This past week, an interesting thought came up in my TE 301 course, Literacy and Learners in Context. This course is not focused on ESL students; it's focused on literacy development and the best methods for assessment and instruction. So, this class is more focused on mainstream classrooms. Once in a while, the instructor will add some comments about how to adjust lessons for special education students or ESL students, but they are not usually extensive.
However, this past week we were brainstorming the best way to make concepts of print and genre more salient to the language learning. After we had all gone through and given ideas about how to make lessons more hands-on, more interactive, and easier to grasp in general, my professor made a comment that really stuck with me. It's kind of a twist on everything I've learned in TESOL courses; she got us thinking about how these adjustments can make such a huge difference in a student's comprehension of a lesson. She then asked us why we wouldn't want to make those adjustments in every classroom, whether there are language learners in it or not.
This struck me. We think about all the adjustments we can make for ESL learners, but we don't think about how these changes could benefit every single student. Sometimes we think that these adjustments or extra props might slow down other learners, but it could potentially reinforce or solidify the knowledge and learning that other learners already have, or make it more accessible to them. This is just something I thought was good to keep in mind, whatever context you would be teaching in.
-Sarah Miller
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