Job Complaint no. 1

I know I should take this up with the teacher for whom I work, but i shall vent here first. she has me working only with her lowest kids (meaning, the ones who have the most trouble with reading) ... and when the five of them are together they make so much noise and it is so hard to get them to do their work! i don't mind working with them in smaller groups, but five second grade boys who speak spanish is quite a formidable opponent!

working with these boys is kind of degrading my faith, if i ever had any, in a bilingual education system. in kindergarten and first grade, they were taught all in spanish. learned their letters in spanish, and learned to read (or began to learn to read) in spanish. now that they're in second grade, they are also getting ESL classes, meaning that for part of the time they are taught in english. here is where i see a problem: it is like they are learning two languages at once. One boy I work with, when he reads for me or tries to spell a word, he sometimes sounds out the letters in spanish as if they were in english. one of his spelling words was Cuidado, and he spelled it Quidado. i also work with a fourth grade class. these are kids who have gone through the bilingual program. in third grade they were taught primarily in english with spanish support, and fourth grade is the same way. i help with reading groups. some of the lower kids (there are like eight of them) are at second-grade reading level. how did that happen?

the current belief is that once they learn to read in spanish, the transition to reading in english will be easier. I think it's probably better the other way around; spanish is their first language, so they already know how to pronounce the words that are already part of their vocabulary. they already know how to read and they also know the language, so one would think they would put two and two together and be able to read in spanish as well. I believe that the transition from reading in spanish into reading in english is more difficult because they don't have the vocabulary to back them up.

i'd like to talk to my boss and ask her if there are any books out there that talk about this system, and how they reconcile these problems. i want to hear the arguments for and against this system.

as far as these five second-graders are concerned, i sometimes feel like their teacher is dumping the difficult ones on me. but it does make sense; they need extra help and she can't stop the whole class on account of them. it's just that sometimes i feel unqualified; i've never taken any classes on how to teach someone to read. and i feel pretty inadequate when i'm up against these kids.