Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo Interview

Dublin Core

Title

Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo Interview

Subject

Social Equity Commons Oral History

Description

Interview with Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo about their experiences as ELD teachers at William Ward Middle School in Riverdale and International High School in Langley Park.

Creator

PGCMLS, Bladensburg Branch Library

Publisher

Prince George's special collection staff

Date

May 7, 2024

Contributor

Bladensburg staff

Rights

Format

.mp3

Language

English

Type

Digital audio

Identifier

200015

Oral History Item Type Metadata

Original Format

.wav

Duration

55.11 minutes

Transcription

Project: Social Equity Commons Oral History
Chapter: Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo Interview
Date: May 7, 2024
Participants: 
Interviewer: Norman Lezama
Interviewee: Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo


  • 00:00 Norman: Alright, well hello. How are y’all doing? Today is May 7, 2024 at the Bladensburg Branch Library. My name is Norman Lezama. I'm a Public Specialist II for the Library Social Equity Commons, and I'm here with: 
  • 00:18 Lilian: Lilian Chi from William Wirt Middle School. I am an ELD. That means English Language Development Teacher. We used to call it ESOL, but now it's ELD, English Language Development Teacher. 
  • 00:34 Norman: Awesome. Thank you. 
  • 00:36 Paula: And my name is Paula Amadeo, and I am from International High School at Langley Park. And I am an ELD teacher there for 9th and 10th graders. 
  • 00:47 Norman: Awesome. Thank you for sharing. So we're recording this interview as part of our PGCMLS oral history project. So thank you to the both of you for spending your afternoon with us today. So we're going to start with a few questions. So what languages do you speak? 
  • 1:10 Paula: Honestly, I really only speak English. I studied Spanish for five or six years, but I was, I guess, I don't know, one of the examples of what not to do in learning a foreign language. I was very scared to speak and very reluctant. And now, yeah, it's very difficult for me to speak it, but I do, I can read it a little bit better and understand what my students are saying. But yeah, English. 
  • 1: 45 Norman: Thank you. 
  • 1:47 Lilian: Yeah, I speak English and French and a little bit of Spanish. I also speak a local language called Pijin English. A lot of people from West Africa or the English part or English speaking part of Africa, they speak the English. Pidgin is like a broken English. So I am not very comfortable speaking Spanish, but I'm very comfortable understanding what my students are saying, especially the curse words or anything inappropriate. I learned all those, but I guess I'm a little bit fluent in Spanish. 
  • 2:24 Norman: Nice. So you catch them every time? 
  • 2:25 Lilian: Yes, I do. I know what those words mean. 
  • 2:29 Norman: Yeah, make sure you know. So where did you grow up and in what era did you go to school? Like which years did you go to school, and in high school or middle school?
  • 2:45 Lilian: I grew up in Cameroon, West Africa and I was born and raised in Yaounde. That is a capital of Cameroon and it is a French speaking city, but I went to school in English. My family spoke English at home, so English is like my first language. And I went to middle school or elementary middle school in the 70s, 80s, and even high school. And it was really very interesting because we did not have computers, we did not have a lot of technology. We were into personal direct communication with each other. 
  • 3:25 Norman: Yeah.
  • 3:27 Lilian: So it's a little bit different now with all the technology. 
  • 3:30 Norman: Awesome, thank you. 
  • 3:31 Paula: I think I grew up around the same era as you as well, in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, so one-on-one conversations, trying to use the telephone, for actual phone calls was our best way of communicating. I grew up in Pennsylvania, about an hour north of Philadelphia. It's called the Pennsylvania Dutch area. So a lot of my classmates and their parents spoke like a dialect of English. It was Pennsylvania German. I'm not Pennsylvania German, so I didn't really know that language.
  • 4:18 Norman: Awesome. Now with that experience, how do you think that impacted you when it comes to education and working with the students? 
  • 4:28 Lilian: Yeah, I think my bilingual background impacted me a lot because I had the first-hand experience of learning a foreign language or a different language because since we spoke English at home, I acquired French out in the neighborhood with friends and in school because we all learned English and French in school. But that just like enlightened me when I came to the United States and I realized that a lot of my students are Hispanic, they don't speak a lot of, they don't even speak English, but they were born here. I identify myself with them, going and learning French and also then learning English. I sympathize with them, I know exactly what they're going through and it makes it more natural for me to teach them and they could feel it from the way we relate, and I also struggle not to learn Spanish. So I make mistakes in Spanish, they laugh at me and I tell them, don't laugh at me, do I laugh at you when you make mistakes? They were like, no. So they are really understanding that second language acquisition process, just as what I went through. So my bilingual background impacted me a lot and even the country in general, Cameroon, it's a bilingual country, they speak English and French, news, TV, a lot in the neighborhood and everything. So it's just like something natural to know how to speak a different language. And I really sympathize with those who are learning English, my students, a lot.
