PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: SILENCES IN THE MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOM CO-WRITTEN WITH GORDON PON
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P69-C4
2025-09-26
253
PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: SILENCES IN THE MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOM
CO-WRITTEN WITH GORDON PON
In thinking about what pedagogical maneuvers might alleviate the racial tensions just described, it is helpful for pedagogy to, first of all, acknowledge that various silences are at play in the multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual classroom. Accordingly, each silence probably benefits from differing pedagogical engagements. In thinking about the ways teachers and students might work with different kinds of silences, we turn to the interviews we had with English teachers Anne Yee, Greg Dunn, and Leonard Robertson. To contextualize the pedagogical approaches suggested by Mrs. Yee, Mr. Dunn, and Mr. Robertson within their own life experiences as teachers and learners, we offer a brief biographical account of each teacher's career.
Anne Yee, Greg Dunn, and Leonard Robertson
As recalled, Anne Yee has been working as a teacher for 17 years. She first came to Canada from Hong Kong as a high-school visa student. She completed her high school, university, and teacher training education in Toronto and went back to Hong Kong to teach. After several years as a teacher and administrator in Hong Kong, Mrs. Yee returned to Toronto where she began teaching again. She is currently an English and ESOL teacher, and the head of the ESOL Department and Literacy Committee at Northside.
Greg Dunn has worked as a teacher for 21 years. Jobs were very scarce when he graduated from the Faculty of Education of the University of Toronto in 1980, so he taught summer school, night school, and did a little supply work. Mr. Dunn got his first full time teaching job in January of 1981 at a private school for Visa students called Eastern College. The school had been set up for Asian students who wanted to attend Canadian universities. Most of the students were from Hong Kong who had been sent to study in Canada because of the uncertainty about the future of Hong Kong after 1997. All of the students at the school were learning in a second language. In talking about his work at Eastern College, Mr. Dunn had this to say:
I think my work with the students at Eastern College has had a great impact on me. These students were alone in Toronto coping with culture shock, homesickness, and language difficulties. You could not be anything but sympathetic to them and their situations. I learned from working with them how crucial it is to the learning process to create a positive and comfortable learning environment where everyone can feel safe and secure. As a classroom teacher, I work very hard to create a positive environment so all students feel comfortable enough to risk being wrong when they answer questions, or can say, "I don't want to read aloud today."
[Answers to Questionnaire, November 19, 2001]
Mr. Dunn was first hired at Northside in October, 1987. The following year, he was declared surplus and assigned to another school where he taught ESL classes. However, 1 year later, a new position opened up at Northside and Mr. Dunn was able to return to the school. He has taught there ever since and over the years has almost always worked with students who do not use English as their first language. This work has taught Mr. Dunn that "one always needs to be understanding of our students' situations and keep what we are doing in perspective":
When we are dealing with students who may be living on their own—cooking, cleaning, carrying a full timetable, and studying in a second language so that the half hour of homework we gave may indeed take well over an hour. We have to be willing to accommodate and facilitate their learning and not penalize them with late mark deductions and lectures about working harder to achieve success. Maybe it comes down to respect. We need to respect our students as individuals, and accord them respect in the way that we like to receive respect from our co-workers and administration.
[Answers to Questionnaire, November 19, 2001]
During the research we conducted at Northside, Leonard Robertson was in his 32nd and 33rd years of teaching. Prior to beginning high school teaching, he had spent 1 year as a tutor at the University of Toronto, while pursuing his masters degree in English. Mr. Robertson began his teaching career in Burlington, Ontario, a small town south of metropolitan Toronto. He describes the White Anglo-Canadian high school he worked at as racially and culturally homogeneous. In those first 3 years of teaching (1967 to 1970), he taught junior classes, and was most successful with classes of students he would now identify as coming from a working-class background. "As I look back," he says, "I attribute that success to my patience, my humor, my story telling abilities, and my refusal to view my students as unable to succeed." Mr. Robertson taught at Northside from 1970 until 1998, with a break of 5 years. In 1971, he became the assistant head of English and in 1972 the head of English. He remained the head of English, teaching all of the grades from 1972 until 1990. During that time, the demographics of the student body changed from a population that was predominantly White and Jewish in the 1970s to one that was predominantly Asian (from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, then eventually Vietnam, and mainland China) in the 1980s. In the 1990s the school became even more diverse when it enrolled students from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
From 1990 to 1995, Mr. Robertson was a consultant in staff development with the school board and worked with elementary and high school teachers on instructional strategies. He also worked on "outcomes" education and strategic planning with school principals and on team building and conflict resolution with business and support staff. In 1995, a year before the study began, Mr. Robertson returned to Northside, and resumed his teaching responsibilities.
When he returned to the school, the high enrollment of students who spoke English as a second or other language (ESOL) led Leonard to seek out new ways to ensure that his students were successful in English classes. He says that there were three very significant professional development activities that shaped the last years of his teaching practice at Northside. During the 1980s, Mr. Robertson was involved in school board committee work that focused on antiracist education. At the same time, he completed a masters degree in Education. Leonard's masters research into language development, pedagogy, reading, and writing reinforced his commitment to antiracist education, student-centered learning, and the belief that all students must have clear models of the work that they are expected to produce. Finally, Mr. Robertson's work as a consultant with instructional strategies such as cooperative learning and multiple intelligences helped him refine the skills he needed to work with student groups. "I no longer saw students who worked together as copying from each other, but as aiding each other in learning." Working with this principle of adult learning, Mr. Robertson says, enhanced his work with ESOL students at Northside. Having provided a brief account of Anne Yee, Greg Dunn, and Leonard Robertson's life experiences as teachers and learners, we turn now to what they had to say about working with silences in the classroom.
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