"For
every complex problem there is always a simple solution - and it's always wrong''. H.L. Mencken.
Now What? Helping Students in Distress
By Tina Martin
The Central America student I fear
may be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome...the young Chinese woman
who never speaks above a whisper and flees from assignments and from help...the
Eastern European woman who is so lost that she doesn’t even know how lost she
is…the young Chinese Born American male who speaks English fluently but has
taken every level of ESL at least twice and still can’t make sense of (or in) the
written word..the young Korean man who illustrates the futility of prayer with me,
the one he begs his God in vain to make stop hating him so much...
These are all situations that in the past five
years have sent me to…
the needs assessment/information
form that is never adequately filled out by those most needing help
the students’ other teachers (if I
can ascertain this information)
my appointment schedule to set a
time for a one-to-one conference with the students
Early Alert
The DSPS, which can’t test ESL
students because of the language barrier
The Student Health Center
The ESL Coordinator
The ESL Chair
Most
recently concern for lost students sent (propelled?) me to a workshop called
“Supporting Students in Distress," given at CCSF in August on Professional
Development Day by the Director of Student Health Sunny Clark and the Dean of
Student Affairs & Wellness, Samuel Santos, who added some situations I
hadn’t had first-hand. Before I share some helpful suggestions made
by Clark and Santos, I'd like to present these situations as problem solving
activities, and I'd like to present them to you as YOURS, not mine. (“It is more blessed to give than to receive!")
I don’t want to divulge the identities of these students, so I’ve changed their
real countries of origin to other countries in the same region.
Situation
1:
A student in your speaking-listening
class speaks as if from another
dimension. He’s from El Salvador, and you’ve read about immigrants from Central
America serving in the US military in Afghanistan, so you wonder whether he’s
suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
When you pair him with another student, the other student is
perplexed. When you see his first
written assignment—thought questions from College
Oral Communication that the other students were able to answer--you notice
that his responses use words from the
questions but don’t really answer them.
You e-mail his other ESL teacher and send him to Early Alert, a program
to help students succeed academically, but you suspect his problems go beyond
his skills in language-use. You ask to
see him in your office, and when you do, he tells you he’s taking Risperidone,
Clozapine, and citalopram. You walk him over to the Student Health Center both
to alert them that he is taking these prescribed drugs and to find out what the
drugs are and why he’s taking them. Will they let you know if he gives his
permission? (He wrote nothing on the
form asking the students to state any disabilities or extra help they might
need.) On the way over, he tells you
that he’s seeing a psychiatrist in the Mission District, and you ask him
whether you can contact him so that together you can figure out how best to
help him succeed in school. He’s
extremeley polite and even appreciative, but nothing in his classroom
“performance” changes. What now?
Situation
2:
A young female student in your intermediate speaking and listening class speaks
in a whisper. You had her a year earlier in a lower-level course, and you
didn’t pass her because she always came late, never prepared her assignments,
and always spoke in a whisper. You have
the students read the directions for activities aloud so that you won’t be
tempted to skip them, and she seems unable to read. The coordinator hasn’t yet had her hours cut
in half, so you ask her about the student’s performance in other courses. The Whisperer has failed or dropped all her
courses outside of ESL except for PE, in which she got an A, and you find out
that she has never taken any reading or writing courses. She probably can’t read in English. You are determined to talk to this elusive,
unprepared students, but as usual, the student arrives late. You tell her you need to talk to her after
class. She flees. You send her an e-mail, but she doesn’t
reply. Now what?
Situation
3:
A young male student all dressed up in a wool
suit and tie (not the typical campus dress even for most instructors) is
sweating profusely, and the perspiration seems to be due to the efforts he is
making to fill out an information form during your first class session of the
semester. He is in a high academic ESL
class, and his answers are in excellent English but don't correspond to the
questions. When you speak to him after class, you realize that his
English is near-native, but he is lost. You find out that he’s taken
other ESL levels two to three times
each, and he’s already failed the Advanced Academic ESL course you’re teaching. You really can’t understand how he ever got
to this level in the first place. He is
so earnest that you think he could really succeed in a job that didn’t require
written English. He could feel good
about succeeding in something. But you
don’t know where to direct him. Now
what?
Situation 4:
Students who have spent the past two
weeks practicing for and conducting a survey have now tallied their individual
results and begun planning a group
presentation on their survey results.
But they tell you that a member
of their group hasn’t yet conducted the survey. The student protests, “Why you said I
don’t? I do,” but as she goes through
her binder searching for some evidence of her preparedness, she realizes that she
thought the practice in class was the whole event. She has already contacted you about her
chances of passing this course. She’s
dropped her Intermediate Academic ESL course and her math class. You make an appointment to help her during
your office hour, and she signs her name by 10:00 AM your office in Batmale but
goes instead to your classroom at appointment time. You contact her teacher from the previous
semester, who says that following the instructor's sample demonstration of how
to steal an umbrella, this student gave a lecture on the circulation of the
blood but finally passed the course with a demonstration on how to give a manicure. Everyone in the class has tried to be
sensitive to this student’s feelings, but she never returns to class. You’re tormented by the idea of her walking
around totally lost, but she doesn’t respond to your e-mail message. What now?
.
Situation 5:
A
very polite Korean student writes very convoluted essays that appear to be
word-for-word translations from his native language set up like poetry. You
send him to Early Alert to get support for his English and academic skills, and
he asks you, “Why me?” You show him the
essay he wrote on overcoming an obstacle:
They said “all everythings have reason”
although, humbled soil, dust, rain drops, they have
reason to be here.
So, they didn’t trea to all things, people.
Some peopple neglected to begger, they helped to them.
In my case, I lived to achieve but, it was very
difficult.
So I considered as I’m jerk, no reason, to live.
Because, I was full of eagering, greedy, anger, jealous,
even I had to plan killing myself.
For example, 2 years ago, I was a high school
student. I was
suffered from my future.
You express
concern about his “even I had to plan killing myself” and tell him about the
wonderful counseling services at the Student Health Center.
He is not interested in going just
in knowing why him?
You find out that he really tested
in a level lower than yours, but because he is an international student and
paying so much money, there was pressure for him to skip to a higher
level—yours.
You send him to
CLAD, the college’s Center for Language
and Academic Development, and again, he
wants to know “Why me?” He has Korean
friends who are also his roommates. Why
him and not them?
Then you assign an opinion essay on the
case of Christian Science parents declared guilty in the death of their
daughter, and this student writes about the futility of prayer.
I want to
you one example.
You,
professor, You discriminates me. I didn’t know
why
You
hates me. So I prayed to my god
and
tried to solve this problem. But I am
suffering
from
it because my god he didn’t help me
to
solve it. I believe my god always don’t
help me,
In
this case, hermanson she’s parents prayer
didn’t
go to him. Such as me. I am sorry
My
professor.
It’s five o’clock in the morning,
and you have a class with this student at 8:10. What now?
Coming
soon: What I learned from the workshop
on Supporting Students in Distress.
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