To be or not to be an English teacher in Puerto Rico: A comparison between two 21st Century Puerto Rican Schools

Originally written on Thursday, January 20, 2011. Written for a Teaching of English course.

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Visiting classrooms and getting a firsthand look at what goes on in Puerto Rican schools provides us, education students, with the realties we will all face as teachers. I'd like to present here two somewhat extreme cases with which the English teacher can find themselves in when teaching in Puerto Rico. The schools that I will compare will be the University High School (UHS) and the public middle school, Dr. José Celso Barbosa. The classes that are described are both 9th grade, although I also mention experiences I had when visiting 10th and 11th grade classes. I will describe the reading strategies used, reading materials, integration of technology and other disciplines into the English classroom as well student interaction, participation and dynamics. All these will be described in order to show how they all help promote (or not help promote?) students’ English language growth.

Important factors to take into consideration are the differences and similarities between the UHS and the Celso Barbosa schools. In terms of similarities, both are located within the same geographical area and are divided by just about one wall since the schools are located on the same block but have opposing entrances. A particularity of the UHS is that entrance exams are required for admission. Celso Barbosa is mostly attended by students from neighboring communities with most of their homes within walking distance. On the other hand, it seems as though almost all the students at the UHS arrive by car. Both of these factors, in my view, represent a significant difference in the student makeup between both schools.

With these particular differences being established, I will begin describing the 9th grade English class at the Dr. José Celso Barbosa middle school. The general consideration that I can make of this class is that it had a poor environment for the development of English. While the teacher, Mrs. Concepción, showed a good command of the English language and used it considerably throughout the classes she gave, the activities, strategies and materials used did little to improve the students’ general comprehension of the language.

Most of the time, phrases and sentences had to be translated to students in order for them to be understood and students themselves almost never used English to communicate. For example, an assignment was given to write a poem. Students in this situation had trouble understanding the instructions given in English, so the teacher had to repeat them various times and often translate them into Spanish for students to understand. Students were generally unmotivated with the activity, as class participation was very low and some students did not even start doing the work that was assigned to them. Some integration of art class could be considered, as another assignment involved drawing a picture related to the theme: “English is the beacon that guides to the shores of success”. In all my experience observing classes at Celso Barbosa, I did not witness the teacher use any reading materials or strategies in order to promote English language development.

My experience at the UHS was remarkably different. During my visits to several grades here, all students spoke and were also highly encouraged by their teachers to speak only in English in their classes. In this 9th grade class, reading materials ranged from short stories provided in textbooks to young adult novels read independently by students. They were assigned to read books such as The Giver and one of the short stories being read in class was “The Most Dangerous Game”. Classroom dynamics included various activities in which most students actively participated in. These included debates, open group analysis and discussions, cooperative learning in pairs as well as on-task individual work. The students also kept a journal in which they were to write entries related to the current topic being discussed in class. In some lessons, the teacher asked the students to voluntarily read their entries out-loud to share them with the rest of the class.

Integration of technology was also present, as most classrooms have a Smartboard which teachers regularly use with slide show presentations. In an 11th grade English class, a field trip project integrated many courses including English, Spanish, History, Math and Science. Overall, the environment at the UHS was quite appropriate for promoting English. Students were often engaged in lengthy yet interesting debates that grabbed the attention of most students and successfully promoted classroom participation.

When looking at both of these schools, we can see how different the experience of being an English teacher in Puerto Rico can be. You may very well find yourself with students who are able to properly speak in English, while in others schools, like in Celso Barbosa, you may find that none of the students are able to even understand the language. This presents a challenge to teachers as one will have to provide very different methodologies to each of these schools’ English programs in order to meet the student’s needs.

While it is evident that the curriculum in Celso Barbosa lacked any evidence that the students actually read something in English, a teacher has to first ask themselves which reading materials and strategies might work with these students. It may be through trial and error that a successful way to go about teaching these students English can be achieved. But such efforts need to be done or else we might risk failing at what should be our main objective. The best we can do as teachers is to not give up on the students and our undertaking in teaching them English.