RR_555

After reading the article Conversing with Miguel, it brought back memories when Miguel talks about how he didn’t want to leave 8^th grade because he was afraid that the teachers wouldn’t care about him like his current teachers do now. I worked with students last year where the majority of them were ELL’s and most had IEP’s and 504’s. I know I cared about each and every one of them, but how do I know if they knew that I cared? Well, it just so happens that while I was at Wal-Mart tonight, I heard my name being called from a distance. “Tina!” as I turned to look, my poor eyesight wouldn’t allow for me to make out who it was. As the girls approached, I realized it was two ELL students that I worked with last year. I could tell that they were happy to see me. They asked me if I was coming back, and they look in their eyes showed that they were disappointed when I said I wasn’t. I guess this answers my question to whether or not the students could tell if I really cared. Sometimes it is the unspoken communication that we feel the most. It’s unfortunate that we can’t stay with the same teachers or students because there definitely could be a bond, but the students should not believe that there won’t be more teachers out here who will care about them in the future, because I can guarantee that there are. In order to address this issue in the classroom I could take extra time to encourage the ELL, and make connections. As a sharing point, I could introduce the class to a Japanese mathematician who recently solved the a solution to "the abc conjecture" in order to highlight cross-cultural contribution. We have one Japanese ELL in our class.