My Possible Dream Job

So this is not really related to the article, but I feel this is a great opportunity to talk about a, well, an opportunity.

My mother works at Bay Farm Montessori academy back home in Massachusetts as a pre-K teacher. The school, as of last Wednesday, only went up to 5th grade. However, I am very pleased to announce the recent approval (i.e. last Thursday) of Bay Farm Montessori Academy Middle School! And get this, it will be a Montessori school centered abound ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE!!

The school is located near the ocean, a marsh, AND a river. Can you say outdoor classroom much?! If you are unfamiliar with Montessori teaching, it is a complete inquiry based approach to learning where each child learns as an individual. Montessori teaching fosters independent learning skills, critical thinking, and science process skills. For example, my mother as fluent readers that are 4 years old. In the past she has had 5 and 6 year olds that can multiply. And no, these are NOT gifted students. It's the way Mopntessori teaches the children - it's all hands on. The child selects a work (with teacher guidance) and the child works on it. Since all the Montessori activities are hands-on, the child learns the skills so much deeper than in traditional pencil and paper activities. And get this, the Montessori method is inherently MULTICULTURAL. That's right...multicultural. Students commonly participate in cultural fairs, learning new languages, and part of the curriculum in all grades is learning about the cultures of the world.

In short - I am slightly obssessed with Montessori teaching. Its inquiry, actually has science as part of the curriculum in all grades (can you believe it, elementary students actually having science daily?!), and is multi-cultural. In case you are interested, here is a link to some more Montessori information. http://www.montessori-namta.org/NAMTA/geninfo/whatismont.html.

I mean, my mother's pre-K kids know the words hypothesis, photosynthesis, they know the parts to a flower, learn about rocks. And when I saw know, I mean they actually know. If you ask any of those kids to make a hypothesis, they know exactly what you are talking about.

So you are probably wondering I am rambling on and on about this. Well, I am applying for a job at Bay Farm Montessori Academy Middle School. The school actually burned down last November (no one was hurt!!) and recently got renovated (because the building was gone). The new school building is gorgeous with tons of space. The headmaster is fantastic, and they are establishing a small farm for the Heifer Project (the kids will raise goats and sheep that will get shipped to third world countries for food and other uses). This school is amazing and is an up and coming premier school in the region. They are just coming out of some really bad times (called a FIRE) and are really going places. So everyone, cross your fingers that I get selected out of the 40+ job applicants!

"What's Language Got to do with it?"

Even though this article used data from a lesson about the Rock cycle, I had a difficult time getting through the article. I think the points posed by the authors are very significant and valid, but I had a very hard time understanding those points. The author's certainly were using academic language, to the point where I was very challened to understand the sentences! I also found myself confused and disagreeing with much of what the authors had to say.

However, even with my difficulty in understanding this artcile, I found this statement of partcicular interest: "Both the verbal and visual data attest to the lexicalization of Linda's rock cycle lesson (pg.49)". In my personal experience, I feel that providing students both visual and linguistic information enhances their learning. I am currently tutoring ELL students in chemistry and I always back up what I am saying with pictures. So far, it has not failed me! I had an amazing teacher moment when I was trying to get my student to understand the word "precipitate". I talked to her like I would any other high school student; there is no need to dumb down science or my vocabulary. I explained how I drink a lot of coffee and that I put sugar in my coffee. I then drew a coffee cup with a spoon of sugar. I then explained how sometimes I put too much sugar in, so I added more sugar on top of my spoon picture. I then explained to her that all that sugar can't mix in so there is some sugar on the bottom of my mug. So I drew little sugar particles on the bottom of my mug. The student went "Oooooh!" and I saw the lightbulb come on. She had not said a word before then (probably because she is shy about speaking in English) but after that moment she started to talk to me in fluent English.

Thus my confusion when the authors of this artcile seemed to describe how using visuals to help students with vocabulary "overshadows the semantic relations...". The authors then go on to say, "In doing so, it ignores and thus fails to not only model, but also simply provide for the students linguistically constructed meaning to fully realize and articulate those relations." I completely disagree with this statement. When pictures are used in teaching science, it helps students connect to the topic; otherwise the words on the board are just a bunch of jumbled letters that scientists put together to make a vocabukary word for future students to learn. When the picture is taught in the midst of a linguistically rich lesson, the students are not losing out on vocabualry or meaning. The pictures are there to enhance meaning for ALL students.

But neither can you teach an entire lesson in pictures; that dumbs down the lesson (at least in the upper grades!!). That is where it is important to continue speaking English to ELL students - it will help them understand pronounciations and meanings. The pictures are there for when students need help understanding meanings. For example, in children's books, the pictures are there to enhance the meaning of the story because young children have most likely not developed advanced enough reading fluency to have the story "play in their mind". So why not use pictures in science lessons to enhance the meaning until the ELL students become fluent in English?

As I said before, I had a difficult understanding this article so perhaps I misinterpretted the authors. However, I found their statements about visuals in vocabularly lessons distrubring. Vocabulary is vital to science - if you cannot speak in "science" you will have a difficult time. If I didn't speak "geologist", for example, I would muyself floating around in the ether in my upper level geology classes. That is why it is so important to push our students to expand their vocabularies, no matter if they are ELL or not. I personally believe that when pictures are coupled with a rich verbal and written language it enhances meaning for ALL students of ALL ages and abilities.