Ways Teachers Can Help Bilingual STEM Students
The need for bilingual aid in schools has increased in Texas, here is what teachers can do to help their bilingual students.
By: Amanda R.
With one in five children being ESL students, the majority of Texas teachers have come across a similar dilemma – how to help bilingual students. According to The Texas Tribune, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it harder for multilingual students to get the extra help they need. Due to this, a teacher’s willingness and participation to help students is more crucial than ever. Here are some helpful tips teachers can incorporate into their lesson plans and classrooms to better help bilingual STEM students.
Make your classroom a safe place
As we all know, creating a comfortable, safe environment is a crucial step in education. In order to make bilingual students feel safe and encourage other students to be open to cultural differences, teachers should show the same enthusiasm. How can a teacher do this you might ask? Or what does a safe place for diversity look like?
One thing teachers can do to achieve this is to include books in different languages on their classroom bookshelf! Adding multilingual books can encourage bilingual students to embrace their knowledge and skill of knowing a second language rather than viewing it as a struggle. Having books in a different language is especially crucial to STEM students since terms and definitions are key elements in the STEM field. A great find and resource is DK’s 1000 Bilingual Stem Words. In English and Spanish, this book is great to have in the classroom to help Spanish-speaking STEM students.
Another way to create a safe place is to celebrate different cultures and languages! As an educator, be open and ready to listen to your students. Let your students share their home language and celebrate them! Being bilingual is an advantage! According to Tessa, “-more and more studies have discovered that bilingual children show signs of significantly higher comprehension across all academic subjects than their monolingual counterparts.”
Increase visual aid and hands-on activities
Another way for teachers to better aid their bilingual students is to include more visual aid and hands-on activities. According to VariQuest, “Visual aids help teachers establish, explain, connect, and associate ideas and concepts to make the process of learning more interesting, enjoyable, and effective.” Visual aid can be incorporated into lessons through graphs, models, videos, etc. Visual aid, along with hands-on activities, can help refine a bilingual student’s knowledge of STEM concepts because instead of just hearing about concepts, students will be able to see how science works. Plus, it will help other students whose learning style is visual learning!
Ask for help
Did you know that Texas has had a bilingual teacher shortage since 1990? According to the Texas Association of School Boards, the multilingual teacher shortage has worsened since the pandemic due to teachers feeling burned out or overworked since they have to take the extra step of translating the lesson plans for bilingual students. The state of Texas has been struggling with multilingual aid for many years, and that’s why it’s so important for teachers to be able to ask for help.
Ask for help from the school district, community, and sometimes, even the family. The school district can offer more aid by hiring a translator or starting an after-school club that gives bilingual students the extra help they need. The community may have some volunteers that are willing to translate or explain concepts in different languages. Students’ families might have members who can aid them by going over lessons in their home language. Help is out there and it is important to reach out and ask for help.
Edited by: Pablo S.
