“Voices from the
Past” from ABC News’ Nightline (1999)
Detail your
personal review and reflection, and not the expectation from your professor
that you can recount your experience through the lens of a
psycholinguist. Remember: There is a possibility that a population
of your learners may have/continue to experience post-traumatic stress,
internment, displacement, and/or alienation before entering your
classroom. It is important that you have a space to reflect upon this in
your class assignments, and consider what steps you may take in engaging
students with an array of talents and challenges.
At first, I
really pondered the relevance of this assignment to ESL testing and assessment,
however, with more research came the concept from this assignment of listening
interpretation exercise really hit home.
Considering my
job-teaching students with Autism, ASD, the topic of an individual learner
experience, past and present, outside of the classroom has always intrigued me.
As a teacher, I always think about what has happened in a student’s life before
I met them, what is currently happening, and what will happen when they arrive
home?
I do not think we
will ever really know every situation a student has gone through that affects
their learning process that would be too overwhelming. The thought of post-traumatic
stress, internment, displacement, and/or alienation before entering a classroom
and the effects these situations have on a student’s behavior can directly
affect student-learning abilities.
So, when I listened
to the audio recordings, and since this assignment is a reflection on how to
engage students with an array of talents and challenges, I felt I could best
apply my experience working at the Joshua School, with students 16-18 diagnosed
with ASD. The demographic of students I work with are on what many would call
the “lower functioning end of the Autism spectrum.” I wanted to use two
students as examples, to answer the question presented: How to gage learner
background experiences, and engage learner in their talents with challenges?
So here we go:
Student A, is
mostly non-verbal, not because he cannot speak, but because he depends so much
on verbal or written scripts from people he communicates with. For example,
helping this student express his likes and dislikes. Once I watched him drink
black coffee, in which his distressed facial expression indicated this student
does not like the black coffee, but when we asked him if he likes black coffee he
replied “yes,” with deepened, I don’t like this intonation. Our hypothesis for
the disconnect in his real feelings on whether he likes something or not,
versus his verbal answer, is that he learned to respond to how his parent or
teacher or peer is responding, or with a response that is favorable to teacher,
parent, or peer. We realize he has an acute ability to pick up non-verbal
prompts that are reflected by the response of the person in the conversation, or
asking him the question.
What does this
mean for his engagement in talents and activities, with his level of language?
Well, first my team thinks about what is most beneficial for student? He
doesn’t have to socialize. Except, we want him to be able to independently
express his wants and needs, likes, and dislikes. We want him t be able to
express, “I do not like coffee.” So for him to engage with people with his
level of language acquisition we found reading and typing is the best way to
receive a response that is not persuaded by nonverbal language of another
person, and that picking up on nonverbal queues is a strength in language
development that we can apply in appropriate social settings. Writing questions and giving choices is also,
very helpful to student A. For social situations, were student is expected to
converse, we help him by writing out scripts. We use different fronts to
queues, when to ask a question, and when to response to a question. This helps
student become independent in social situations, like at a dinner with friend,
or talking to a peer.
Student B, is
Hispanic, and has a twin brother, also diagnosed with ASD. He is very verbal,
however his grammar and clarity is hard to understand, especially for those who
are just meeting him. He speaks very fast and sometimes incoherently. The
unusual part is that he does not even speak to his twin brother in verbal
language, but through sounds and noises. We know they’re communicating because
they organize themselves to meet at a certain area, or change body positions,
or just through synchronized laughter. Student B, is not interested in social
conversations. However, he knows the correct response because of scripts he has
practice over the years. If he does not want to be spoken too, he says, “can
you please stop talking to me,” which he says often.
The challenge
here, to benefit his future, is helping him become independent at a job. His
conversation with supervisors, who are not trained with his behavior program,
or Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) knowledge, is one of the biggest obstacles. Questions
on how can we help this student B be successful working with an array of people
who do not know his disabilities, quarks, or environmental needs? Because it would be impossible educate every
person we meet, to be ABA professional, we help student B cope, and work
through day-to-day challenges in community settings.
The team I work
with is, also, assisting in him building the language that will more
appropriately help him acquire his needs, in language that is easy for people
to understand. Student B is most definitely talented, he is great with detail,
he learns mechanics so quickly, and he is great with routine. These are his
strengths.
Student B is
from a low-income, underserved, immigrant community, located in north Denver.
To me, he exemplifies student adversity. He has cognitive learning disabilities,
and because of his home life and his school life he has learn two different
behaviors and functional language. At school, calm voice, work to get rewards.
At home, loud vocals, erratic behavior to get attention, to get what he wants. Sidenote, he doesn’t understand that concept
that either behavior is wrong or right.
I bring these
two students up because I can relate their stories to the question Module 5
asks about engaging students with language challenges. I cannot as easily relate the stories of
learners with post-traumatic stress, interment, and alienation. However, the
stories of the “Voices from the Days of Slavery,” specifically, Susan A.
Quall’s voice recording from 1932 is relatable to hearing expressive language
to describe an experience from someone with “broken” English.
I had to read
the text because the audio was so old and crackly, but when listening to audio,
I could hear the change in prosody in her voice as she answered questions and
spoke of challenging situations, the ones that “bother [her] everynight.” I,
specifically, chose this audio recording because I used to live on John Island,
SC, so I know the rich Gullah culture that reside in that areas of the country.
However, upon reading the transcription of the audio, I put together a
despairing story of abuse, sexism, racism, and rape.
So, I imagine,
today, if I had a group of refugee students from Syria, with traumatic
experiences, like witnessing death, violence, and whatever horrible things that
are occurring in the area of the World they are from, I would of course approach
their lesson planning in a way that acknowledges their past experiences, and
help them learn expressive language techniques. For this, there are some
methods would include, visuals, social stories, and roll modeling
feelings.
At the school I
currently work at, The Joshua School, understanding emotions is a huge part of
helping students reach cognitive learning goals. If a student can put language
with their emotional state, then they can express themselves better. By
expressing themselves to others better, more compassion and understanding can
occur.
Much like
hearing Susan A. Qualls voice (1932, May 16), we as listeners become more aware
of the situation she experienced, although the audio is crackled and hard to
hear, listeners can hear the sadness in her voice when she speaks of, “How you
have to make him do it. You have to talk [sweet (?)] to him,” You can hear
despair in her voice as she describes the “man who worry me every night,”
Quall, Voices from the Days of Slavery.
I think the most
important aspect to take away from this assignment, is listening to the student
speak, and encouraging them to speak, read and write, no matter their level of
language about feelings and experiences. Most of my students cannot describe
their home life, or even what they like and dislike, but we still encourage
them in as many different approaches as we can, until one day something’s
works, or a concept “clicks,” or just becomes a memorized script.
Teachers may
never know what a student has truly experienced in their life, trauma, tragedy,
abuse, especially if they do not have the language to describe it, but as long
as there is genuine listening, compassion, and tolerance for learners, we will
learn the best ways to teach them the language they need to survive, and maybe
one day describe their individual experiences, like Susan A. Quall voice has
done.
Citation:
Voices from the
Days of Slavery. (1932, May 16). Retrieved November 21, 2015, from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/index.html
“Voices from the Past” from ABC News’ Nightline (1999) https://usfca.instructure.com/courses/1555445/assignments/6520181#submit
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