Transnational and Community Literacies for Teachers

As an Elementary Education major with no prior knowledge on English-language learners (ELLs), I was intrigued by this article and everything it has to offer. While I am aware of the diversity of students among schools in our country, I was in the dark about how teachers go about teaching children who are so foreign to not only our language, but our customs and ways of life as well. I liked how the article started out with the basics, describing in stages everything there is to know about this issue for people like me who are just  beginning to learn its importance. As a teacher, it gave me ideas for when I have a student of different ethnicity or culture in my classroom: How to get them to open up, how I can learn from them, how I can get them interested in our culture while still learning about theirs, and how I can encourage them to learn about our ideas while at the same time incorporating theirs. At the same time, I was discouraged that some teachers are too scared or reserved to go out into their neighborhoods or communities to research their way of life. As I learned in the Student Teaching Options meeting today, administrators look for diversity in teachers, determination to go above and beyond to look at education from many points of view. For example, a principal is more likely to pull an application of a student who traveled to England to student teach as opposed to someone who student taught here in Illinois. The important thing about teaching is that you explore the different ways to teach and learn because there are so many changing ideologies!