Man oh man oh man. I don’t know who had more fun during “Language Day” at Bay View Charter School: Me or the children I was teaching Arabic to. It never ceases to amaze me how diverse, brilliant, charming, and lovely children are when it comes to teaching them and how much they look up/idolize their teachers when they are gifted new information, especially a foreign language that is as alien to them as it gets.
The experience of teaching such a young age group, like the 4th and 5th graders I dealt with, changed my prior beliefs that I wanted to exclusively teach adults. I may have had a change of heart after seeing how excited and engaged they become when submerged in language. Seeing them strive to understand the content and participate so willingly got me excited because they were excited.
Most of the children were very extroverted and wanted desperately to give the answer to a question when asked or participate in an activity that required them to think about the content they just absorbed and apply it to a game I was teaching them. I noticed that even the quieter, more introverted children were listening and absorbing information, even if they did not feel as comfortable coming up to the board and writing or participating in activities. I know this because they would raise their hand and privately ask me a question about the Arabic language or something else relative to a lesson being taught and would start to come out of their shell and feel comfortable enough to speak up more and more and . . . . have fun. Moments like those made me feel really really good about where I am at in my life right now. I never not want to see that transformation occur in future L2 learners.
Aside from feeling incredibly touched by how wonderful and engaged the children were, a lot of what we’ve been reading and discussing in P&P was so applicable to the learning and lesson that took place at the school. My personal favorite attribute of teaching, awareness, could not have been more applicable to today than ever before: it was happening constantly and because it was, I was better able to maneuver and gauge the lessons based on the students.
I wish we could do this sort of activity every month!!!!!!
It is a great insight to bring to our current conversations about the affective domain: that learner excitement is infectious and transfers readily to teachers who have the awareness (I am glad to see you stress that as paramount) and empathy to be open to that. There is also a neat, accurate picture here of learner variation – see the more introverted students who asked you privately about things they wanted to know.