Reflective Blog # 6             SPSE 6712

December 2, 2011

Personal Reflection of My Journey

Field work and Applied Research in ESL has been a wonderful course experience for me.  As a practicing ESL teacher, I really enjoyed conducting fieldwork in my own class as well as in the other ESL class with former students.  I really got to know the students that much better from the experience.  My favorite part of the coursework was conducting the action research project to troubleshoot common issues in second language acquisition and the ESL classroom.  I also really enjoyed reading about “the second classroom” and how important it is to build real relationships with your students.  I feel that this has been an extremely valuable course in helping me to learn how to assess my students in a different sort of way but a very necessary way.  I have had many wonderful experiences working with ESL students over the last 10 years on and off but I wish I had the knowledge that I gained from this course before.  I often think back on previous experiences while reflecting on coursework and think how I might have applied the strategies to my former students.  This was the last class that I needed to take to acquire teaching licensure.  I highly recommend teachers who are interested in teaching ESL to pursue the add-on license or the M.Ed. in ESL at MTSU to be well prepared for working with English Language Learners.  I would tell the teacher who is looking for recognition not to go into ESL because you don’t often get the full respect from other teachers and administrators.  But if you love the diversity of cultures and are compassionate about helping students that struggle to achieve and overcome their language gap, then ESL is for you.