Chapter 5

In Branch 5-1, Wong talked about Vygotsky's ideas in TESOL and the minority. He said that all children, whether they are "normal" or children with disabilities or from a minority, have the same capabilities of learning and should have the opportunities to participate in the educational discourse. According to Wong, Vygotsky "understood education as a tool for social transformation--for social emancipation and freedom from want." I think it's easy for us to take the easy way out--to keep the status quo and not transform our methodology to include all students, thereby preventing access to knowledge for all students. But Vygotsky said that it shouldn't be the case, we need to use education so that it is accessible to all students, whether they have disabilities or are in the minority. If given access to education, all students can use education to transform their lifestyle. The previous quote just reminds me of that saying, give a man a fish and he'll have food for the day; teach him how to fish and he'll have food for a lifetime.

Later in Branch 5-2, I heartily agree with Wong when she said we should "honor home languages and cultures, we need to bring bilingual and bicultural models into our classrooms and we need to change the climate--the culture of our classrooms, to foster respect for all languages." This reminds me of Jim Cummin's framework of language minority students in the way that he said that we should take an additive view toward the home language and cultures. We shouldn't expect our students to only speak English in the classroom because we're just merely denying them their identity. Instead, we should work so that our curriculum reflects respect for all languages.