  • 6:00 Norman: Awesome, thank you.
  • 6:02 Paula: When I think back to where I grew up, it kind of makes me a little sad in a way because my friends’ parents, they all spoke this language that I didn't know, but in my generation a lot of them were not wanting to continue with that language and so I don't know, I just want to take that with me too, with my own students, it's like you're learning English, but we want to continue to maintain your first language and you don't want to lose that culture, that part of you, that part of your identity. So yeah, I think that was a little bit of an influence to me. I do try to speak Spanish, many of my students are Spanish speakers and so they, I'm trying to help them with English and so sometimes, because we don't always have just Spanish speakers in our classes, so sometimes I'm having to read it to some of the other students too, like, oh come on, you can do it, let me help you with this and you'll repeat after me. And so they really enjoy sharing their language and their culture.
  • 7:18 Norman: Awesome, so you are seeing some feedback and your students and you and your students are like just connecting that way? That's awesome, that's awesome to hear. So what was college like for the both of you?
  • 7:33 Lilian: Oh, I went to a Catholic middle school back home, they called it mission school. And it was very religious, we went to school, we went to church every day, almost every day in the morning, before going and starting our classes. Every Saturday, Sunday, we learned the songs and went to Mass every day. So that was college, like a lot of religion and a lot of studying because I left my home. I left my parents when I was about 12, 13 years old, I went away, far away and it was a big experience. I cried and everything, but when I got to college, well this is middle school, middle school back in Cameroon, we called it college, but here, maybe that's the university and everything. But middle school, that's how I went, I went away for a while, but I’d always go back home on vacation. And for college, now that's the university, it was a different experience because I went back home instead for university. I went back home, that is a time here in the United States, students move away from their parents, but that is a time I came back home for my parents to go to the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. It was a very good experience, a lot of studying, we just immersed ourselves in studying, we had some distraction parties, like college students, but it was a lot of studies. We studied a lot because we did not have a lot of resources, we had to make paper copies for textbooks, we didn't have a lot of textbooks, so we all like relied on each other, if one person has a textbook, we all like take it and run copies. So that is how college was for us, we were studying a lot because we did not have a lot of resources and it really paid off. Most of my friends and I were all graduated in the three years I was supposed to be there. It was fun, it was also fun. I came out a little bit late although I was at home with my parents, I have to come back home and explain, we had a party and everything. It was hard growing up, being in the university and staying home, but it went well because we were all successful.
  • 10:00 Norman: It was important to have that down time after just long hours of just studying.
  • 10:04 Lilian: Yes, and they understood that.
  • 10:07 Norman: Thank you for sharing.
  • 10:10 Paulal: I went away for college so I went up to college up in Boston so I got to explore that city and get to know that city. It was a Catholic university, too, so I was now taking some theology classes as well, but I was actually a communication major back then, I was not an education major. So I did an internship at a local TV station one year, which was kind of interesting because it was the year that the Iraq War, the first one, broke out and there were a couple of large businesses up there that were supplying weapons for the military so I got to go to a couple of big press conferences, see the president at the time, and I also got to ride on a news chopper over the city of Boston which was a highlight I guess. I lived with people who would become nurses and business, I met my husband there as well, but it was kind of, I don't know, just a regular experience, in my view, an American university experience.
  • 11:48 Norman: I think college is definitely a wonderful time where you meet a lot of your core friends and you never know who you're going to meet during that time that will really impact you for later down the road. So did any certain classes impact your career choice and how so?
  • 12:07 Paula: Well, I would say I had a career change, so not so much. I graduated from college and I thought I was going to continue in journalism and I actually started a master's program out in Chicago and I really did not like the day-to-day and some of the things that, I don't know, I questioned some of the values of some of my classmates and what they were doing to get the story. So it was only after I was kind of like a crisis in a way like what am I going to do? I graduated, I don't want to do what I was studying in school. I happened to be living at the time with my cousins, they had an eight-year-old son, and that's when I started getting, I was kind of interested in what he was doing every day and so it was really, I think, my little eight-year-old cousin that kind of influenced me to get into teaching. My parents were both teachers and so growing up I was like, no, I'm not going to be a teacher. That's the family business, no, not for me and so I think I kind of pushed it off. I don't know, whenever anybody had suggested anything of the sort, I pushed it off. I probably would have gotten to this point sooner had I not been so stubborn about that. So it wasn't until I was in my master's program that I realized that I needed to go in a different direction. 
