Comments on: Linguistically Diverse Education

By: Langwitches » Just Learned About Just Learned

Langwitches » Just Learned About Just Learned — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:31:44 +0000

[...] Her current post immediately caught my attention. “Linguistically Diverse Education” [...]

By: Silvia Tolisano

Silvia Tolisano — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:14:26 +0000

I agree with Dennis, that technology can be inserted for “language” in many places. I speak 3 languages to communicate with friends, family and at work. I consider technology to be my 4th language to be able to communicate.
I blogged about this a while back on Technology as another language
Having lived in three different continents/countries/culture/languages, I do appreciate your sensitivity when teaching your students NOT only the grammatical structures of the language but recognize that language is CONNECTED to experiences and expression of all senses.

Heather, this is a very interesting subject that I am very interested in learning more about from you as an international educator.

By: Dennis Harter

Dennis Harter — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:05:36 +0000

Consider me converted. You are LDE’s to me from now on.

What struck me was your point on the necessity of LDE’s to understand how students use language at home and outside of schooling. This is a powerful piece that I am guessing not all ESL teachers are on board with (or is it not all other teachers are on board with?).

As an outsider, I think of your jobs as teaching English, but instead you are teaching “de-coding” of an English environment. To do this well, you have to understand a child’s ability to de-code in their own language. At what depth do they think and communicate in their native languages? How is this reflected/demonstrated in their ability to do so in English?

On a side note, I found your description particularly cool because all I have to do is substitute technology for language and it’s suddenly my job description!

“It entails understanding each individual child’s ~~language~~technology use; how they communicate with their friends and families, in addition to how and what ~~languages~~technologies they use to navigate both their academic and daily lives.”

How we define our jobs is fundamentally important. It speaks to how we wish to be valued and what we think is important. I wrote on this idea in the context of teaching here in the context of the use of a term “anti-teaching.”