This weekend I went to the annual NNETESOL (Northern New England TESOL) conference, which is always full of great workshops to choose from.
The keynote speaker talked about growth mindset, a topic that is such an important factor in learning a language. One workshop shared instant scratch quizzes and their benefits and rewards to teaching ESL students. Another one discussed how cultural gender roles in the classroom.
As if by divine providence, not one but TWO of the workshops at the conference today were conducted on teaching SLIFE students! I feel like I received the answers I had been seeking for a long time!
Each of the above topics deserves a separate blog post. However, today my main focus will be on teaching students with limited and/or interrupted formal education (SLIFE).
I am seeing such a need and such lack of practical ways of how to teach this unique group of students that I am beyond excited to share what I’ve learned.
In my district, we do not have many SLIFE students. But over the past couple of years, we have received a few that have made all the teachers seriously reevaluate what they know.
In this blog post, I will break down three things that I took away from these workshops and will share practical advice on how you can help your SLIFE students – no matter how many you have – in the (mainstream) classroom.
Understanding our SLIFE students’ world
Who are SLIFE students?
More often than not, students with limited or interrupted education are refugees from countries that are no longer safe to reside in. They may have lived in refugee camps, where access to education was limited or non-existent. They may have never gone to school. Or they may have missed 6 months, a year or two of school.
They can also be students from unfortunate family situations in other countries that are not at war or other political turmoil, where going to school was not an option or a possibility.
In any case, their world is radically different than the one they enter when they come to school in the United States.
How do SLIFE students learn?
When we get a new student, who has limited or no formal education, especially when they are in their teens and older, we naturally wonder about how we can help them, where we can meet them education-wise, and where we can even begin.
The workshop answered these questions beautifully. During it, the presenters Beth Evans, ESL teacher from Burlington, VT and Dr. Helaine Marshall, Long Island University-Hudson, introduced their Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm instructional approach (MALP). The presenters broke down in simple terms what we should expect from SLIFE students and how we can adapt our teaching to help them.
They pointed out that there are two “worlds”, if you will: that of the SLIFE students and that of the expectations in the U.S. schools. They then went on to describe how those two worlds can easily collide because they both are radically different. And finally, they introduced three ways we can help SLIFE students meet the expectations.
The three ways are: accepting the current situation, combining processes and focusing on new activities.
How does this look in real life? 3 things to keep in mind
What is important to SLIFE students vs. the U.S. school expectations
When we think about accepting learning conditions, we have to meet the student where they are at the moment they arrive in our classroom. That is, a student with limited and/or interrupted schooling experience knows their community and culture and is looking for immediate relevance to their world in what they are learning. How does what they are learning apply to their life? How can they use this information and share it? They need to feel connected and by acknowledging this, we allow them to feel valued and buy into their own learning.
By contrast, a U.S. school places value on the subject relevance in the future. For example, information and credits that are necessary for one to gather so they can go to college some time in the future, or pass a unit test, or pass SAT. This makes no sense to a SLIFE student because they do not see how this can help them now.
Individualism vs. collectivism
SLIFE students come from backgrounds where shared responsibility and collectivistic culture are valued over individual achievement. However, when they start going to school in the U.S. individualism is expected: students are responsible for their own work and even if they work in groups, they are assessed for their individual performance.
Practical vs. academic
Remember I mentioned immediate relevance? This includes learning in ways that are practical and students can easily implement them right away (think of constructing, fixing, etc.) But in the Western world, critical thinking and problem-solving are valued and sought after.
When they enter U.S. schools, SLIFE students are required to deal with information that is decontextualized (think social studies assignments, science experiments, etc.) and require academic thinking skills in English.
While these pose difficulties due to the fact that their immediate relevance may not be clearly seen, it is important to help SLIFE students learn this way.
Here is where the tips for teachers come in.
Culturally responsive teaching for SLIFE students
Based on the above information, there is a way to reach our SLIFE students. As with everything in life, when you give a little, you get a lot. What I mean by that is what if we took part of their world – what is familiar to them – and part of our Western world and melded the two together?
We can take something that is immediately relevant to them, something they already understand and something that helps them feel connected. We can then work with it through both shared responsibility (group work, discussions – oral) and individual work (writing sentences, recording own story).
This can be further developed by using simple and familiar language to help them learn new processes and concepts which are required in an academic setting.
To make break it down even more, here are some of the things you can try in the classroom.
Dos and Don’ts for teaching SLIFE – 5 tips
- Do use lots of realia. This is in line with the immediate relevance aspect of learning. Don’t use worksheets. They are decontextualized and meaningless to SLIFE students. At least until they get the “why” of it all.
- Do not ask them to raise their hand and put them on the spot. They are there but not necessarily following your teaching the way you think they are. In addition, putting them on the spot does not promote learning, especially if the student cannot fully follow the class.
- Avoid true/false-type of statements. They make no sense to a SLIFE. Why would you give me a statement that is false when you can teach me the concept and I will do my best to get it?
- Do break down complex tasks. Look at the language of the task (write, read, discuss). Look at the required vocabulary (cell (science), revolution (history), predicate (language arts). Examine the content of the task (what does the student need to know prior to proceeding with the actual task?). Allow the students to use simple everyday language but teach them the process (a lab write-up, a paragraph structure)
- Meet them in the middle. Remember the three things you can do: work with what is familiar to them, allow for collaborative learning to get to individual accountability and focus on new activities in familiar language and content.
- Finally, never assume. It is difficult for us to know exactly what their world is, but it is important for us to meet them where they are. Right now.
For more information, teaching resources and lesson checklists visit MALP education website.
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