  • 13:53 Norman: That's really wonderful to hear because I met a lot of people who are in education, but it wasn't their first choice but they felt a calling to it and it really shows the passion about wanting to help your students and the community.
  • 14:08 Lilian: That sounds like me. I always had a passion for teaching. My dad was also a teacher. When we were growing up, from elementary school, in Yaoundé, my dad was the principal of the only English or bilingual school in that city. So everybody, all the English-speaking Cameroonians were sending their children there, even the French-speaking Cameroonians loved the school. So they were all sending all the children in that school. My dad being the principal there, I was a little bit privileged because my dad was the principal. I had some problems with kids, but I always admired my dad, being the principal there, everything ran so smoothly so I started thinking about teaching. So when I went to the university, I did English language and literature because I was just admiring my dad how things were going, the respect he was having in the community, ambassadors, ministers, senators, people from other countries, they all had to send their kids to the school where my dad was in charge. So I admired him a lot. I always wanted to be a teacher. So when I started my university studies, I did English language and those classes really advanced my passion for teaching. You know, learning grammar, phonetics, reading, English language. Those were my core subjects and those were just directing me towards the teaching field. And when I graduated, we were one of the few who were accepted to the teacher training college. So I just like teaching, was just like following me from day one. So I also finished my master's in English as a second language and started working back home as a teacher. I started teaching the French, speaking a Cameroonian's English because a lot of schools there, it was a French city, the students don’t know English, so most of us who graduated as second language teachers who went to all these French schools. So those classes I really took from college just like prepared me for teaching. So that's how I would say that, you know, just like my passion started from day one. But when I came to the United States to meet my husband sometime before, you know, coming from Africa, from Cameroon, oh, I'm in the United States. I want to do everything, I want to do computers, I want to do nursing, I want to do this. But that wasn't my calling. I did those things for a few years. I still had to go back to teaching. So it was just like a different experience. You started somewhere else, everything teaching. I started teaching and just stayed with it.
  • 16:57 Norman: And it's so cool to see the different, how people were guided in that path, right? And now with that, what was your first experience as an ESL educator?
  • 17:10 Paula: Well, like unofficially, I think it was when I was doing my teaching internship. I was in a fifth grade classroom and I think in the middle of our time there, we had this new student join our class. She was this little, tiniest little student from, she was Hmong. And nobody there spoke her language. But she, everybody was so fascinated by her because I don't know, she was just somebody new and they just took her in. And so I tried, that was the first time that I ever had to like think about how to include her in what I was, oh, I was trying to learn how to teach at the time too, but I had to from the start kind of think about, you know, about having the first classroom. So, yeah, right from the start.
  • 18:19 Lilian: My first experience teaching ESL or English as a second language in the United States was at Adelphi Elementary School in Prince George's County. I was hired as one of the ESL teachers there. And when I went there, I thought they were going to give me a curriculum or tell me what I'm going to do, coach me or give me a guide. They just like, okay, that is your class, take those children and teach English. I was like, okay, what am I supposed to use? They were like, just teach them English. And I was like, okay, so that's when I had to go back to the experience I had back home as an English teacher in the first school. I just started improvising things. Okay, we have to start learning the alphabet, we have to start learning little objects, and little things because the first experience was really difficult for me because being in the United States, I thought maybe everything was that easy. They'll give you everything. As now, we have curriculum and everything, but back then there was really no curriculum or textbooks to use and everything. So I had to go back to my previous experience. But I was also surprised that most of my students here in the United States did not speak English, although they were born here, they still couldn't speak English. So I was just like, wow, it looks so familiar. Like students back home, they were also speaking French. They didn't know how to speak English. So I was a little bit into the system. I just like pulled my hat. Okay, I'm a teacher, I've seen this before, I've done this. So hey, come on, let's go. We started learning the alphabet, the grammar, follow them in the classroom, see what the teachers are doing in the classroom and then do more of that until after some time we started having some textbooks. That was maybe late 90s. And so, you know, a guide. But my first experience was kind of like, hey, those are students, take them. I was like, what am I supposed to do?
