The lesson I taught while reading aloud the Name Jar book by Yangsook Choi.
Interestingly, I have never thought about my identity before moving to the United States. It is just you feel how you are different when you move here. I was different in my home country too but did not even think about various modalities and aspects of my personality. I mean name, language, gender, culture, and ethnicity.
Now, when I am on my way to become an elementary teacher, my identity starts to play a role. A role that connects me with my students in a unique way. By representing different cultures and languages, I understand how they impact me and my identity. My students will also bring their identities in my classroom, and it is my role to make them to feel comfortable no matter how different they are.
One of my first lessons that I thought in one of the elementary schools in Seattle was a language arts lesson with reading aloud The Name Jar book by Yangsook Choi. This is a marvelous book that teaches students about difficulties that every immigrant child faces with. In this particular book, the story tells us about a young girl whose family moved to the United States from South Korea. She has a unique Korean name, and she struggles with it as it is hard to pronounce.
“My students will also bring their identities in my classroom, and it is my role to make them feel comfortable no matter how different they are.”
I was very nervous during reading aloud and after it too. It was an online lesson in Zoom so I was able to analyze the video afterwards. I also enjoyed teaching this lesson as I am Korean too and I was able to share cultural knowledge with my students. I appreciate that an important part of this assignment was thinking about good questions to ask during the reading aloud. I feel how every author tries to deliver multiple thoughts in a text, so it is important to stop and think after some paragraphs.
Even though I was not able to encourage the dialogues between students I learned that I could push their thinking by asking questions. It happened because I prepared a list of good questions while we read a book, but I did not think about follow up questions to students' comments. I feel that encouraging students to discuss topic with each other is helpful tool to their independent and critical thinking. And I am still working on it.
After the lesson, one of the students shared story of her father and his family and the reasons why they decided to have more English names rather than Chinese ones. I was also glad to hear from another student that it is ok to be different.
As a teacher I want to build friendly relationships not only with my students but their families as well. Each family has unique funds of knowledge that can teach us about their culture, language, and traditions. There are so many different cultures in the United States but still many students feel not safe when they speak language other than English, or they represent culture other than American one.
In MAT program I have learned how culture impacts learning (Rogoff, 2003) and how it is a crucial part of every child. We learn through cultural lenses, and they shape our understanding. I also learned how social justice can be achieved by allowing students to use all their language repertoires in the classroom. I am a big fan of translanguaging pedagogy, and you can read it about more in my other post.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. (pp. 1-12)
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