Fires in the Bathroom Chapter 8 "Teaching Teenagers Who Are Still Learning English"

    The importance of this chapter seemed to validate various learning styles, various students at various levels in a class and the expectations for teachers. When reading this chapter suddenly all of these things become real situations and not just stories you read. As teachers we could all be presented with these situations and challenges and that's why I think reading about these in the chapter are really important.

    I was really able to relate to some of these stories; for instance, a student who a translator to help them understand the English being spoken in the classroom. I grew up in New Jersey and there was a wide variety of students with different nationalities, race, and religion who attended the same school and it was very common to see translators for students, but mostly they were others students. There were a couple of years that I had a completely non-English speaking student in my classes and they had a student who translated everything the teacher said to them in their language. This was frusterating for everyone involved, the non-English speaking student who couldn't directly communicate with the teacher or other students, the teacher who had to rely only on the student translator and when they were absent it caused a lot of difficulty, and it even caused stress for the other students in the class because it was hard for the rest of us to concentrate having other students talking while the lesson was going on. It also caused the English speaking students to be jealous that those students were able to talk and we weren't. It was really easy for me to understand the distress and discomfort of these students when I was reading this chapter and it really helped me look at it now in a teacher's perspective.