  • 20:27 Norman: It sounds about right. A lot of, I've noticed a lot of, anybody in the education field, like when you first start, it's a lot of improvising and trying to figure out your own way of trying to teach and connect with your students. Describe the neighborhood or community you currently work in.
  • 20:46 Lilian: I work at a community called Riverdale, my school is right here at Riverdale, Maryland. A lot of the people there, they speak Spanish, they're Hispanic families. We also have a lot of families from Afghanistan and Syria. We also have a few families from Africa in general, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana.  So the community is kind of mixed, but majority, I would say more than 90%, you know, they're Hispanic families. You know, very welcoming, where they appreciate what we, the teachers, do in school. And that is something that I don't see in other communities I’ve worked with, but the parents are very welcoming, they're happy. You know, all the parents, the African parents, Hispanic and, you know, the Middle Eastern parents, they're just happy that the students are learning and they're in a new environment. So that's my neighborhood.
  • 21:43 Paula: So I teach just right up the street from here at, it's called International High School at Langley Park, however, we're in Bladensburg. And so we're not like a community school, although we have like a certain attendance area, but we have students who come from your school in Riverdale. We have a lot of students from Langley Park and College Park and then right here in Bladensburg as well. And I think we have similar populations probably because I feel like the majority of our students are from Spanish speaking backgrounds. But we also have some students from Africa and we do have a number of students from Afghanistan as well, and that number is growing. Yeah, so the community changes through the years, but for now that's what it's like. And our students, our families, they had to make a decision to come to our school because it's not, it isn't their local boundary school. And for some of our students that involves like a 30, 45 minute bus ride each way. But I think overall they're generally happy with what we do at our school because a lot of, they are often asking if there's space for older siblings to come into our school. So it's, you know, I know that we're doing good things there. Things are happy. The students are happy. The students are often, when we have a day off of school, a scheduled day off of school, a lot of them will say, do we have to? Do we have to stay home? I want to come to school. So that's like the biggest way I know that we're doing good things there.
  • 23:34 Lilian: That sounds so familiar. Most of them don't want to go back after school. They're like, can we stay after school and do something else? I love them. My students are the same way. They're happy to be with us. And they can tell because we're happy to be with them, too.
  • 23:51 Norman: I know you already talked a little bit about your students, but what do you enjoy most about engaging with them? I know you talked about how you feel when they really want to stay with you. If you want, you can continue sharing stories about what do you enjoy most about engaging with them?
  • 24:09 Lilian: Oh, I love to engage with them, especially after school. That is not a rigid environment. After school, they're a little bit laid back and that is when they are open, especially the students want to speak because they feel relaxed and not in the classroom setting. That is really tight and other students can make fun of them. So that is the time when you see the personality come out. They try to speak the language and everything. A few years back when I was at Riverdale Elementary School, I was running and I was the coordinator of an after school program. We were meeting on Saturdays just to engage the students, teach them extra, everything, science, geography, math, reading, everything. So it's always very good. It's so different to see the students in a classroom setting and to see them after school, when they're maybe with their friends and are relaxed more. That is the time when they get to speak more because ESOL, when students are in a less restrictive environment, when they feel comfortable, relaxed, that's when they practice the language more. So to me, that is the best time. Even now that I'm preparing this African celebration at my school, we stay after school from 4 to 5. I tell the parents, please, 5 o'clock, the program is ending. We are practicing for this event coming. We're going to have a modeling show for Africa. We're going to have some African bands and everything. We've started this program because the students did not feel comfortable with the Black History Month. Most of the Afghanistan children, especially the African students, would come to Riverdale Elementary. This program, they just finished celebrating African American, but I did not hear anything about Africa. I really do not belong, so we just started doing something for Africans, too, and even for the Middle Eastern students. So they loved it. We told the parents, please come back at 5 o'clock to pick up the students. At 6 o'clock, they're not even there to pick up the students. The kids don't want to go. I was like, please call your parents. It's almost a garden. Tell them to come now. I was like, okay, Miss G, let's stay a little bit. If you meet once a week on Thursdays, why don't we meet three days a week? I was like, okay, we have other things to do. So they loved staying after school, and that is the time I really see the personality come out, they speak more, they identify more with the school. They feel they belong. And I think it can open up intellectually where they love the school more, they interact with their friends who look like them, maybe the teachers or everything. It really sparked a lot of learning for them.
