Chris and his family moved to Alabama from Mexico when he was a baby. Besides struggling with English, he is a fairly typical 6 year old who enjoys laughing and playing with his friends. Even though Chris is a happy child who desires to do well, he has a hard time understanding English. Because he is an English Language Learner, he struggled through the first grade. He is now attending summer school and is being retained in the first grade for next year.
I am a lab student in Chris’s summer school class. I enjoy working with him because he is so joyful. However, it seems that he struggles to understand what is being said. When I ask him a question he usually gives me a blank stare. If he catches on that I am asking a question, he usually says something random that has nothing to do with my question. A perfect example of this is a day when we were listening for rhyming words. At first, the teacher said two words and asked the students if they rhymed; they answered yes or no. Then, the teacher went around the circle and gave each child a word and they were to come up with a rhyme. When she got to Chris, the teacher said, “What is a word that rhymes with sock?” He said “Yes,” as if saying, “Yes, the words rhyme.” The teacher had only given him one word though. He did not understand the directions, so he went back to the last thing he remembered.
Chris becomes discouraged very easily. When he realizes he doesn’t understand something, he reverts to acting very silly. He covers his face with his hands, makes funny faces, or looks away as if looking for something to distract him. Sometimes, he wiggles in his seat, changes the subject, and even distracts the students around him. One day when he was being particularly silly, I told him that horses used blinders to keep them focused; so in the same way, when he starts feeling silly he needs to put his blinders on. So now, whenever he starts disrupting I will tell him to put on his blinders. He will put his little hands up next to his face and in his cute little Spanish accent, “Okay.” Then he will do his best to get back on task. A few days later, during a different rhyming activity the same thing happened. I said, “I have a secret word in my head. It starts with P and rhymes with mat. What is it?” The other students caught on very quickly, but he didn’t understand. After guessing a few times, he became discouraged and quit trying. He looked around the room; he made silly faces, and then started talking about something else. I tried rewording my question and giving him hints. He still didn’t understand.
That same day, his mother was late picking him up. We called her cell phone and her voicemail was in Spanish. We asked Chris if he spoke Spanish at home, and he said no. However, I think he misunderstood the question. At school, he talks in very short, broken sentences. It is often hard to understand him. I feel that if he spoke primarily English at home, it would not be so difficult for him to speak and understand it at school. My thoughts were confirmed when his mother finally came. She herself did not speak very much English. When she was spoken to, she simply nodded and waved with a smile on her face. In my past experiences with non English speakers, that is there way of being polite when they don’t understand you.
This child simply does not understand the language and he receives no reinforcement at home. His coping mechanism is being silly and being off task. There are two problems at hand. The first being, how do you teach him in a way he understands? The second being, how do you keep him from distracting his classmates in the mean time?
Spanish-Face image found at: <http://vivirlatino.com/i/2009/01/face-spanish.gif>
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