Page 34 - Journey Seasons Magazine Spring 2020

ESL with Miss Soiles
To me, “Home” is not just limited to the comforts of my house. “Home”, in a larger sense, is the community and people around me, such as my family, friends, coworkers, and students.
Since schools have shut down, I wanted to make sure that my ESL students were still getting some ESL instruction in a way that seemed familiar and safe to them. After praying for direction on how to teach during this time, I felt inspired to create a corner of my bedroom to look like my classroom (see photo to the right), featuring Mr. Minion, a pretend co-teacher that my first and third graders are familiar with since I had him in my real classroom at school.
I created a YouTube channel called “Miss Soiles ESL,” which has three educational video series. The aim of this channel is to create a sense of community and another “home” for my students; school, in many ways, was like a home for them because of that familiarity that they had with the classroom routines, as well as relationships with their teachers.
The first series I launched was called the “Quarantined Classroom,” which has the slogan, “Where you can stay safe and go to school.” Each episode starts off with the learning objective being shared in English and Spanish, and me trading a banana for a book from Mr. Minion. His series is a read- aloud, accompanied with vocabulary and writing prompts, which is something that my students and I would do together if we were in my classroom.
The next series I created is called “Tea Talk,” where we have tea and talk. In this series, Ms. Soiles (me) and Mr. Monkey or Mrs. Monkey discuss a topic, such as culture, how to care for the earth, teamwork, etc. I use a teacup as my ventriloquism tool, because I am no expert at that. These videos are not only made with the intent to be speaking exercises for children and their families, but also to be funny so that my students can laugh during this time of uncertainty. My students have written their responses and sent them to me, too!