I teach Newcomers. Well, for 30 minutes of my day I teach Newcomers. The rest of the day, I do various things as a literacy coach like facilitating meetings, assessing students, modeling, co-teaching or observing lessons, covering yard duties and lots of other things. But the first 30 minutes of each day, I get to be humbled and chagrined as I do my best to reach 8 students, grades 1st through 5th, with 3 different home languages. It is the best 30 minutes of my day. 

 

Each day, we greet one another and sing songs. Their favorite is to sing the alphabet song, but they like to replace their classmates names for the mnemonic.Replacing A is for apple, a, a apple for  “A is for Azkah, a, a, Azkah” and “B is for Bingzhen, b, b, Bingzhen”. They actually get louder and louder as the song progresses, raising their voice in delight to share the sounds with each other. I sometimes have to pause the song, remind them that the walls are thin and the class next door can hear us. I push play and they continue loudly, “K is for Kha Vy, K, k, k, Kha Vy.” 

 

We sing songs about days of the week, greetings, seasons, clothing, school objects, colors, people, and so much more. I enjoy scouring the Internet to find something engaging, appropriate, not babyish to share with them and see their reaction. I can always tell if a song worked, when they start singing along, without my prompting. Days of the week sung to the Adam’s Family theme still gets requests to add back to our rotation. 

 

I taught Newcomers at my last school too. Each time I meet a new student, we pull out a map so they can show me where they came from, tracing their journey on the large table top map. Sometimes we pull up Google Maps so they can zero in on their city, town, village so they share all that they loved. Their journeys to our school are sometimes long, arduous and always fascinating. There was Isaaq who left Yemen to a refugee camp in Jordan for 2 years, then Indonesia and finally the United States. Or Ivin from China to the Dominican Republic to the United States. Gaps in schooling are frequent, but the eagerness to learn and fit in are ubiquitous.

 

The thing about teaching Newcomers is that they force you to be a better teacher. They demand you find more ways to be understandable, engaging and meaningful. You can’t fall back on lectures, heavily worded explaining, dense text. You need to learn how to use visuals, precise language, movement, repetition and authentic reasons to use English. So many of my lessons have fallen short, like the one on clothing names but each one enabled me to understand more clearly how to make it work for them, like the one on parts of a face. I am so grateful to work with them and learn from them. I teach newcomers. Well, really, they teach me.