Service Learning Culture Project  Puerto Rico

 Location and Learning Environment

My name is Sydney Hood. I am in my Junior year at University of Central Florida. I am majoring in Elementary Education. I do not have any prior teaching experience; however, I have been volunteering a local elementary school for one year.

I did my service learning at Clermont Elementary in Clermont Florida. Clermont Elementary is a Tittle 1 school with many ESOL students. While at the school this semester, I tutored one girl who was in third grade.

The main material that I used to tutor the ESOL student was a series of books entitled “I Am”. The “I Am” series was very helpful because it had the words translated in her native language right under the English version. I also used technology with the ESOL student by helping her understand what the questions were asking during Accelerated Reader tests and listening to her pronounce phrases when working on Rosetta Stone. I ran into several challenges while having the ESOL student read to me and helping her understand the Accelerated Reader tests.

The main issue was that she did not understand what she was reading, and she did not understand what the questions were asking, and I had trouble explaining what she was reading to her in terms that she could understand. A challenge that the Rosetta Stone program caused is that she did not know what was going on in the pictures and she would sometimes call a picture of a boy “she” and so I had to explain that it was a he because it was a boy.

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The strategy that I used from this course while tutoring my student was leveled questioning. I found this strategy to be very helpful. I used leveled questioning by asking my ESOL student a problem one step at a time if she could not answer the whole question. This was effective because it allowed her to show what she knows and answer a question even if it was too complex to begin with.

The most successful learning activity that I did with my EL was having her read the “I Am” books to me. This was effective because she was able to see English and look down and see the translation in her own native language. I also asked my ESOL student to repeat a sentence if she missed pronounced or skipped over a word. The most stressful activity for me and my EL was when I was teaching her to put time on a number line. I overcame the difficulty by asking her to subtract the minutes first and then go to the hour. My EL also made all the jumps the same length and wrote the new time in the middle of the next jump. I tried telling her the correct way to use a number line, but she kept doing it the way that she knew, and the teacher said that it was not a problem as long as she had the correct time. In order to avoid confusion, I allowed my EL to show the time on the number line the way she wanted.

The main way that I informally assessed my EL student was listening to her read. If I heard her mispronounce a word so that I did not know what the word was I would wait until she finished the sentence and then ask her to reread the sentence. Once she was done with a book then she would take an Accelerated Reader test about the book and if she did not understand a question, I would break it down for her and remind her to look through the book for the answer.

There were several things that I liked about my service learning site. However, the thing that stuck out to me the most was that the teacher was from the same place that the EL was from and had the same first language. I liked this because the teacher made sure to tell my EL student what she wanted her to do with me and if there was any time that we had a communication issue my teacher could help by being a translator. Another thing that I liked about my service learning site was that she was with the same class the whole day and did the majority of her work right beside her English-speaking peers. I liked this because it gave the EL the opportunity to talk and grow in her social language vocabulary. I learned several things about how English learners learn through tutoring this tutoring experience. One thing that I learned is that you should use leveled questioning with them so that they understand what a question is asking. I also learned that if you want an English learner to put an answer in a certain spot or read a certain sentence you should point to where you want them to put their answer or begin to read. Finally, I learned that English learners learn a lot through talking with peers and want to talk with them. This means that whenever possible you should have English learners talk to one of their peers.

English Learner Characteristics/Factors

The EL that I worked with was in the third grade and was eight years old. She was very motivated to work and talk with her peers. My EL also listens to instructions and is very caring. My student was a level 2 on the WIDA scale because she could ask questions like who, what, when, and where, locate information in a text, follow two step oral directions, and produce short sentences (Nutta 119). My EL student was from Puerto Rico and her first language was Spanish. She lives with her mother and 1 sibling, her farther is still part of her life but she does not see him often. She and her family have been in the continental United States for two years. Her weaknesses include spelling and reading. Her strength is art and she enjoys drawing when she has spare time in class. She can participate in group work by pointing out details that she finds in a passage the group is reading and state her opinion. Some classroom communication gaps include not having academic language, not feeling comfortable talking in front of the class, not being able to retell stories, and not being able to write a paragraph response. Some support strategies that could be use is allowing her to answer in common language, allow her to discuss answers with one partner instead of the whole class, asking her questions about the story, and allowing her to answer written answers in a sentence rather than a paragraph.

Introduction

My EL is from Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has an area around 9,100 square kilometers and is in the Caribbean east of the Dominican Republic (The World Factbook: Puerto Rico 2018). Both English and Spanish are official languages in Puerto Rico however, around 92% of Puerto Ricans speak Spanish as their first language (Puerto Rico Language Stats). The EL that I work with is in the vast majority of Puerto Ricans who speak Spanish as their first language.

