Conversation is Key

I agree with the information presented in these articles about the place for conversational learning in the classroom, as well as the general importance for conversation in language development. I agreed with basically all of what I read in these articles. I was particularly interested in the Goldenberg article, because I enjoyed the research and graphs that went along with it.

I agreed with the statement that "school curricula tend to emphasize lower-level skills and knowledge, thereby rendering classroom discussions largely irrelevant from the standpoint of most teachers." In my first practicum class, my mentor teacher and I actually spent quite a bit of time that first week with her explaining to me her reasons for encouraging so much classroom discussion. She said that it often looks like the class is getting off task or something, but really, she's trying to allow them time to discuss what interests them. If they're interested in, or at least invested in having conversations about, the material, it is more likely to stick.

"For these students, school is often the venue in which they are not only using language to learn but also learning the language itself." This is a quote from the Mayer article, but is something I have learned from almost every deaf education class I've ever had (if not all of them), which is why I think conversations have a place in the classroom. Just because it might not "look" or "sound" like educational instruction doesn't mean it isn't. I think it fosters better incidental learning, for one thing, which has been shown to help students retain information better.

I guess what I gained from these articles is also what I have already sort of decided -- that I need to be letting my students guide my classroom goings-on at least a little. When it comes down to overall material that I need to cover, obviously, I'll have to guide them some, but I think it is important to let them explore what interests them most about what we're learning about. (I hope that sentence made sense.) When students get to have conversations, it also helps them explore their own ideas about things with their peers, and since it is more informal, the pressure to "sound smart" or be correct is kind of taken away. This is a better way to check their understanding, albeit a more informal way.

Just my opinion, anyway.

Natural and Meaningful Language (Easterbrooks + McAnally)

I don't think it's an accident that the first section of language instructional techniques in the book was about natural and authentic experiences to support language intent. I also think, as McAnally said, that teachers often tend to support the correct "adult form" of sentences/communication as opposed to letting children communicate in a way that is appropriate for them (yes, even including their slang...kids these days). Easterbrooks said that "[i]f intent is the heart of communication, then students must be given important reasons for wanting to communicate." That is totally something I can get behind.

Growing up with deaf family members, I've seen how much more quickly my hearing cousins pick up sign language when it is relevant to the things they want to talk about, as opposed to something they just "should learn." While learning signs related to emergencies or accidents can be super, super important (and I'm not saying that it isn't), it tends to be much easier to retain signs that are related to things you personally are interested in (rockets, cars, etc. for example). Also, in nannying for a family that wanted to learn signs to help in those moments that their deaf son wasn't wearing his cochlears (like bath time), the kids were much more interested in learning signs for animals or things that related to their interests than learning bath signs (like "no splashing" or "wait").

Authenticity is wildly important when teaching languages. Even though emergency signs and bath times signs have a time and a place and a real-world application, authenticity is not the only thing that is important. So in exchange for them remembering the necessary signs for those times, I would teach them (there were 3 kids) each one sign they really wanted to know. I loved the way they would sit and negotiate it all out ("Well...we all want to know these two signs. What other sign would you guys want to ask about? Okay, you ask her about this sign, and I'll ask about that one, and you do the last one.") Kids need that interest-factor to play a part, too. Because their interests are very real to them, I think teaching signs that are both authentic and interesting can be a good way to build language (and also to use as bribes for teaching the other stuff). That's just my experience and what I've learned from readings in the past, however. What do you think?

Siegel + Monikowski

The beginning of the Monikowski article had me thinking about the things I witnessed in the classroom recently. For the first time ever, I have a practicum with elementary aged students. Even though I nanny and babysit for deaf and hard of hearing kids, seeing them in a school setting is completely different. I've previously only been in the middle school at TSD, so seeing the jump in maturity even from 5th to 6th grade is mind-boggling. I've noticed that, especially in elementary school, the students seem to talk at one another more than they talk to or talk with one another. I guess this is the incidental information that hearing kids pick up in classrooms typically? (Although, I'll be honest, I hear hearing kids talking at each other pretty frequently at that age, too.)

For basically the rest of the reading, I felt like Monikowski was very negatively criticizing interpreter's in a classroom. One example that really left a bad taste in my mouth was her claim that interpreters lack ASL skills. While this is definitely, absolutely, completely true of some interpreters, that seems to be a big, bold, blanket claim that isn't true of most interpreters (or maybe I've just been fortunate to witness some really great interpreters). Also, Monikowski cites a study (Johnson, 1991) that it is "perhaps impossible for a deaf person to visually attend to more than one thing at a time." I feel like I learned exactly the opposite thing -- that people who are DHH tend to be better at visually attending to multiple things? Did I misunderstand something somewhere? Regardless, reading this article made me feel very defensive of my friends who either are or are studying to be interpreters. Also, I think that "mere interpreters" should be language models, no? I generally feel like everyone who can be, should be a language model to a child trying to learn any language. Maybe they shouldn't be the primary language model, but there are plenty of opportunities for DHH children to acquire language all the time, not just spontaneously (or just formally).

I was also really defensive of the view that Monikowski seems to take of deaf children. The interpreter is "forced" to make a decision to interpret for one person during a group discussion (which was pretty easily be remedied by asking children to take turns when talking and let people get a full thought out before speaking, which is not only good manners to be teaching children in the first place, but also what children cannot start learning early enough), and then from that decision, the deaf child can't make his or her own opinions? I just don't understand that thought process, I guess.

