Inquiry on Support and Resources for Language Development at Berkeley High Berkeley High School

Inquiry on a Student as a Learner of English for Academic Purposes

In observing the students at Berkeley High it is very common to hear a variety of languages. On the break between classes I have heard Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish,and Farsi. The student body is diverse and consists of about 3000 students. Berkeley High has a ESL/ELL program with 4 full time faculty members. They offer ELD 1 or 1A, ELD Writing 1 or 1A, ELD 2 or 2A, ELD Writing 2 or 2A, ELD 3 or 3A, ELD Writing 3 or 3A, Expository Writing, Literature of Diversity 4, and a Social Studies Orientation for students from 9-12 grade. The overall environment at Berkeley High seems very open to diverse cultures, but also seems to develop small communities of different ethnic groups, many of which go along language lines. The few teachers that I have spoken to in the Art Dept. are fluent or at least conversational in different language. In my class alone students speak Spanish, Farsi, German, French, Japanese and the students seem to be aware of the power that language has. There are no specific text books to work with ELL students in my class room, but their are a variety of different artists of diverse cultural and lingual backgrounds. These are used to be able to speak to the diverse student body in a way that is both empowering and productive for an art class.

Demographic information about the district, school, and classroom in which I teach Berkeley High Fact Sheet

Written Evaluation of Maria's Work This is the written evaluation for the photography assignment on Family and Culture. Her writting suggests that she is below grade level in written English. With some spelling errors and some sentence construction problems. I will have to do more research to give an accurrate grade level evaluation of her writing. At this point of the evaluation my educated guess is that she is a 5-7th grade level of academic writing. Her ideas are coming across but with a little bit of needed translation. There are some simple mistakes in spelling, "fiml" for film, and "feelt" for felt. Another minor error is in her use of "there" to explain the posessive word "their."In addition to the paper being written in three sentences and the third sentence being a very long run-on sentence. The positive elements of the writing was that she was proud of her project and shared the importance of her mother and her cousin with me. She is also aware of the visual strength of the images when she says, "it seems like people can tell who they are and where they came from."

Photographic Evaluation This is a photograph that Maria took ofher younger brother for a project on Family and Culture. She developed and printed the photograph by herself with some assistance. The photograph shows a strong use of composition and personal subject matter, both of which give the photograph a compelling mood. It is an extremely well printed image which convey a connection between the photographer and the subject and shows a clear idea of culture and family in one photograph.

Maria's story as a student According to an informal interview with Maria, her story reflects a similar experience to ELL students in America. Both of her parents are from Guatemala, and immigrated to the United States before Maria and her older sister were born. In grammer school they put her in classes that had English/Spanish because the teachers thought that her English wasn't very strong. Her dad thought that there was no need for her to continue taking Spanish because their "new life" was here. He was convinced that he could teach her Spanish, because in his mind "They speak Spanish differently in Mexico." Up until high school she hasn't taken a Spanish class, and because of this she is struggling in her Spanish class at Berkeley High. She feels that she is doing badly in the class because the teacher "doesn't like colored people." Maria is quite proficient in slang and in conversational English, but still is struggling with her spelling and her written work. When I asked her to write down simple words like "portrait" she asked for my help in spelling it out. She said that most of her teachers have been helpful with her learning English. She still has a "accent" which she says still makes it hard for her to speak like her fellow students. When I asked her about her going to college she responded, " I ain't going to college." When I asked her for more informations she said she was interested in going to nursing school. She is currently working with premature babies at a local hospital, going to night classes at Laney College, and attending high school. According to her all this work is because of her older sister pushing her to do well in school. Her sister translates her school letters for er mother who still doesn't speak or read English fluently. In my class she is a very talkative student who enjoy's playfully teasing her classmates, as well as exploring her photography. She is going to Guatemala for her spring break to visit her family and to work on photography. When I asked about how well she knew her camera it became clear that she is very inept at hiding her lack of understanding of the course material. She is quite an energetic student who shows promise in improving her written and oral language skills, it is only a matter of time and effort.

