For the past 9 weeks my family and I have had the privilege of hosting an exchange student from France. We have enjoyed the experience but the challenges of cross-cultural and linguistic understanding in our day to day interactions has given me cause to stop and think about my classroom. What are the cultural norms that I take for granted in my classroom? Are they the norms I really want to be part of my classroom? What are the cultural norms my students bring to class? Is the student who never asks for help disengaged or does he/she feel that asking for help or clarification indicate a lack of respect for me as teacher?
I have particularly thought about my maths teaching in terms of language in my classroom. In teaching maths there is so much language that we, as fluent maths people, use without even thinking about the full meaning of the word. Our students, however, are not fluent in the language yet. Is the language a barrier to understanding or to engagement in the first place?
In my psychology classroom, there is a very clearly defined range of vocabulary, terms and contexts that we are careful to explain. I think we can be less aware of the language we use in maths, because it can be an every day term, but not all our students will have understood that term in that context before sitting in our class.
To have to stop and think of what other word or concept I could use to help our exchange student understand the full meaning of our Aussie idioms made me realise that I need to take time to stop and think about my language in my maths classes and really work at linking the concepts and meanings to ideas/words that my students have a better connection with, while allowing my students to maintain their dignity and integrity as learners.
Now that was not something I expected to get out of our experience as a host family.