Hello everyone, my name is Tiffany Yang. I am a student at the University of Houston. I am currently majoring in teaching and learning with the early childhood through 6th-grade certification in hopes of becoming a 4th-grade teacher. I am student teaching at Oak Forest Elementary in 4th grade.
As you can see from my video, growing up I was expected to learn two languages which are Chinese and Spanish. Growing up I lived in a multi-language household when I was very young. My grandma only spoke Taiwanese while my parents spoke Chinese and my siblings spoke English. English is my first language, however, my parents were not fluent in English. There was not a strong Chinese community in my hometown so I would rarely speak Chinese. My community was a Hispanic dominated community so people were expected to know English and Spanish. My parents were expected to learn English and Spanish to communicate. Many of my teachers spoke to parents in Spanish because the parents did not know English. Both sides of the border were expected to learn the other's language.
This is my first time doing a video blog. I am committed and providing a safe and fun environment to my students, so they are willing to learn and they have their basic needs fulfilled. I believe students are responsible for their own actions because I can only influence them. I believe students are small adults who need to be taught on how to act and think. “Minority students … tend to have parents with low levels of education who are unable to provide assistance with schoolwork or afford expensive supplemental educational services” therefore, as a teacher I need to provide support to close in the gap amongst my students to help them learn. (Wright, 2015) I can provide support such as oral administration, proximity sitting, and visuals. Oral administration can help them when they do not know who to pronounce the word or passage. Proximity seating would allow me more access to help the student.
I am forward to working with all of you!
References:
Wright, Wayne (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, Second Edition.