Excerpts from Reflective Journals | Excerpts from Literature | References

The concept of listening to students is certainly not limited to family literacy classes and adult limited English proficiency (LEP) learners. Caution, however, is needed in getting so caught up in your own agenda and order that students' ideas and input are set aside as secondary. Often students, possessing a different perspective than the teacher, can present ideas and suggestions that are truly better than any the teacher may have thought of beforehand.

Excerpts from Reflective Journals

• April 18th, 2002 (Wave I) - “The majority of their questions are very legitimate, but they steal time from the reading aspects I want to cover. But, for example, tonight, they were really interested in the difference between the words kids, keys, and kiss. These are tricky pronunciation issues for them, and I don’t blame them. Now, of course it wasn’t in my lesson plan to get to these words, but I also believe in teaching to the needs of the students—this is my small dilemma. Anyway, I enjoyed our conversation about the differences, and sent them home to practice the sounds all day long.”


• April 23rd, 2002 (Wave II) – “One student asked if it wouldn’t be possible to do this class at another time, more than just once a week. Oh my…I loved her enthusiasm…I’ll have to think about that. Others echoed her interest, and…now I’m thrilled to see what really could be a great thing coming to be a reality! Next time I will take a vote with them. If most are really serious about going at it twice a week, I will do it. But if not enough show interest, I don’t want to do it because then I will run into some of the same problems with attendance and catch-up that I’ve run into during Wave One of PACT.”
• April 30th, 2002 (Wave II) – “I wrote their ideas on the board, and in the few remaining minutes, we did two important things!!! I passed around little ballots to vote anonymously if they wanted to extend the class to Thursdays at 5:00 as well as Tuesdays at 5:00… So, they want class on Thursdays as well…I’ll do it then!!! I absolutely love their interest and enthusiasm. This just confirms to me that there is a need…it’s just a matter of students actually being able to come and commit to being in a class (that’s the simplified version).”

Excerpts from Literature

• Auerbach, 1990, “If literacy is to be meaningful for immigrant and refugee parents, it has to be centered on issues of importance to them. This means that curriculum content has to be tailored to each group of students—it can’t be developed before the educator ever comes in contact with the class, but rather has to be built on particular conditions, concerns and contributions of specific groups of participants at a particular point in time” (p. 42).
• Shanahan, Mulhern, and Rodriguez-Brown, 1995, “At times parents’ preconceptions are too strong to overcome. We do not support the use of prescriptive grammar study or workbooks in language learning, but to some parents these approaches are synonymous with good teaching. After a few months of working on language in social contexts, they complained that we weren’t really teaching English. We agreed to spend some part of each lesson on worksheets. Eventually parents saw how wasteful and unnecessary this was, but without such responsiveness it is hard to imagine the program being as successful” (p. 589). (This serves as an EXAMPLE of when they listened).
• Neuman, Caperelli, and Kee, 1998, “Most importantly, the voices of the participants themselves have largely been absent in any discussions of program development, quality, or evaluation. This information is critical if programs are designed to accommodate family needs and life goals” (p. 244, emphasis added).
• Neuman, Caperelli, and Kee, 1998, “Retention in programs, was related to whether or not participants’ needs were addressed” (p. 246).
• Paratore, 2001, “Social issues addressed in the classroom are only successfully built on when they arise from learners’ interests. When we try to push our agenda on parents and they don’t see the relevance of what we consider to be major issues, they turn off” (p. 105). (Here she was quoting an e-mail correspondence from a colleague).

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