  • 26:55 Paula: So at the International High School, we created our own curriculum. So I'm doing kind of what you did at the beginning. So I write my own curriculum and I have to come up with my own texts, but I try to create instruction that really connects with their own personal lives. So I think when, I really enjoy learning about my students, and that's when they open up more and they will speak more, and you can just see the pride that they have. So recently, we were reading a memoir of a bilingual family that, I guess, they weren't immigrants, but they lived near the border. And so some of their family was on either side of the border. And it was like a picture book. And so we were talking about cultural traditions. And then we made our own book and we had to learn how to do some watercolor. And oh my goodness, they were just so excited to be and proud to be sharing family traditions or religious traditions or just traditions from their communities. And I just learned a whole lot about them and we learned a lot about each other and I just really like engaging them in that way. And then also because we do have students from many different cultures in our school just to see the commonalities, even though we dress differently or we speak different languages, and they just really enjoy that. And so I really love that. The other thing at our school that I helped me do that I really enjoy is we do advisory. So each afternoon for the last hour of class, I have the 16 students, I get them ninth grade and then I'm with them until they graduate. And during that time, we just build a lot of community and we're kind of like a family within our school. So they've all been variants that I've been visiting these other middle schools to bring in these new ninth graders. You're not going to be here today? Wait, when are you coming back? They just want to make sure that I'm like their security blanket in a way. I'm kind of like their mom at school. And so we build these tight relationships through advisory.
  • 29:29 Norman: Awesome. Wow. Have you had to change over time how you teach as an ESL educator? If yes, how so?
  • 29:41 Lilian: Oh, I think I've changed a lot because at the beginning, you know, since we did not have the curriculum and everything, we used to do a lot of hands-on activities who create something that, you know, you took your students from where they were all the way up, you know, so you can go down or up and we will create a lot of things. For example, we want to teach about housing. You bring housing equipment. You want to teach about grocery. You bring some of the food and everything that we used to do a lot of hands-on activities. But now I don't see a lot of hands-on activities going on in the curriculum that we've been given. It's just computers, everything is like on the Internet. The kids go there instead of following up the lesson, they are engaged in other activities, games and everything. And you have to like be behind them to make sure that they're following. So, you know, teaching ESL has changed a lot, you know, because when students get to experience with what you're doing, they get to do something, they touch it, you know, it's visual for them. They make that connection. They learn more and they really remember those items that when everything has to be on the Internet, they just like see it, they don't touch it, they don't feel it. So to me, that is how teaching has changed a lot for more hands-on to more technology.
  • 31:03 Paula: I do see the technology piece, that certainly has changed. I started like 2008, I think, I started as an ESL teacher. Things that kind of got in the reverse for me. So I taught up in a different county and I taught like leveled classes in my first high school when I was there. And then when I came here to the International School, we follow up a model that our sister schools up in New York created. So we have heterogeneous classes, which was new for me. So I have students who are newcomers all the way up to being ready to exit out of the ESL program, so I've had to learn a lot of collaboration and our school has like a lot of, like we're trying to educate like the whole person. So I've had to incorporate a lot of social emotional practices that I didn't do originally at my first school. My first school was just like, okay, this is what the curriculum is and this is what I need, you know, the content I need to cover with you. But now I'm in a good place where I get to do these hands-on activities, like we made this mural with the watercoloring. Or we do Reader’s Theater, we try to just do project-based learning at this school, and then we have to learn to work together and work through our problems in healthy ways. It's become more than just teaching the language, it's been helping the whole student and just providing them with a lot of different activities. So that has changed for me in that way. And of course, like the communities of students changed over the years. I've had students from other countries that were, it was more dominant when I started out and I'd probably past students from those countries now. And then probably in the last 10 years, I think more undocumented, sorry, not undocumented, more unaccompanied, minors that we've had and students who've had just large gaps in education along the way has become more common than when I first started out. So we've had to learn different strategies to meet their needs. And yeah, so it's just always, it's always a work in progress.
