Social Justice

     I think that teaching abroad will absolutely impact my responsibility to "Promote Equity and Social Justice." In particular, it is very easy for me to draw comparisons to the ESL classroom that I did my first prac in at Brighton High School. A lot of the social justice issues that I saw in Brighton, I experienced here in Italy. Certainly, on a much lower stakes scale, but for the first time, I felt what it was like to be in a country where my native tongue is not the majority language.
     Furthermore, I did not know a single word of Italian when I stepped off the plane in Florence, which might have been poor preparation on my part. I have a pretty strong background in Spanish, which definitely jumpstarted my learning, but can now be confusing when you learn the subtle differences between the languages. Now certainly, if I walk into a store or a restaurant in Italy and speak English, there will be someone there who knows enough English to get me by. I do not have to know Italian. I thought about this compared to my job as a hostess as a restaurant. Previous to this experience, if someone had walked into the Bonefish Grill and spoke to me in Italian, we could not helped him or her. At all.
    In the classroom, my biggest difficulty was when a child would not understand something. I could see the confusion on his or face, and recognize "Non lo capisco" but if he or she asked me a question in Italian, there was a very limited chance I would be able to respond or answer it. This made me more dependent on my CT, who would sometimes have to translate, or would just go over my head and answer the question in Italian. From a teaching standpoint, this makes assessments much more difficult to see. However, from a student standpoint, this is terribly frustrating. If my CT was not there, it would be a situation where a student needs help, has focalized that he or she needs help, and is unable to receive it, because I do not know his or her language. In all of my Spanish and Italian classes, my professor has been fluent in English as well. This raises a lot of questions about our ESL system. Should there be a classroom model where the teacher is fluent in the native tongue as well? Logistically, this would be very difficult to get a teacher and classroom space for the hundreds of languages in the world.
     I think that students who are learning a foreign language, especially as a necessity to immigration, there needs to be a better system. A model that includes "Survival English" for the first two weeks perhaps, filled with common everyday phrases and situations they might encounter. My CT at Brighton taught a lesson on police brutality - and printed up and laminated a card for her students to hand to the police if they were ever in an altercation. It included information like "English is not my first language." "I have the right to remain silent." "I have the right to a lawyer." And other very important ideas and rights that they would not have access to without this card, simply because they can't express those rights in the correct language. Then, perhaps moving on to a traditional grammatical plan. However, I find the use of translating to be very effective in my Italian classes and here at San Giuseppe so I am a little discouraged at its lack of use in ESL classes in the US.
     This experience has really made me want to look into the ESL educational policies more, and perhaps consider teaching an ESL classroom, where I believe I would have huge asset because I understand the incredible difficulties of living in a country where you can't make yourself understood without a lot of dedication and hard work.