Building Trust & the Desire to Learn with an ELL Student

The Desire to Learn

Tutoring an ESL student provides a unique opportunity to work with someone personally and hone in on certain skill sets, as well as build on necessary language foundations. There is a significant amount of multitasking when engaging an ESL student. Though it can be difficult to balance the role of simultaneously teaching relevant information to a high school student, while also making sure the ESL student can understand and effectively comprehend the material in a foreign language, it is vastly more difficult to be the student applying their undivided concentration and established skills with confidence.

Additionally, this is an intense period of transition for an ESL student and their family, as they have likely emigrated to America, or have entered the nation to seek political asylum. As a future educator, I am beginning to learn the intricacies of working with an ESL student. There is a delicate proverbial tightrope to balance on between challenging the student through scaffolding and projecting confidence, while also ensuring that the student doesn’t get discouraged to a point of apathy.

The absolute best educators in my life have excelled with maintaining the balance between facilitating a classroom to ensure students can explore, while providing the necessary guidance that students regularly seek.

Engaging a Student in Times of Hardships

In the very brief experience I have had as a tutor and an educator so far, I have learned how important it is to build trust with a student during times of hardship and turmoil, especially when these hardships occur for ELL students at a crucial transitional period between moving from a completely different culture.

Recently, my student, Walter, has incurred a tremendous amount of stress and personal crises that could result in a student losing their well being as well as being engaged in a different culture and classroom. My student is a refugee who has experienced a great deal of instability and chaos in his personal life before entering America, and since moving here, he has lived a new type of chaos, adjusting to a completely foreign lifestyle to him.

Specifically, Walter, a fellow tutor, and myself found a video, in which his best friend from his native country killed himself in protest of a brutal government. It is not only devastating to hear about a best friend’s passing, especially if it is a suicide, but to find out about this terrible news through a trending video is outright traumatic for anyone.

Walter was completely shocked and damaged by this horrible news, and he talked about why would his best friend choose this life path, as well as expressing how difficult it is for him to concentrate in school. I talked to Walter and discussed how tragic this was, and I ensured that he felt comfortable reflecting on this awful news. I also emphasized that there are vast resources that can help him during these dire times, as well as saying that my fellow tutor and I are there to help in anyway possible. Most importantly, we explicitly stated that he is not alone. He simply replied that he always feels alone at school, and feels like an outsider.

The term outsider is a terrifying word to hear as an educator, because it means that there is a fundamental issue with either the community and culture that is being promoted, or with the experiences the student has had in a new country so far. For the last week, I have felt as if I have failed, because I wanted to be able to help him more, but I have also realized that Walter trusts myself and my fellow tutor, because he is willing to open up about a traumatic experience of this magnitude, and having this kind of trust in a teacher-student relationship is paramount to keeping a student on the right track, both from a well being perspective, and an academic perspective.

The upcoming works are going to be a challenging time of emotional transition for Walter, but it is imperative that I ensure the most stable and easy transition for him, to ensure that he is going to cope in a healthy manner as well as excel as a student in the classroom. I have been researching a few websites to better understand long term strategies to help with a student that has experienced a traumatic experience, and I have also modified this list to make sure it properly aligns with ELL students in particular:

• Maintain Contact with Professionals Within the School: Walter, more than anything else right now, needs a sense of belongingness in the world, especially when he has lost such a dear friend. As a tutor, I do not have the ability to see Walter everyday, but his teachers and guidance counselors have the ability to meet with him on a day-to-day basis. First and foremost, through reaching out to teachers, one ensures that the teacher is actually aware of the situation, that way they can better accommodate the needs of the student in a classroom setting, as opposed to a one-on-one tutoring session. Additionally, the guidance department has access to more resources in order to provide for students who experience trauma. Maintaining these contacts also allows for multiple perspectives to be seen, which permit the “full picture,” of what is happening to this particular student. In some instances if the trauma was indirect from a foreign country, there may be outside resources that can provide contact between the United States, and the origin nation of the student.

• Positive Reinforcement is Key: Learning a foreign language full time at school is already a daunting enough task that is often paralleled with embarrassment and a sense of feeling inferior to other students. During this pivotal juncture of the student’s trauma, there is nothing more detrimental than to criticize their work. The paragon of engagement within the classroom begins at the internal level with confidence and believing that “I can do this.” It is better to focus on praising a student for their excellent work, or speaking skills during this time, but that does not mean that offering critique is impossible either. Delicately approaching communication and criticism will ensure the student is learning what they need and want to know. A compliment sandwich in terms of their work may be a beneficial strategy to point out criticisms, while also giving praise for the student.

• Developing Routines: Trauma is often affiliated with the unexpected, through offering a routine in the format of teaching a student, they will feel a sense of comfort and expectations. This does not mean everything has to be done exactly the same, but rather, it means that starting a tutoring session with review, or working on homework. Excitement can exist in the routine, each lesson is different, but the format of the tutoring session should be similar.

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  Take Time to Breathe: Often times ELL students can be spending upwards of 8-10 hours a day in school, it is okay to take time to reflect, and breathe. School can be a hectic environment that yields sensory overloading, but this can be resolved through taking time to reflect. Perhaps this can be achieved through playing a game (which can tie in with language skills, while simultaneously being low key) or asking what the student would like to do for a certain period of time. Time is limited with tutoring and trying to cram information in an hour for ELL students is important, but this can often be overwhelming for students as well.

Resoures: 

http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/8-ways-support-students-who-experience-trauma 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_silent_epidemic_in_our_classrooms