Hi Bahiyi, One of the most rewarding years I have ever had as a teacher was in a pre-k class. I was a teacher of an immersion program which meant I and only a few of the students spoke English. The other children were from France, Spain, Korea, China, Japan, Columbia, and Bolivia. It was my job to get the kids ready for kindergarten in which only English was spoken. This particular pre-k was under the umbrella of the public school system and received district monies (quite an innovative idea back in the day ). Most of the families lived in a low socio-economic part of town and all were on reduced lunch and early breakfast. Anyway, since no one could understand anyone.... (parents/school included) I decided to tell family stories with lots of pictures and a few words that later grew into simple English sentences . In turn,parents and sometimes interpreters would read a story about an event in their family that was dictated to them by their kids. The kids did the illustrations and the parents wrote a few words in their native language. I would write a few English words underneath. We read the words in both languages. Parents and kids learned together...as I did. We had so much fun and we all learned a great deal about each other's culture. There were stories about a totally immersed baptism, a house boat in China, a mountain house with iron knockers in Bolivia where extended families would cook in a communal pot... special holidays and food and dress that accompanied that holiday... I even learned how to play a Korean game of stickball that was played in the streets with a stick and folded pieces of paper that soared higher than any baseball I could hit! (Kids just speak in kid language to each other and in ways that it is so intuitive ... its easy to understand.. even for an adult.) Because the kids dictated their favorite memories of their native country , all our stories were very developmentally appropriate. We not only learned about each other, and other cultures, we learned language and even how to read some translations. Later, the stories evolved into language experience type writing that involved our classroom adventures. It was really something... but I think it was so successful because we didn't approach ESL from a deficit but from a wealth .... of family knowledge.... rich in culture and it was the hook into English...and in your case reading and writing. Our stories became so popular they were later housed in the public library for town kids to read and appreciate cultural diversity. It was here that I learned that family is a child's first teacher and I have since then always included families in, my teaching. Even though I teach in a highly competitive and affluent district today, I still hold family workshops once a month where families learn along with their kids some aspect of our reading, writing, or math workshop, ... even science! I still do family stories ... coauthorship on that level is awesome. I think the key is respect for diversity... it sure opened my mind to an untapped resource ... parents and the extended family.
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