Diversity Conference

Before this conference I was actually already thinking about becoming an ELL teacher. For me, this conference only made me want to do it more. I really enjoyed how the panel answered questions, and how they would bounce ideas and answers off of one another. However, I wish we had gotten to ask our own questions instead of them answering questions that were already prepared. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot from this conference that will be useful even in a general education classroom.

For the most part a lot of what they had to say seemed the common sense. For example, they said you should understand where your kids came from, you should use a lot of visuals, they’re going to meet standards in different ways, etc. What I really found interesting was when they mentioned that if those students don’t know how to act socially they’re probably not going to thrive academically. If you think about this it makes complete sense because if they’re cut off socially they’re going to have a hard time even asking the teacher a question in class. A couple of things that I enjoyed most about the conversation was when they talked about parent meetings and resources for the classroom. The conversation about parents was interesting because, even more so than other students, you need to have good communication with ELL students’ parents. It was great to hear about how some of those parent meeting go, and it was really interesting to even hear the administration side of things. Lastly, I enjoyed hearing about the different resources for the classroom because they can be used in both an ELL classroom and a general education classroom. I made sure to make note of all of them because I’m always looking for new ideas now.