Teachers Anonymous: 'Talk slow'

Until I retired a few years ago, I taught science in the Philadelphia public schools. One year, my administrators gave me a ninth grade English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class. I went to the person in charge of ESL, and asked if there any books. There weren’t. They told me, “Talk slow.”

You’ve got 35 poor kids sitting in front of you who understand maybe every 10th word you’re saying, and you just gotta talk slow, because there are no materials to use to teach them.

I had no idea what to do. I’m a science teacher, not an English teacher or language teacher. I had to figure out how to teach these kids science without using language, and I had to figure out how to do it while also teaching two other ninth grade classes and two chemistry classes. 

The 35 kids in my ESL class were the least skilled in English — they were 1s, 2s and 3s on a scale of 5. In total, they spoke about 20 different languages. There was one girl from Nepal, and not a single other person in the school spoke Nepalese. I went home and looked up a couple of words. When I said, “Namaste” to her, she looked dumbfounded that someone had said hello to her in a language she understood. We eventually found a kid who spoke Urdu, and they could kind of communicate. 

I had this class at the end of the day and the students always looked so sad and tired from trying to get through the day not knowing what people were saying.

Anyway, I took what I was teaching the other ninth graders and started looking up pictures. I figured that I could put the pictures up on the smart board and get their words for whatever it was, and give them the English words for it. 

The first thing we’re supposed to teach them in ninth grade is the scientific method — it’s a basic, but seriously abstract concept. You probably remember it from high school. The Oxford English dictionary definition describes it “as consisting of systematic observation, measurement and experiment, and the formulation, testing and modification of hypotheses.” I had to try to explain all that without using words. 

So, I brought in a flashlight. I turned it on and it didn’t work, and I said, “OK — what’s wrong?” And the kids who knew a little English said, “Maybe there’s no batteries, maybe the bulb is broken.” Then I tried to get the kids who spoke even less English to come up with and test hypotheses about why the flashlight wouldn’t turn on. I used a picture of a battery, and a spare bulb I’d brought in. The class managed, somehow, to figure out the problem with the flashlight.

Hypotheses and the scientific method? I don’t think we all got there. It was way beyond my ability to explain it to them using just a flashlight, a bulb and pictures I’d printed at home. 

Teachers Anonymous is a column that shares brief stories from Philly teachers and others that illustrate the difficulties and joys of working in a drastically underfunded system. Email stories to emilyg@citypaper.net or by mail to Emily Guendelsberger c/o City Paper, 30 S. 15th St., 14th floor, Philadelphia, PA 19102.