Welcome In The Classroom Analysis

A twelve-year old girl sits in the classroom; the buzz of many voices whirls around her and a feeling of helplessness and confusion overwhelms her. Everywhere she looks, she sees words written that she cannot read and hears words spoken that she cannot understand. She wants to connect to the people around her and make new friends, but she cannot communicate her thoughts out loud. This girl is experiencing life as an English language learner, who has recently immigrated to America. There are millions of such students in the United States at this very moment, and many of them feel completely lost and confused in their new classroom environment. These students often struggle with feeling out of place in their classroom. Many of these students also fall behind in their education due to the struggle to understand a completely new language. What can teachers do to help these students feel welcome in the …show more content…
Teachers must show that they value the different worldviews of their students and value their unique traits as an individual from a minority culture (Introduction to Multicultural Education, 2010). This also includes helping these students to learn a new language while still maintaining their first language. According to Sheltered Content Instruction: Teaching English Learners with Diverse Abilities, a teacher’s role involves “helping individuals to become academically successful in English while maintaining their first language (Echevarría & Graves, 2010, p. 3).” There are many ways that teachers can show they value a student’s first language, such as learning phrases to use in conversation with that student, labeling classroom materials in both English and their language, and providing written instructions in both languages (Fitzell,