction is more individualized. And that itself is the evidence of diversity in
American schools. This project left me with some confidence and much more interests for
working as an elementary teacher in the United States.

References
Bireda, Saba & Chait, Robin. (2011) Increasing Teacher Diversity: Strategies to Improve the
Teacher Workforce. Retrieved from
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011/11/09/10636/increasingteacher-diversity/
Galles, Ellen. (2014, November 21). More Students Opt for Language Immersion. ABC 5
Eyewitness News at 10. Retrieved from
http://kstp.com/news/stories/s3626855.shtml?cat=1
Haynes, Judie. (1998-2010) Seven Teaching Strategies for Classroom Teachers of ELLs.
Retrieved from http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/seven_teaching_strategies_clas_
06140.php
Hill, Jane D. & Flynn, Kathleen M. (2006) Classroom Instruction That Works with English
Language Learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development.
Reading Resource.net [website] Retrieved from (2009).
http://www.readingresource.net/rottenapplesightwordgame.html
Tiedt, Pamela L. & Tiedt, Iris M. (2010), Multicultural Teaching: A Handbook of Activities,
Information, and Resources (8th ed.). U.S.A.: Pearson

Appendices (attached separately in other forms)

Service learning log of hours

Sight words sample

Rotten Apple Sight Word Game: card sample