Labels are great!! They enable us to identifiy different students with different needs and serve our students appropriately, rather than teach a "one size fits all" approach. Consider this..
1. You go to the store and all the bottles, cans, boxes and packages have no labels. How do you know what to buy?
2. The pharmacist is going to fill your prescription. S/he goes to the shelf and there are 1000 bottles of pills, all looking alike with no labels. So s/he just grabs the first bottle available and gives it to you.
3. At the gas pump we (in the US) have several options, with prices varying by almost $1.00 a gallon per gallon. Without labels, how would anyone know which gas to buy and how much it was?
We need to be able to differentiate medicines, foods, products, services...and students. Fixating on the word "label" is easy and trendy lately. How should teachers be able to differentiate students, and teach them at their level, without labels? Is it the word "label" you don't like, or the idea of classifying students in order to meet the needs of hundreds, or thousands, of students with limited resources.
Allison Widmann, MSW, MPP, Certified TESOL
------------------------------
Allison Widmann, MSW, MPP, Certified TESOL
ESL Teacher
Language and Literacy, LLC
United States
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 05-08-2022 02:15 PM
From: Yuliya Summers
Subject: The labels we use in our field and how these labels matter
Hello, My TESOL Lounge Community,
Linked is a preview copy of the article Rai has written for the August issue of TESOL Connections. In this article, Rai looks at the terms and labels we use in the profession, specifically EL vs. MLL.
We thought this could be a good launch pad for further discussion within my TESOL. TESOL Connections, with this article, was emailed to all members on Monday.
Check out this article on how we use labels. Reading the article made me think about these questions:
- What labels do you use in your district/school?
- How do labels limit?
- How do labels make us have certain expectations and assumptions?
- How do labels affect our students?
We look forward to your response. Please let us know if you have questions for Rai, the author.
------------------------------
Yuliya Summers
MyTESOL Lounge Coordinator/Volunteer
TESOL MPC
United States
------------------------------