MVP 2: Respond to “Learning to describe”

In the article, “Learning to describe”, I learned that “To describe teachers me that the subject of my attention always exceeds what I can see”. As educator, the quote from the article reminds me of that that we need to be subjective to observe and understand our students. Last semester, I was doing internship in a Kindergarten. It was an ESL class. Students with various cultural backgrounds, learning abilities, and personalities were brought to a big class. At the beginning when the kids do not know English, they quietly to observe and pick up words. Interesting thing was even though they did not really know English; they still tried to raise hands and answer questions, because when they saw the other kids actively engaging in the class, they did not want to be left out. They joined in even they did not know the answer. What the teacher thought was the kids needed a chance to talk. When the kids answered question, the teacher just let them talk even the answers were unrelated. As the time went by, they got used to speaking English in front of class. After a semester, we could not even stop them talking. Relating back to the quote, my experience shows that to describe teaches us to have a subjective view to think about students’ situation. We do not rush to judge or make conclusion of our students. We need pay attention to them. We have to give them time to adjust the environment and fully present themselves. As educators, we know our students and understand their behavior by their cultural backgrounds. We become observers to guide our students construct idea and planers to plan out effective activity to motivate students participate in class.