Grace Lau

EDSE430
Case Study

Lorelai Gilmore is a ninth grade English student who attends Stars Hollow High School.

She is a full Vietnamese fifteen-year-old, which makes her stand out in her school because of the

abundance of Filipino people, as well as people from Hawaiian descent, as well. Lorelai is a hard

worker, and helps to set the tone for the classroom. Lorelai is a quiet, shy, and introverted

student. She has friends, but keeps her circle close. She is a very good student, and leads the

class with her grades. Lorelai is a hard working student, and continues to strive to give her best

work and try her best in class. Through an interview with Lorelai, I was able to get to know her

more in regards to her life academically, socially, cognitively, linguistically, and culturally. I was

able to get to know about her personal family life, which has shaped the way that she learns,

processes thinking, behaves, and grapples with things. In this case study, I wanted to how to

teach a student like Lorelai, who is very shy, quiet, and introverted, but still have her remain in

her high class standing.

Lorelai opened up to me about her family life and how it affected both her and her sister

as they grew up. She has two separate families. When Lorelai was in the first grade, her parents

got a divorce. Her father won custody over both her and her sister, but they find time to visit

their mother as well, along with her new husband.

“Since I was only in the first grade and my sister was barely in school, we didn’t quite

understand what was going on and we didn’t understand what a divorce was. We just

knew that mom and dad didn’t love each other anymore. But maybe they did. But maybe

they also didn’t. All we knew was that the happy family that are in movies with a big

happy family, like, it wasn’t us anymore.”

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If Lorelai decides to pursue a college degree, she will be the first one to graduate from

college. At home, her family values unity, traditions, time together and closeness. She has a good

relationship with her parents, even though they aren’t together. They expect her to do well in

school and go to college and get good grades. They also expect her to be a good role model for

her sister.

“Sometimes, I get mad at my parents because I feel like they expect too much out of me.

I know that they are looking out for me, but I’m only 15 and I want to have fun and hang

out with my friends too… Sometimes I hate my dad for not being with my mom but they

still talk to each other. They talk to each other about things that happened during the week,

the government thing like taxes and custody and money. I know that they are still friends too. I

don’t talk to my mom’s husband. He never really got the chance to get to know us, especially

because we only live with Dad. But we still see our mom.”

Lorelai also has a good relationship with her sister. Her sister is younger, and so she

sometimes acts in place of mom to cook and clean and help her sister with her homework when

her father isn’t home because of work.

“My sister can get irritating sometimes, but she knows that she can trust me and I know

that I can trust her. But all the other times, she’s annoying but what are little sisters for?

I’m happy that we have a good relationship with each other because my friend hates her

sister and it affects her in her own personal life. I don’t want to hate my sister and then

realize it’s too late to have a relationship with her. Sometimes I talk to my parents about

things but it’s mainly about school and if I’m doing well in school. They don’t talk to me

a lot about my friends or boys. I usually just hang out by myself or text some of my

friends and Snapchat them.”

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Because Lorelai speaks fluent Vietnamese, and that is considered her first language, it

sometimes is hard for her to make friends, and often keeps to herself, which makes her very

introverted.

“Sometimes I choose not to speak to people because it’s a lot of effort for me to put

together sentences. Sometimes, there are some students who spoke only Tagalog, and it

felt like I wasn’t the only one and it made me feel better about speaking a different

language. That’s kind of why I don’t have a lot of friends. Sometimes, I don’t have

friends because I am just thinking a lot in my head. I can think in Vietnamese so it’s not

that hard.”

During group work, Lorelai sits with people who speak English as their first language,

and one other person who speaks Hawaiian as her first language.

“Sometimes when I sit next to Lane, it makes me feel like I’m not alone because Lane

understands my struggle in how I feel about learning English, especially in English class.

We are able to help each other and I consider her my friend in class. She is kind of my

only friend in class because we understand each other.”

Considering that Lorelai is at the top of her class, despite English being her second

language, I wanted to see if there was anything that she personally wanted to work on in class,

and what I could do to help her out.

