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Emilee Rodriguez

Jenny Ahn

Tch_Lrn 401

14 December 2023

Reflection #5: Competency 4K

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try as teachers, there are always going to be ways we

can improve upon the experience of our students, whether it be modifying a lesson plan,

changing an issue in the classroom, working together with other staff to fix an issue at the

school-level, or working with community members to make changes to the community as a

whole. There are so many factors that affect our student’s educational opportunities and their

ability to learn unhindered, and MLLs can face many more challenges in their environment that

can make them feel isolated, unwelcome, incapable, or even unsafe – all of which are huge

barriers to learning, especially when MLLs have so much more learning to focus on with

acquiring a new language. Some of these challenges can include misconceptions about MLLs

based on this English proficiency, race, or ethnicity, socioeconomic status, citizenship status, and

many more. It can also mean having teachers who don’t consider their culturally and

linguistically diverse students when planning routines, activities, or their classroom environment.

As teachers, we should strive to constantly analyze the experiences of our students from their

eyes to get a better idea of what works well and what doesn’t.

There are multiple assignments that include these ideas in their planning and execution.

One is a paper I wrote for my honors English course. This paper focuses on the experiences of

diverse student populations and how zero-tolerance policies at school disproportionately affect

low-income, culturally diverse students. This not only criminalizes normal, appropriate juvenile
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behavior for these students (changing the entire trajectory of their lives, usually for the worse),

but it creates a community, school, and classroom environment that is unsafe, unwelcoming, and

culturally unresponsive to diverse student populations, including immigrants and refugees, who

may be more likely to show “insubordination” through simple cultural differences, and thus be

punished disproportionately by their school. I have also done an interview and another research

paper analyzing the experience of MLLs in my community, which can be seen in my NNES

Student Interview Paper and my Honors 380 Final Paper. Both of these papers go over the

experiences of MLLs in the schools where I went growing up in Bakersfield, CA. I interviewed a

close friend of mine to see how her educational experiences differed from mine and to get a feel

for what barriers she had to face, which included living in a household where she was one of

only two English speakers. This meant that school communications weren’t accessible to her

parents, and she would often have to be a translator for phone calls to the bank and other

government institutions.

From the activities that we’ve done together, I think it’s important to get an idea of the

student’s background experiences and what their current home life is like. This gives us an idea

of how we can help the student feel more welcome in our community. These insights are also

important when planning academics, as if a student’s needs aren’t being met, you shouldn’t even

consider trying to teach them math until they are sufficiently cared for – this is where community

resources come into play! Our activities have also been eye-opening to the policies and common

practices that disadvantage students today, as well as the lawsuits that gave MLLs the rights that

they have now to ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes again.

When students have teachers that are cognizant of the experiences of their diverse

students, they have a place where they can be heard and understood. It creates a safe learning
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environment that encourages students to succeed, rather than waiting for them to fail. Beyond the

classroom, it enables the teachers to connect with community resources to keep in their back

pocket if a student or their families need support. If a teacher doesn’t know the struggles their

students and their families face, they won’t be able to be on the lookout for ways to help them

until it’s already a big issue.

Knowing what I know now, I’ll feel even more justified taking the time to get to know

my students and take any opportunity I can to connect with them. Talking to students gives me

insight on how they see the world and what’s going on in their interactions with others. Of

course, rapport is an important part of any teacher’s toolkit, but it’s hard to make positive

changes if you don’t know what the students want to change – it’s hard to know that student’s

families are having trouble due to languages barriers if you don’t talk to your students enough to

give them the opportunity to tell you about it. This also reinforces my emphasis on the

importance of community in the classroom – not just in the sense of creating a classroom

community but instilling a sense of community in your students to enable them to thrive outside

of the classroom. There are lots of opportunities to involve your students in civics and advocacy,

and if your students notice barriers, they can discuss them and think of creative solutions that

point adults in the right direction for the changes that need to be made.