Language/Linguistics

The Spanish language has many similarities and differences compared to English. Spanish is written from left to right like English (Script Direction and Languages). The script is also a Latin script just like English (Script Direction and Languages). A final similarity is that their alphabet has the same letters as English, however they three additional letters, for a total of twenty-nine letters. The letters that were added are ch, ll, ñ (Fortna). There are many sounds in English that will pose a problem to Spanish speaking English learners. These sounds include the English letters a, e, h, i, j, n, q, r, u, v, x, and z (Spanish Alphabet Pronunciation). One of the most notable differences between English and Spanish grammar is that Spanish word order leaves a lot more room for creativity. For example, a sentence can be organized verb + subject + rest of the sentence, rest of the sentence + verb + subject, or verb + rest of the sentence + subject (Spanish Grammar Rules). Another difference is that verbs have different genders. Verbs can be either masculine or feminine. Masculine verbs end in o and feminine verbs end in a. A final minor difference is that in Spanish adjectives go after the nouns that they modify, whereas in English the adjective goes before the noun (Spanish Grammar Rules). The most complex part of the Spanish Language is morphology.

The Spanish language has five different tenses. These tenses include infinitive, plural, past, future and present. Infinitive verbs are verbs that are not conjugated and end in either -ar,-ir, or -er (Infinitives in Spanish). To change an infinitive verb to a plural you add an -s to the end if it ends in a vowel, add an -es to the end of a word that ends in a consonant, and if a vowel ends in ión then you drop the accent mark before you add es to the end (Plural Forms).

Educational System

Even though Puerto Rico is a US territory their schools are extremely different from schools in the continental United States. A first difference is that mandatory schooling starts when a student is five in Puerto Rico however, mandatory schooling does not start until age six in most states in the continental US (Puerto Rico Education Stats). This leads to most Puerto Rican parents believing that their child has to go to school when they are five when they really do not have to begin until they are six. This will not cause conflict in the school system in the United States because while it is not mandatory in several states, most children attend kindergarten when they are five. Another difference is that the average student to teacher ratio in Puerto Rico is around 11 while the average student to teacher ratio is the continental United States is about 14 (Puerto Rico Education Stats).

This could lead to conflict in the United States educational system because some Puerto Rican parents might expect smaller class sizes and we do not have enough qualified teachers to bring down the average to 11 students per teacher. Another difference between schools in Puerto Rico and schools in the continental United States is that most schools in Puerto Rico hold every grade from Kindergarten to 12th (Vogt PERSONAL: Differences in Education). It is very hard to find any schools in the continental United States that have all the grades at the same school. Most parents from Puerto Rico expect to be able to drop off all their kids at the same school, no matter their age difference, however this rarely happens in the continental United States.

This could lead to some parents from Puerto Rico not planning well enough and their kids being late to school or the parents being late to work. Another difference between the school system in Puerto Rico and the school system in the continental United States is that 58% of Puerto Rican students drop out of school once they are old enough (Vogt PERSONAL: Differences in Education). This means that some Puerto Rican parents might think that dropping out of school is the norm, which in the continental United States it is not the norm. Another difference between schools in Puerto Rico and schools in the continental United States is that most schools in Puerto Rico provide breakfast and lunch for every student, however only students from low income families or students from Title I schools get free lunch (Laboy Differences in Schools). This will lead to conflict in the United States education system because some Puerto Rican parents might send their student to school without lunch money and not understanding why they need to pay for their student to have lunch at school.

The duration of the schooling in Puerto Rico is very similar to the duration of American schools. For example, both boys and girls from ages 5 or 6 to age 17 are required to attend school and public schools are free for every student (Education System in Puerto Rico). One interesting thing that I found is that 7.82% of males and 5.1% of girls were not enrolled in a primary or secondary school (Puerto Rico Education Stats). This means that girls are expected to finish school more than males. One difference between most Puerto Rican schools and schools in the continental United States is the hours of schooling. For example, kindergarten is held 5 days a week for four hours either from 8:00-12 or from 1:00-5:00 (Education in Puerto Rico). Junior high begins around 7:30 and ends between 1:30 and 2:30, and high school begins around 7:00 and ends between 1:30 and 2:00 (Education in Puerto Rico).

In order to find how the Puerto Rican culture views plagiarism, I asked a family friend named Guido Zamora who went to a private school in Puerto Rico until he was 15 years old and then moved to America in 1987 and finished his schooling in America. Guido said that cheating of any kind was not condoned in Puerto Rico (G. Zamora, interview, November 23, 2018). This is the same view as the schools in the continental United States so there should be no issues for the teacher to address except maybe how to cite sources correctly. During the interview Guido said that students were encouraged to work in groups. He stated that tests in Puerto Rico were fill in the blank and essays, there were no multiple choice, which is the opposite of what he saw in Florida. Mr. Zamora said that he had 1-2 hours of homework every day after school (G. Zamora, interview, November 23, 2018).

Home Life

The Puerto Rican culture is very different from the culture of the continental United States. One major difference is that in most situations in Puerto Rican culture it is acceptable to interrupt each other (Beyond Language). This may lead to problems in school because once students pass first grade, they do not tend to interrupt each other and if they do, the student doing the interrupting is seen as being rude. The teacher needs to be sensitive to this because they have been taught that interrupting is acceptable and now, they have to learn that interrupting is not ok. Another major difference between Puerto Rican and American culture is that being on time is not important to the majority of Puerto Ricans (Beyond Language). This means that some Puerto Rican students might walk into class thirty minutes late and say they just lost track of time. The teacher needs to be sensitive to this because the student may not have ever had to be on time for anything else and now they have a lot of things they are expected to be on time for. Another aspect of culture that may lead to problems in school acculturation is that they celebrate all the regular American holidays and 7 additional holidays.