The student that i have chosen to discuss is a 11 year old boy named Nam Nguyen. He is Vietnamese-American, his family moved to the State before he was born. To aide in this new transition, they had support form both the immigration assistance program and the ESL instructors at this new school. Even though Nam's parents were the first to come to the States from their family, over the years more of the Nguyen's have come to the U.S. For these reasons Nam's Vietnamese heritage is very important to he and his family. However as a child of immigrant parents, he often feels torn between his two identities. He feels as though he must be Vietnamese at home and American at school, nevertheless he takes pride in being Vietnamese.
This is very common amongst students who are from immigrant parents, so as a teacher we must make the classroom a multicultural place where all students can express their individuality. It would be idea to have books in the classroom library that contains either Vietnamese culture or students from immigrant families. For my discussion-based lesson i will be focusing on a book entitled You Can Be a Friend. This is a book that takes about friendship and excepting people for who they are. This book would tie into a multicultural setting that would aide all students. For an assessment we will be creating Venn diagrams about the similarities and differences we have amongst our classmates and how their differences make them who they are, and also how their differences does not affect their friendship. This assignment would give Nam the opportunity to express himself in terms of identifying with two cultures. This assignment and discussion would bring students closer by them expressing their differences and having students appreciate them.
What I never really payed much attention to, until now, is the fact that students have to play separate daily roles. I absolutely love that you mentioned this, because it is so easy for us to say that we need to make these children feel welcome, but it is another thing to incorporate students' home life so that they do not feel the need to have to be two (or more) different people.
ReplyDeleteOftentimes, we encounter students that speak English at school and another at home. However, we fail to realize that these students are doing EVERYTHING differently at school than they would at home. Not only to we need to promote academic accommodations and modifications, but we need to promote social ones too!