From Pullout to Inclusion in a Service-Learning Project :: Teaching Education Research

From Pullout to Inclusion in a Service-Learning Project Introduction Service-learning is no mystery to those who have been working with English Language Learners in the United States, who are often marginalized immigrants and refugees, and who for linguistic and cultural reasons are misunderstood. TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) professionals are frequently their mouthpiece, if not their advocates. As advocates of these â€Å"other† cultures and languages (who generally support bilingual education), we are seen as a kind of pariah perpetuating the immigration and â€Å"illegal alien problem.† Not surprisingly, given the increase of immigrants and refugees in the U.S. in such a short span of time, many teachers and administrators have relied on their best instincts rather than the best theories or methods to work with English language learners. For one thing, the populations keep changing. Within less than a decade, many programs have served students from diverse backgrounds with completely different needs ranging from low literacy Hmong to high literacy Russians. Teachers are often called on to be experts without having sufficient training in language teaching methodology or in second language and literacy development. Despite their exemplar methodologies in other ways (e.g., task and project based learning, critical thinking, cooperative learning), they do what they think is best, most often relying on their own past experiences learning a foreign language in the U.S. Moreover, TESOL professionals (not a monolith, we understand) are accustomed to enormous linguistic an d cultural variety along with a fair amount of ambiguity. Unknowns abound in our world. When service-learning merges with TESOL, what is called for is a new kind of expertise. In this paper, we set out to question the elusive nature of expertise in company with service learning. Expertise within any discipline is an ambitious goal and even under the best circumstances, liberal arts faculty rarely think of themselves as preparing experts. In the TESOL world we have long since known that our expertise is not locked in our own ability to â€Å"technify† our students (or our teachers), or to fill young (and old) minds with theory. Following Edward Zwotkowski (1999) we understand that expertise encompasses more that theoretical understanding and technical skill; it also includes the in-depth knowledge that comes from having lived with a problem or set of circumstances over an extended period of time. We have not had to look very hard to find those living with kinds of problems.