Reflection Post #2

After several months being away from the classroom setting, I was once again immersed in the joy, stress, and reward of teaching. (Well, assisting a teacher). Last Wednesday I began my service learning for my TE 250 class. I have been placed in a Kindergarten class at an Elementary School here in East Lansing. After I had been introduced to the students and they had gone to gym, the teacher gave me some background information on them. First of all, the entire class is made up of many different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. She then began to describe the language barrier that they have been facing since the beginning of the year. Many of the students did not know their ABCs, any numbers, or how to write their name (some still aren't able to write their name yet). At first this was just something I dismissed and thought of as a common occurrence for kindergarten classes, but the more I take into account the different backgrounds and home languages, the more I see that this teacher has quite a big challenge on her hands. She not only has to teach her students the basic kindergarten information, but she also has to teach many of  them English. As I continue in my service learning, I will look for more ways to help these students learn English using some of the methods we learn about in LLT 307. Even though I am not their teacher or even someone with a degree in education yet, I hope to be a good resource to them in developing their language skills.