Lost In Translation

I recently completed my mid-year update of this blog for the American Immigration Law Foundation.  Basically I sat down and wrote about all the things that DID NOT work like I expected them to–many of them being technical issues with hosting this blog.

Then I let it sit for a day and read my own writing.  It seemed too pessimistic.  There is so much good that these students have learned by blogging.  Sure, I overestimated how much these students would blog.  In fact, I overestimated how busy these ELL students are at our school.  I will never make that mistake again, though, and will now advocate even more forcefully for the inclusion of these students into our educational processes.

Therefore, this blog will end the year in this way:  I’m going to produce a document that will help any teachers to set up an ELL blog in the future.  Parts of it will cover the technical issues of hosting a Wordpress blog on a server.  I’m going to compile a survey from all the students that blogged here and get their reactions to the blogging experience.  In particular, I want to document just how much responsibilities these students have to juggle during the school year.   I may even do this as a verbal interview, so you can read their spoken words.

This summary will be written up into a pdf file and given to the AILF for them to use however they want in the future.  I will also pass the document on to the people at the University of Northern Colorado who taught me so well how to deal effectively with ELL students in our educational system.  I’ll license the document under the same Creative Commons license that this blog used.  That way, people can feel free to copy my ideas, add to them, or refute them, without worry of copyright infringement.  I’ll also post the article here, although this blog will eventually disappear, due to technical reasons that will be detailed in the pdf file.

See Orrakle's Photostream on Flickr

The end of our school is coming very near. This means that summer is
also very near and the fun begins all over again. During the summer
time I am thinking about going to the mountains or a lake with my
family. I love the mountains a lot especially because of the really
cool and beautiful scenery that I encounter. Also, it is very exiting
whenver the chance of seeing an animal such as deer occurs. Mother
nature allows us to have the chance to be exposed to beauty and so it
needs to be cared for

This year of school is almost over! and I really want to be a Senor next year to finish what I need to obtain a Honors certificate,  to graduate and then do a career. I want to be the first one in my family to go to college, but my family doesn’t seem to support me at all.  They say that I don’t need to study,  that I would not make it and that makes me feel very sad because having their support would show me that they believe in me.

Many times my father says to me why to study for, and my brothers sometimes tell me if I don’t want to go to school  don’t go, but they don’t understand that I want to have an education. Having or no having their support I would make it, because I believe in myself and I know I can do it, I can go further! finishing high school would be my first step, but I would not end there, I would continued no matter what.  I would demostrate my family that they were wrong and that I did it, but I would go step by step with the help of God.

Today I was a little sad, because In my government class we were talking about some cases that we have to study for. I was really into immigration, while others were studying about burnig the flag, death penalty. I was more in having a immigration reform were those that have being violated the law have a perdon, an amnesty! I talk to all my class about what things are being denied to illegal people those that are called (alliens), these people as we allready know don’t have medicaid, no right to vote and things like that…..while they are paying billions of taxes , they give this money and they don’t get anything.  I was talkig many things that illegal people can’t do.  Some of the students told me that, they have to worrie about USA, insted of other contries, and that illegals sometimes takes the work from Americans, I told them that they don’t take nobodies work, they always do work that many Americans wouldn’t do, and for a minimun salery, and I also told them about the American dream, and they told me that the American dream was just for people that are legal here. I was very sad because i felt that everyone was against an amnesty, and I though if all these students are against it what about other people, what about the president and the congress and all of those people that could make a change, I really want all this people to have a amnesty, so they are no more scared of being deported and living their families here, all this people need a chance!

I had been so  bussy that I haven’t post a lot. Today I went to Mesa Club, and we were looking for Interships, and it was very interesting! there was a lot of information of jobs that one can do, and mostly there are things were you  can choose to do! I think by doing this would help to prepare in future! Today I was also looking for community services, that I could do!, and I am very interesting in helping in the hospital , and also working with childrens. I really like to try, and experience new things!

Hace unos dias, me tube que registrar para mis clases del año siguiente, sera mi ultimo año y una consejera me digo que yo podia calificar para un certificado de honor, ella me motivo a hacerlo ella es muy buena y me apoya mucho, se llama Olga, y me digo  que casi lo tengo todo para ovtener ese certificado, solo necesito de  cuatro creditos, pero esos creditos seran de clases avanzadas , pero lo quiero hacer, quiero que mis padres se sientan orgullosos de mi, quiero hacer lo mas que se pueda, pues aunque el ano siguiente sea mi ultimo año en preparatoria no va hacer el ultimo en escuela, porque quiero seguir, con el apoyo de los mios creo poder lograrlo, y que venga lo que tenga que venir! quiero tener exito en esta vida!