  • 33:48 Norman: Yeah. Wow, it's so wonderful to hear how the both of you adapted over the years and which goes into the next question. What have been the greatest current challenges? Because you already mentioned some of the challenges from before, but what are some of the current challenges that you face as an ESL educator? I know you talk a little bit about it's not as hands on and it's really focused on more in the tech aspect. But if you can elaborate a little bit more about some of the current challenges that you see.
  • 34:17 Lillian: Yeah, I could share that the challenge I have right now, I am an ELD teacher, teacher of the Second Language, but I work in the English classroom. I'm a co-teacher, I teach eighth grade. So I have students who have been in this country for about two, three years who are expected to perform as native American students who have been learning English from the one, now they’re in eighth grade. They're all expected to learn the same curriculum, so that is why the ESL teacher is in the English classroom to assist these ESL students. The model has changed, at first to keep the ESL students more isolated until they learn. But now after about a year, two or three years, they are in a regular classroom for math, social studies, especially English. So me, as an ESL teacher, I have to be able to modify this lesson to meet the needs of my students. So that is a challenge for me to have the students write a five paragraph essay. I have to work with the English teacher and let them know that they might not have five paragraphs. Maybe if they have three paragraphs, but with everything in there, you know, it is still the same hundred percent as another student who's going to write a five paragraph. And even if they have, if for one paragraph you need about seven or eight sentences, if an ESL student gives you even four sentences that still meets the point or the targeted, the requirement, it is still considered because there was a big discrepancy for the grades, you know, the year these students used to have very low grades. They used to fail because they were measuring them as other students who have been learning English. But that is where I come in to be able to have the classroom teacher know that, OK, if the student produces not the required amount, but if they do something, it is still the same grade, it's still a 90%, 80% or at least not failing because they are not, because of their language limitation or anything. So it is a big challenge right now to modify lessons to have teachers understand that these students are still learning English so they don't have to be penalized. You don't have to fail them because they are in the learning acquisition process, you know. So teachers do understand that they work with me, so teachers, it is a challenge to accept these students in the regular classroom. And right now the policy is that they cannot be on their own. After two, three years, they have to be in the regular classroom. So that's a challenge. We've been trying. These students, you know, I work with them so that they're not discouraged, you know, I build up their momentum, give them some motivation, they see me there. I work with them as small activities and everything and, you know, we enjoy the process.
  • 37:21 Paula: I think we have some similar concerns as well. So on the high school level, they're changing some of the curriculum as well, especially for English credit for graduation. So a lot of it used, well, up to now, some of the ESOL classes could count toward their English credit that they needed for graduation. But that's going to change next year. A lot of the classes that they need, especially for our newcomer students or beginner students are going to be, or even, you know, our intermediate or advanced need them as well. I mean, speaking countywide, because we, again, I don't level, we don't level at my school, but I know this is a big concern. But in the county, but a lot of those courses are now, instead of the English credit, they're going to be elective credit and it's going to put the students much sooner into the regular English classes. So a lot of them who have only been here for six months and, you know, or a year at the most are going to have to be taking the same courses that students who, you know, English is their first language of living here and using it their whole life. They're going to have the same requirements. So I know that there's a lot of concern about that by teachers across the county. I'm in kind of a good place that we're able, all of our teachers, they come to our school with the understanding that they're also language teachers as well, whether they're math teachers or English teachers or science teachers. And so we tried to, so I tried to support them by helping them understand what scaffolds can be used to modify the curriculum so that it is accessible to a student, whether they've been here for four years or they've been here for four months. But it's still a lot, I mean, it's like it's a lot and it's definitely a concern in the education field right now. At least for ESOL teachers, I'd say.
  • 39:33 Norman: Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. And how has your profession as a whole changed over the years?
