Fall 2008

Linguistically Diverse Students LLSS 315

Linguistically Diverse

Red Spinning Apple

I Am From

I am from Plainview, Texas

a place of ranches and farmland

where my life began.

I am from Marvin and Sherry Meek

my loving parents

who raised me to have good values.

I am from having a loving husband

and two great kids

one thirteen years old and one two years old.

I am from children's books, toys,

swings and slides.

I am from homework and volleyball games

to new clothes, music,

and sleepovers from time to time.

I am from "Jacob stop that!",

"Jacob please be quiet!", and

"Jacob don't hit your sister!".

I am from going to college

and finishing my education.

Late nights and very little sleep.

I am from reading mystery and

romance novels.

Going camping and

taking family vacations eveery two years.

I am from playing boardgames,

WII, and playstation to be involved

with my kid's interests and entertainment.

I am from Aztec, New Mexico

where I have spent the past

seventeen years.

I am from raising my kids

with the good values that

I was raised with and

encouraging them to go after

their dreams.

Final Thoughts

I have really enjoyed this class this semester. Even though things started out slowly, I think we finished strong. First, I just want to say again that I enjoyed having Vicki come to our class. I feel like she opened my eyes to the fact that some day I might have a student that has a hearing loss. I always knew that I will definitely have students that will be hard to deal with, and that I will have students with learning disabilities. However, I never thought about having a student with a hearing loss. Even though she was only here for a few weeks, I feel like a learned a lot in that short amount of time. Therefore, I hope that she will be able to come to your classes in the future, because she is a great guest speaker.

I enjoyed Vicki, but working at Apache with Desaundra, Tyler, and Tristen was my favorite asignment for this class. I worked with Desaundra the most, but the last several weeks Fredrick and I teamed our kids up and worked in a group. Working in a group helped all of us share ideas and help each other, so I am glad we decided to work together. Desaundra was a little shy at first and really quiet; however, the more we got to know one another, the more she opened up to me. There were days that she did not seem to interested in writing her poem or her story, but in the end she seemed proud of her finished products. She had decided to write her family story about their family trip to Seaworld, and so I told her that I was writing my family story about Seaworld too. Knowing that we had something in common helped us to start building a relationship with each other, which made it easier to work together. She is such a smart kid, I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with her. The day we wrote her first draft, I told her how proud of her I was and I thought she had a great story to tell. I could see her face light up. She started telling me about all the other stories she had written at home, and she really wanted me to read them. It made me feel good that she wanted to share her stories with me, I knew then that she felt comfortable with me getting to know her a little bit more. This was such a good experience for me, and I hope that my fellow classmates had a good experience at Apache too. On Thursday we will have the Author's Chair, and I am excited to meet the parents and hear the students share their stories. As I said before, we finished the semester strong, we finished with a BANG!