Documentation of Teaching with a Language Development Focus

Relevant context for my teaching Berkeley High School is a comprehensive four-year school serving approximately 3000 students. BHS is unique in that it is the only public high school in a community of over 100,000. Drawing from a diverse racial, ethnic and socioeconomic status, the student population embraces a broad spectrum of people and ideas. Berkeley High enjoys vibrant and active community support from the parent community and the larger city community. This commitment is demonstrated in several generous bond measures and special taxes the voters have passed to fund school improvement. For many years, Berkeley High has earned a reputation for academic excellence. The school offers a wide variety of academic and co-curricular experiences to meet the needs of the student body. The college preparatory program meets the entrance requirements of all major universities. The curriculum is rich, offering a wide range of rigorous courses, including honors and advanced placement classes, and a wide variety of electives in the arts, foreign language, and specialized academic areas, such as computer science programming languages, biotechnology, African American Studies and Chicano-Latino studies. Over 80of graduates go on to two-and-four year colleges and universities, with some admitted to the most prestigious schools in the country. Average SAT scores consistently exceed both national and state averages, and BHS regularly produces students who qualify for National Merit Scholarships.

The content and language knowledge that this teaching event required Students will be introduced to a new schema of arts language which will probably be new to most students. Words like balance, repitition of form, composition, and tonal value are important concepts to understand in beginning art class. In order to help ELL students, as well as all students it will be important to scaffold the correct meaning of art terrminology that will be used. I will also introduce students to different genre's of art which come with their own language, i.e; surrealism, documentary, and others. The challenge is in getting students excited about learning art as well as improving their language abilities!

Knowledge about learners that influenced my approach to this particular teaching event I think it is crucial to know your learners in order to create a usefull and valuable curriculum for all of my students. Learning about each students individual story. heritage, ideas is the foundation of my teaching practice. I believe that knowing my students is the building blocks for teaching. It amazes me that more teachers don't spend more of their precious time learning from their students. If their isn't a symbiotic relationship between teacher, student and the subject matter, or what Martin Buber calls I, thou, it we will only be teaching ourselves.

My learning goals for this lesson My learning goals for this teaching event was that students would have a deeper awareness of their physical surroundings in order to create a photo narrative that spoke for itself. It is also a goal that students will improve their technical ability both in the darkroom and in the lab. And it is vital to any class that students will improve their understanding of the art world, its language and ideas.

A summary of my plans For this project students were introduced to a variety of artists that work with social documentary and cultural narratives. Photographers like Gordon Parks, Graciela Iturbide, Richard Avedon and others. Students were asked to explore in class what culture meant to them. After a brainstorm that generated ideas a variety of ideas about culture such as: music, food, race, economics, country of birth, American, consumer and other ideas; we began to process of exploring these ideas with photography. Students have about two weeks to shoot the photographs, develop, and print their individual images, and present their exploration of family/culture and heritage to the class in a critique session. The majority of class time is spent scaffolding the overall idea of "what is culture?" so that students are able to make a meaningful project that reflects their individual understanding of "culture"

Results, assessment, and analysis Maria along with most of the students in the class created individualized projects that reflected their own culture or heritage. In the case of Maria, she used her Guatemalan ancestry as the focus of her project. She focused on the close knit family dynamic, and the clothing of her parents native country. Even though she was born in the United States, she still has a strong connection to Guatemala and recently traveled their to visit relatives who were ill. It was very exciting as a teacher to have students getting the chance to explore another country with photographs. Part of this is the excitment of seeing their travels, as well as the potential for the students to be an expert in the classroom. Other students created strong images that relfected their bi-racial heritage, the consumer culture of America, church culture, or used this project to question "what is culture?." Overall, it was a successful project for the students who completed the project in a timely manner. In retrospect, I would have liked to spend more time on this project because of the great potential that it provided for the class to learn about each others individual stories. This project proved to be a great project to give me a lens into the economic and cultural lives of 26 students.