I find myself constantly reading material with the bias of an ELL teacher. This particular article was no different. In fact, I believe my ELL background made the information clear and believable in a way it may not have been otherwise. I find myself often wondering how it would be best to integrate ELL students into the classroom. This article focuses on the use of democratic discussion in the classroom. It touts an inclusive atmosphere and one which respects diversity. This is one of the tantamount aspects of ELL integration in a general ed classroom. I will discuss two specific examples of this here, though there are many other important points that have been made within the article.
The first point regards a quote that the authors used in Chapter 1 by Richard Bernstein. "One accepts the fallibility of all inquiry ... One accepts the multiplicity of the perspectives and interpretation. One rejects the quest for certainty, the craving for absolutes, and the idea of the totality in which all differences are finally reconciled. But such pluralism demands an openness to what is different and other, a willingness to risk one's pre-judgments, seeking for common ground without any guarantees that it will be found. It demands - and it is a strenuous demand - that one tries to be responsive to the claims of the other." This quote highlights one of the hopes and one of the greatest threats to the classroom discussion. The hope is that the students will be able to listen attentively to the thoughts and opinions of others. That they will work to understand these other perspectives which may counter their own. The hope is that through discussion students will be able to thread these differences together into some form of common ground and yet still be able to accept that common ground may not be possible. With regards to ELL students this can be intensely more difficult. There can be such vast cultural differences that they use of a single word can mean something completely different between two or more people. There is more hope that the students will work to find understanding and common ground even in the vocabulary that is being used. Often this leads to the possibility of the greatest threat which I mentioned earlier. And that is the inability of students to accept another's background and claims, or at least the inability to try to understand. There is such a history in the world of segregation and injustice that finding the right balance within a classroom, the kind of balance that allows students to feel comfortable sharing and intellectually critiquing each other, can be a very difficult task. It is a threat which has no hint of dissipating within the near future of education. This does not mean that a teacher should give up on discussion, nor does it mean that even if the first few discussions crash down in flames that students cannot rise from those ashes and learn to collaborate in the future.
The second point is in Chapter 2 and builds in the quote from Chapter 1. "There is nothing like students' hearing from each other's lips the diversity of interpretations that can be made of the same apparently objective facts or the same apparently obvious meanings. It's much harder for learners to ignore views that are contrary to their own if they're expressed spontaneously by their peers rather than discovered in a text or mediated through a lecturer's words." When students are exposed to new ideas, new cultures, new experiences, they can firmly latch on to their past knowledge and ideals for a safety net. The unknown is a frightening place to venture into. ELL students are treading water in the unknown on a daily basis. They might read their text books or listen to lectures and believe they are understanding the material. All students have a cultural bias that they are applying to material being learned. This can be helpful and also harmful in the educational environment. Democratic discussion allows these perspectives to be shared. The quote used here I chose specifically because of the words 'apparently' and 'spontaneously.' With a bias of any sort, the information a person gathers is fit into existing models in the mind. If the information is read or copied from a lecture, there is no chance for those models to grow. With discussion the apparently obvious ideas for one student may not be the same for other. And when those new ideas are spontaneously presented then the student does not have the time to work it into the pre-existing model. New understandings can grow from new perspectives, if the students are willing to learn. And the hope, at least for me, is that if students are nudged to grow and understand then acceptance of those who are different should not be far behind.
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