Jpurnal 7

Journal 7

July 25, 2007

Lincoln Middle School: Two Excellent Teachers

Today we visited Lincoln Middle School. We were divided into two groups and observed the teaching of the math and English classes.

First, we went to Mr. James Dahlgren’s English class. There were 14 students in his class. On the black board, he clearly wrote down today’s objectives and agenda. He separated his students into two groups. The students in the first group were busy working on the computer program. Every student had to keep a record of the time spent on the game. The computer program is graphically cute and lovely, so the students paid a lot of attention to work out the game. The other group sitting by Mr. Dahlgren discussed the storybook they read. Most of the students spoke Spanish. They just started to learn English. Even an easy conversation was a challenge to them. During the discussion, some of them answered the teacher’s question in their mother tongue. To my surprise, Mr. Dahlgren could understand the students to some extent, so he could communicate with them. He answered students’ questions in English, but he did not correct students’ mistakes immediately.

Next, we visited Mr. Matt Tosiello’s math class. He is a very active and energetic teacher. He can speak Spanish, French, Japanese, and write some Chinese words. He is interested in the Asian culture. He gave the students a warm-up math problem to solve. Two teacher assistants helped Mr.T (His students nicknamed him so) translating English into the language the students could understand, which was of great help to students’ learning. Mr.T explained that some students came from the working class family and they even didn’t go to school in their home country. They were forced to leave the school to make a living by themselves. Mr. T paid a lot of patience to help his students to understand the basic concepts of geometric shapes. How lucky the students are!

I do hope I can help my students to learn English well as the two teachers do. Visiting Lincoln School encourages me to have a more open mind to accept the students of different backgrounds.