I did agree with most of what Monikowski said about ASL, however, and I understand the push for a bilingual education (and agree with most of it). I agree the deaf children deserve better than only signed English systems (which are pretty impossible to learn and comprehend sometimes), and that they deserve real language (ASL). I just don't think Monikowski's points were made very effectively.

I definitely agreed more with Siegel's sentiments. I've always wondered why the LRE mandate seemed to skip over communication. Personally, I would much prefer to be in a space where I could communicate with everyone with fewer problems than in a space where I could communicate only with a select few, or maybe only through someone like an interpreter. This always makes me remember one of my best friends from middle school. She was deaf and in my very first class in middle school. I grew up with deaf family, so when I saw her signing with an interpreter, I went up and introduced myself in ASL. She then introduced herself and also the other boy who was deaf with her and her interpreter (whom I hadn't noticed). That was the start of one of my favorite friendships. I didn't offer to introduce her to anyone else, I only interpreted for her when asked, and I tried my hardest to teach some of my other friends how to sign with us. (Basically, I wasn't about to make it easy for anyone who wanted to ask her questions through me. I was even kind of a huge jerk about it.)

I'm not really sure what to say specifically about the Siegel reading. I agree that the American educational system for DHH students must and can become communication driven. That is something I just fundamentally, as a human person, agree with. I think all of the supporting points made were well-founded, too. It was nice to read after that Monikowski article. (HA)

Week 5 - Easterbrooks + Baker

I saw that we were reading about assessment and groaned inwardly, a little. However, I found this book not only to be readable, but also that it takes a much more objective approach instead of a subjective approach. I agreed with the statement that "the most important reason for testing is to decide what to teach." I felt like all the information provided (such as gathering as much information you can in order to narrow or limit the skills you, as a teacher, are testing/assessing) was highly relevant. As a student in a semester with tons of reading required, I liked that it didn't seem to ramble on and on and on about it, either. The authors deliver the information in a really direct way that appeals to my inner scientist. Once again, the tables and appendices were super helpful in my organization of the information given.

I also really liked that the authors stated that they feel "the question should not be about which philosophy to use but about a particular student's style" in understanding and communicating information, basically, and choosing what best matches that student's style individually. I literally could not have said this better myself. I also liked how directly the authors laid out the issues in assessing DHH students. One of the issues was the lack of easily administered tests, but it was cited from 1995 (which was 20 years ago now, yikes). I feel as if there still aren't many of those easily administered tests, but isn't that something that's getting better? Or at least that people (general people, test makers or whoever) are working towards? And related to this, I don't think I realized how many different ways there are to assess language formally and informally. I knew of some of the ways mentioned in the book and could probably have spouted them off directly, but I don't know that I really considered things like the ILSA (Interpersonal Language Skills Assessment). Like many of the people I know in the deaf ed field (although certainly not all of them), I like portfolio style assessments the best, I think, for informal assessment the best. I feel like it's the most genuine and honest way to look at how the student is doing, because it provides tangible evidence for what and how the student is doing in the classroom itself.

And as far as the second section of readings, the planning language instruction and tons of ideas for facilitating the instruction, I can sum up my feelings and thoughts about it in one word: helpful. Incredibly helpful. Especially since some of the ideas were things I hadn't seen or considered before, like the example for production (giving a child a box of interesting items and asking for clues). It seems like a really fun way to get children interested and involved (and subsequently, ideally, to communicate). I think that since I want to teach science, that specifically would be a good (and relatively easy) thing to implement to help me elicit language from my students.

Week 4 - McAnally + Schirmer

The McAnally article started with all the information about how a child's acquisition of language should be meaningful and natural, and it reminded me of some theories of language learning that are more like drills and non-meaningful repetitions. That, in turn, made me think of the ways that some people teach any student language - by following one person's model exactly. There are so many elements of language that I think would be almost impossible to cover by only focusing on one "main" aspect of language. I also agreed with the statement that many teachers often teach the correct "adult model of a sentence," instead of allowing children to be children, and follow a sentence model that is appropriate for them.

I think, generally and broadly speaking, I agreed with most of the principles for language learning, but when broken down to specifics, there were parts of all of these things that I did not totally agree with (but isn't that always the way?). I did like the "principles in practice" part of the article though, because I think it helped me understand exactly how to apply the principles in more direct ways, instead of me assuming that I got it and attempting to think about implementing those principles in a way that is completely not what was intended. I also really enjoyed reading the different models, and I think I personally find the alternative model to be most beneficial from my experience with children. Asking more questions to get more information from children of any age, whether they are forming coherent sentences or babbling in "baby talk," can really elicit language production when done appropriately.

Overall, the first part of the Schirmer reading (the one that started on p. 8) really helped me understand all the MLU information better (because I don't think I walked out of 415 with much of that knowledge). I also really enjoyed reading about how language develops in a more in-depth way, and I am glad to have the charts from that reading in my possession now (like the examples of the different semantic categories). I think that will make it easier for me to speak more professionally about my students' language skills, especially when setting language goals in IEP meetings. Also, and kind of randomly, I've always found Vygotsky's theory of inner speech to be fascinating. I definitely think it holds more truth than Piaget's ego-centric speech (which I often forget about because I find it a relatively inaccurate belief). I would love to see some research on "inner sign." Maybe someday! And the last section of the Schirmer reading (from the other set of pages) was another resource I'm glad to have in my possession, but I do think, to really understand it, I would need to see examples and practice doing it. That must be the kinesthetic learner in me!