Sacha’s Story: Research Intentions Interrupted

My research took place in a west side Vancouver school where I teach pull-out ESL and Core French. For this project I chose eight children from two different ESL groups that I saw two to three times per week. I chose these two groups because, of the five groups that I taught, these two were the most stable. By stable, I mean that I was fairly certain that none of the children would leave the school for an extended period of time; that they would not be leaving the group to join another group; and that their schedules were the most consistently kept. Each group had four members. The first group, Group One, was composed of one boy from Thailand in Grade Seven and three boys in Grade Six, one Mandarin and two Korean. Group Two had two Grade Five boys, one from Korea and the other from Finland, as well as a Korean boy and girl in Grade Four. The four boys in Group One were fairly quiet, did not have a lot in common and, therefore, did not spend much time socializing. Group Two was the opposite. The students were younger, very talkative and all friends who played at lunch and recess, so keeping them on task was a constant challenge. Everything I did with Group Two took longer because there were so many questions and discussions.

Once I began the project, I quickly realized that the ten lessons would take much longer than I had planned. Since the students came from different classrooms to meet in my room for the forty-minute block, we always seemed to lose five to ten minutes at the onset. I had initially hoped that this disadvantage would be compensated for by the fact that I was working with small groups. I was wrong.

Group One generally comprehended instruction and directions much more easily than the Group Two. They tended to only ask questions if they got stuck on something while Group Two loved to explore all of the “But what if…” type questions before embarking on the activity. In the end, all ended up being successful, but Group Two took much, much more time than Group One to complete all of the tasks. The impact on this research project was that Group Two did not finish their reports within the allotted time for my research data collection.

My continuous frustration with this project was the time factor. I was always running out of time and ended up rushing the kids through certain parts of the unit. As a teacher, I hated doing this because I feel that a big critical part of learning is letting the children make discoveries on their own. By rushing them, I often had to give answers rather than allowing the time for them to figure them out. Ideally, a research project of this nature that requires an extended period of time would be much better suited to an enrolling class where the teacher could allow for double-block periods and make it a daily focus. I found that I had to review the material with the children frequently because sometimes a week would pass where I was not able to see the students due to my schedule being flexible for classroom teachers.

It is so hard to create a consistent, flowing program when interruptions are so frequent. This research project is the perfect example of the challenges faced by pull-out resource teachers. An on-going issue with being a pullout resource teacher doing research was that I am vulnerable to other people’s timetables and must be accommodating and flexible. I had to get used to the students and they to me. My research participants would forget to come and I found myself running from room to room collecting them, wasting valuable teaching time. I got used to students’ teachers asking me if I minded not taking their students on a particular day or being asked to help out with a project that an individual child was are struggling with, not thinking that I had spent time prepping for the period already. I understood these conflicts of priorities—those of the classroom teacher and my own as a pull-out resource teacher and frustrated Master’s researcher with a deadline—because I had to or else I would have gone crazy taking it all personally! Understanding aside, however, I do feel there is a lack of respect for resource teachers; perhaps the pull-out model is to blame…

In the end, all of my students were successful in writing a report that I know was above the standards of what they had been capable of writing previous to the project. They were all proud of their work and I can only hope that they will retain the writing process and be able to apply it to future writing activities.