You may have noticed that several posts have occured just today.  While doing site maintenance (read that as “deleting a whole bunch of spam”), I noticed several posts written by students that were saved but not published.

That got me thinking about some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way with this blog.  Here is a summary of the main lessons I’ve learned trying to organize a blog for ELL students to write about their lives.

1.  Spam.  Lots of spam.  Something about hosting a Wordpress blog with a bunch of students and hotmail accounts causes me to receive so many spam comments that I’m seriously considering NOT allowing comments, or dealing with the spam somehow.  Tonight I went through 148 comments that were awaiting moderation.  Of those 148, all but one of them were spam.  One actual comment!  As much as I like comments, I’m not going to deal with ratios like that.  So as soon as I’m done posting this, I’m going to deal with that.

2.  Access.  In teaching my computer programming classes, I have learned that all my class websites should simply be open to the public.  Requiring students to log in cuts out 80% or more of the students that otherwise would have looked at your site.  It seems funny that people can’t remember another login and password, but it’s the same with my fellow teachers.  One more login really kills traffic on your site.  In this case, it caused many students to not blog simply because they don’t want to deal with the login process.  Then, if more time passes, the likelyhood that they’ll still remember or have their password drops dramatically.  Our school district has students log in by their name and their password is their student ID number.  I’m pretty sure that many students simply use the same password on all their accounts, which is a security nightmare….

3.  Collaboration.  Although our ELL department agrees that this blog would be a great opportunity for their students to see their writing have a purpose and and audience, none have actually helped students to blog here.  Again, this comes down to access.  I’ve set up entire classes for teachers so that all their students have accounts on this blog.  If they don’t immediately start blogging, though, half of them forget their user names and passwords.  A teacher then spends a lot of time wondering how to help more than half her class login.  Since that’s not very fun, they simply stop trying and the whole class does something else.  I love our other ELL teachers and know they’d be great at encouraging this project, if only it was simpler for them to do with their classes.  [Incidently, I experienced a similar crisis when I tried to teach a bunch of ELL students some Python programming.  The syntax of the computer language compiler just killed them.  Little things like not capitalizing a certain command (or capitalizing one that should have been lower case), cause entire programs not to run.  It was a nightmare that didn't occur with my mainstream students....]

4.  Time.  Everything takes longer in the ELL world.  I know this from teaching experience, but it’s very apparent that it also applies here.  Time to process.  Time to reflect.  Time to thrive.  All of those lose out in the end when students go into survival mode and are faced with a pile of homework and responsibilities outside of school.

The winter season is coming and is almost here.  I really like the snow a lot but, it can sometimes get to be way too much.  It gets very cold and walking home after school is not as easy.  The weather I got to admit is not as bad as last year or any of the past years.

One of my favorite holidays that is coming up is Thanksgivin.  I really like and enjoy this holiday because, family from other states like New Mexico and North Carolina gather with us and we have a big family dinner.  Thanksgiving is more than a holiday for giving thanks to everything and everyone that you appreciate.  To me it is a day to be able to get caught up with your family that lives away from you.

Even though Thanksgiving is suppose to be a happy holiday, it is not always this way.  If you have family that lives in Mexico and can’t come here to the United States you are not able to be with them or not able to share that special dinner that you and your family carefully planned.  When this happens all we can do is hope that one day you will be able to share Thanksgiving Day with them.

Hi! its me your fried and today I decided to share my coments about thanksgiving. Althoug I don’t like turkey and the food people eat this day I still celebrate it. I think that this is a good celebration since it represents a lot to American people. I think they deserbe it. I also think that this holyday would hepl families gater and have a good time. Get a chance to relax from work and be with their families.

My family and I don’t celebrate it much but we still do some things that are related to it. Some of my family menbers are going to eat turkey but since I don’t like it I’m going to eat some more of Mexican food like tacos or menudo, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about this American holyda.

As I said I thing they deserve it

Sports are the No.1 activities I like to spend time on