For my advanced clinical I chose to visit Adams Spanish Immersion School, even though I didn't speak Spanish at the beginning of the semester. My reason for this was to experience what it is like for non-English speaking students to be immersed in the language in an LEP classroom. I do speak French, and after years of working with Spanish speaking students I could understand a little and say a few simple sentences, but I really couldn't speak Spanish. At the beginning of the semester I started to learn with some tapes from the library. Being in Mrs. Caspar's class, with all the text and pictures on the walls, and especially with her speaking only Spanish to the students, who were also beginners(although already much better than I), I soon could understand enough to know what was going on in the class. The students knew that I was learning, and sometimes could teach me something, which made them feel good. The experience deepened my empathy for LEP students.

Dates attended: 9-24, 10-1, 10-8, 10-15, 10-29, 11-5, 11-19, 12-3, 12-10, 1999.

Journal: I kept a reflective journal during the clinical.

Activities: I usually led the small groups in math skills. I would help out students who needed extra attention to finish a task.

Lessons I taught:

Family: Mrs. Caspar was doing a unit on families, so I brought my wife and our two daughters to class (we live across the street from the school so it was easy) and introduced them. Then we asked the students what the relationships were between us all.

Music: The students were reading a book about animals going to play in an orchestra. At the end of the book were two pages with pictures of musical instruments. Over lunch, I went home and got some of my collection of musical instruments: violin, guitar, banjo, drum, tambourine, cymbals, guiro, tenor guitar and harp. Then I presented the instruments to the students and had them match the vocabulary with what they had learned in the book. Afterwards they handled the instruments in small groups and experienced the different sounds that they make.

Juggling: First we introduced the Spanish vocabulary for juggling, balls, clubs, diabolo, rollo bollo and devil sticks, then I performed a small show. For a finale, the students counted to 100 in Spanish while I juggled four balls standing on the rollo bollo.
Pictures
 

Teacher Raquel Casper, Arianna, Tim,  Carla and Jesus doing math sticks.	Carla answering a question in the daily calendar.
Introducing my family for "Mi Familia" lesson.	The kids meet one week old Megan.
Teacher Aide Lydia doing the daily calendar.	Taylor and Antonio looking at the  visual aid for my family lesson.
Ashley and Katrina making turkeys.	Graham and Scot.