“I know that I’m really quiet and I’m really shy. Sometimes, I want more friends to talk

to, but friends who understand me and what I’m going through.”

With this being said, I wanted to see how I was able to help Lorelai make new friends.

Even though I’m not her mom, I wanted her to be able to interact and feel comfortable talking to

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people, because as she progresses through her high school career, attends scholarship, college

and job interviews, having the trait of talking to people is an important one to have.

To do accomplish this, I put her into a new group, with other students that have other

L1’s that are not English. Therefore, when we put them in groups to do group work and

presentations, I wanted to put her with people in her class that are similar to her since I watched

her get along with the girl who speaks Hawaiian as her L1. Therefore, we had Lane in her group,

along with Max and Rory, who both spoke Tagalog. Even though there was a small language

barrier, they all bonded together because of their commonality of not speaking English as their

first language.

Secondly, when we mixed the groups up again, I put her with Rory, along with Emily and

Dean, who spoke English as their L1’s. I wanted to see if she was able to get along with them as

well as she did with the other group. Through this intervention strategy of putting her into

different groups of people, I was able to see how she would make friends, as well as how well

they work together as a group.

When Lorelai was in the first group with Max, Lane, and Rory, with people that all spoke

English as their second language, they were able to relate to each other more, and talked about

their culture and their families, and things that are going on in their lives. This included friends,

college, family and boys. Lorelai easily fit in with these new people, and during group work,

they would sometimes get off track and talk about their personal lives, and then go back to work,

and then back to their personal lives. However, through this time, they somewhat disagreed on

their assignment and butted heads throughout the assignment about who wanted to do what and

what they should be doing and the theme of the Powerpoint, and little things throughout the

independent work time.

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When Lorelai was with Emily and Dean for another assignment, she was a lot more quiet

and a lot of work was done instead of talking about their personal lives. However, their group

ended up getting a very high grade on the assignment, and they were all agreeing on the

assignment instead of the other one where there was a lot of disagreement. They all worked

together well, academically, but socially, there wasn’t a lot of talking about personal life. They

went straight to work.

Some factors that could have affected this study are the grades of the people and their

class standing. Lorelai is at the top of her class and always does well in her studying,

assessments, and assignments. However, Max and Rory and Lane are towards the middle/lower

middle of the class, and often struggle in their English class. Therefore, Lorelai’s grade was a

little lower for this assignment. It could have been because they talked a lot during class time,

and spent time getting to know each other more than talking about the assignment. Also, because

the work ethic was more focused on talking, it could have took away Lorelai’s focus from the

assignment.

When Lorelai was with Emily and Dean, since all of them are towards the higher

percentile of the class, they were focused on the assignment itself. Therefore, when they worked

on the assignment, they could have been so focused on the assignment itself, they didn’t want to

talk to each other as much as she did with the other group.

In conclusion, we did two different types of intervention strategies. For this case study,

we do want Lorelai to make friends, and maintain her high standing in class and keep her grades

up. Even though she made friends with the first group, her grade for this particular assignment

went down. However, even though she didn’t talk as much about her personal life, and make

friends, she kept her high standing. Therefore, moving forward, I would think the next thing I

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would do is create an assignment that is similar to a discussion, such as a spiderweb discussion,

or a Socratic seminar, or an informal discussion, where they are able to do the assignment, but

talk about their connections or about their life. Therefore, Lorelai is surrounded by people who

can help maintain her grades and high class standing, while getting to know other people and

making friends.

In conclusion, even though she had “English as a second language” in common with the

first group, she also has the same work ethics with the other groups, even though they weren’t as

talkative. As they continue to study more, and as they continue to work together, they are able to

help inspire each other, and build each other up with their grades.

In the future, there are going to be students who are very quiet, and students that I would

want to make friends and get used to talking to each other. What I learned is that students are

able to get along with each other because they can inspire further thinking, and concepts that are

out of the box. They can help to expand on their thinking, and work together to create a stronger

product together that they can individually.