A Personally Meaningful Event

Now, this may not count as a very personal event or experience, but it was definitely a very, very meaningful moment to me. One of my students in one of the courses that I teach went to a school for his lesson observation. The task was to work with a few focal ELLs/EBs. Help them, teach them and observe the way they learn and acquire English. While working with one of his students, my student found out that the teacher at the school had labeled the child as a troublemaker. The child himself had lost hope, and kept saying that he would drop out after finishing 8th grade. That broke my student’s heart. He decided to do something about it.

He started having regular conversations with that child. He found out a lot of background information about the child. The child told him that he was looking after his younger siblings at home on a regular basis as his parents were always busy working since they had to make ends meet. The child also told him that he wanted to be a soccer player, but since his parents did not have enough time, he couldn’t play any sport regularly. And because of all these extra responsibilities, he wanted to drop out.

My student went back to the teacher and gave all this information to him/her. He told the teacher that probably the biggest reason why his focal EB was not behaving and performing well in the class was because no one is talking to the child. To cut the long story short, my student’s conversation with the child resulted in a big improvement in the EBs behavior. He even started getting his work done in the class. At one point, even the teacher noticed the difference and accepted that the EBs behavior had improved indeed. 

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