  • 39:43 Lilian: Well, it has changed because I think right now we emphasize testing and a lot of testing going on. And now teachers don't feel as if we have enough time to pull out the students to all the small group activities that they need and do all extra things like grammar, vocabulary, so these extra things that you think they need, you know, a lot has been focused on testing, you know. From the beginning of the school year, we have pre-test, we have benchmark every quarter, we have the ESOL tests, three of them, you know, they have the first quarter, three of these speaking and writing ESOL tests. So wherever you have reading, inventory tests, a lot of testing going on. So to me, that is a big change. We do not have time to focus on things like grammar that the kids need or not just writing, a lot of the mid writing and speaking.
  • 40:48 Paula: Yeah, I agree as well. It's testing season as well. Our students, you can just see at the end of the day, they are just drained. They are so tired. Some of these tests used to be like four days and now they are eight days. They are just getting to be more and more of a time that is spent with testing. It means a lot for any student, but if you are taking it in the second language, it is just a lot. So you just have to try to fit everything in around the testing schedule. That takes precedent over everything else and everything that you are listing. We have test after test.
  • 41:39 Norman: Now with that, what would you like to see in your profession and what ways can we help our community? Along with that, who has been the greatest influence on you as an educator?
  • 42:04 Paula: I don't know. We try to look at things differently as much as possible at our school. There are some things we can't change like the testing schedule, but otherwise we do. We are trying to look at the whole student and incorporate social emotional. We try to do more hands-on types of activities and more collaboration. I would love to see more of that in some of the other schools as well. I think it is a little hard. Some of the schools have very large populations and really need to have a lot of teacher buy-in to do that. I would love to see it replicated at more of the schools because we can only take so many students at my little school. It would be nice for everybody to have those kinds of experiences no matter where they went, so yeah, I don’t know. In terms of who is educated and who has influenced me the most, I would honestly say it is my colleagues. Everybody at my school, they come there with an open mindset that we are trained educators, but what can we do better to serve this particular population of students? We are really open to share best practices with each other, not territorial about this is my idea. What works for this student, we wanted to see it work for many of the other students. I have learned so much from my colleagues. As I said before, I didn’t do any SEL at my first school. Everybody at my school has a different area that they are really good at. If I need help with classroom management, I will go to this person and this person and talk to them about that. How do you incorporate more literacy into your lessons? You go to this person and this person. I am really blessed and fortunate to be where I am. I have changed as a teacher so much since I have been at the International High School. It is all because of the people around me. 
  • 44:52 Lilian: I also suggest that if the schools can provide opportunities for students to engage in a lot of activities, that will really bring out a lot of anxiety they have for school. It will make them shine in their own way. Not everybody is going to be a doctor or a lawyer. I think if we start from elementary, middle, high school, start opening channels for the students to just shine. If you want to do music, you want to do some of these things. And they don't do it only for creative arts. They just provide opportunities for students, especially the ESL students, to do other activities. They just do something they like so that they know that they are going to graduate. They are going to have a certificate, go to college, continue this passion that they have. And they are going to be successful individuals that just make everybody sit in the classroom and do this. After school activities, sewing, gardening, a lot of activities that teachers can help control or coordinate for the students to have that experience in life. And I will share the person or the people that had the greatest influence on me. Also my parents, starting from my mom. My mom was my private teacher at home. Every day she would make sure that I sat there doing that homework. My dad was an educator. He has been a principal, an inspector and everything. I just always had that passion for teaching. It's not only for teaching, it's for learning. So I've also developed that passion and I've transferred it to my children at home. You have to learn, you have to go to school and everything. My dad has been an educator and a very successful one. A lot of students now see my dad. We used to call my principal, you're still here. You had a great impact on me. So I just started not on you, also on me as their daughter. My dad had a big impact. He was very strict. Everybody had to study when he started to study at home. We had homework time. My friends would be out there playing and laughing. We could hear the screams, but we had to sit there, complete this work. And right now, to me, I think it has paid off. So I really appreciate my parents, you know, first of all, for being an educator. Just gave me the passion to move on. And for some strange reason, my daughter is a teacher now. She's in high school. She's a health teacher at Parkdale High School. So I keep telling her, you know, these young people, you don't want to be a machine when she started. She was like, maybe I'll do one year or two. But this is her third year. So I was just like, okay, are you loving it? As an educator? So you get to like keep changing these things, make things better. You know, so.
  • 47:54 Norman: Awesome. Now, before I ask the last question, I want to thank the both of you for sharing today. It's been a pleasure hearing about your stories and things that you experienced. And so what has provided you the most satisfaction in your career as an ESL educator? And what's been the most disappointing?
  • 48:22 Paula: I'll share something that I just told you a little while ago. So when when students come back after they graduated and they share what they're doing, it's so satisfying. I had a student in my advisory, my family, like four years ago. And I met her right before she started ninth grade. And she was so shy. She barely spoke a word. She needed her little brother to come with her to translate for her. And she was with me during those four years. We had the pandemic. So we were, we were, but we were still connected as an advisory through, you know, through Zoom. And and then she, she graduated last year. She came back this December to share what she was doing and to meet my new advisory students, my new ninth graders and give her voice of wisdom. And she, she is now studying nursing at PG Community College and she has so much confidence and she was speaking to everybody in my new ninth graders and telling them how she could not speak any English when she first started and they could not believe her because she, you know, she, she now, she, she can speak publicly to strangers and so things like that really satisfied, are very satisfying for me just to see, you know, to see, to see that growth and, you know, the confidence and I know that she's going to be impacting her community, her family in so many positive ways. And so I'm very, very excited about that. And that brings me to the most joy. Probably what's most disappointing for me is when we lose some students. So, you know, it doesn't always work out because of situations, with going on in their lives. For example, I know we worked so hard with this one girl. She was, she was also in that same advisory and she, she just, I don't know, she, she was having some issues living with, with a new parent she hadn't lived with for many, many years and it was just a lot of stress and a lot of pressure I think for her to stop going to school and to start working and she didn't speak any English and she, she left school and was like a month before we went and locked down. I just wondered, I don't know what happened to her. You know, what was she doing during the pandemic? Did she even understand what was going on? I don't know where she is today. So things, things like that, that's, that's what, you know, I find most disappointing.
  • 51:31 Lilian: I, what I find, you know, satisfying is when the students write me letters, especially those who have, you know, either left or they're still in school, they write letters. Thank you, Miss Chi, for being my teacher. Thank you for teaching me English. When I came, I didn't know, similar, you know, those letters because sometimes at my school, we give opportunity for students to write thank you letters to teachers for a particular reason. So the students have to say, I think about, okay, this teacher impacted me in this and on the right, although some of my students still struggle to write the English, but you can understand the message. They send me these letters thanking you, appreciating what they do, because not all students appreciate what we do out there. Not everybody appreciates, but when you see a letter from one of your students writing, somebody who came and couldn’t write or say a word and then they write you thank you letters for these or these, it's very satisfying. You feel as if you have succeeded, you know, in like today as we're waiting for this program to start, I met some of my students and they were very happy to see me. Hi, Miss Chi, how are you? And you know, just be able to, that relationship is there because some students see their teachers and run away because they know they don't have anything good to say. But if you can build a relationship with students to say thank you, to recognize you out of the school building as long to give you a high five or, you know, that is so rewarding to me, really satisfying. And what I find disappointing is that after our reader test, our ESOL test, a lot of our students do not exit the program. That means that test is not easy. As you can tell, there's a test for speaking, listening, reading and writing. Out of the whole school of maybe 500 ESO students, you might have 20 of them exiting the program. That means like passing the test. And you were just like, oh, you've worked together the whole year. How can you not pass? You know that there's problems somewhere either with the test or with the students. Most of them don't want to speak. I don't know about high school. They do not want to speak for the speaking part. And the speaking part has a lot of percent. If you don't do well with the speaking, it affects your other sections. So to me, that's a little bit disappointing where the kids are shy. They don't want to demonstrate what they know because of maybe the environment. They don't want to speak next to their friends. But don't just even speak in the recorder or listen to their own voices. Like, well, you record something. They have an opportunity to listen to the recording and either erase it, delete it or keep it. Some of my students just deleted it and they tell me, I didn't like the way I sounded. That sounded weird. I was like, this is the test. You have to show them what you know. So you can exit the program or you can pass the test and everything. So sometimes it's a little bit disappointing when you know that the kids don't want to demonstrate what they know just because of maybe they're shy or they've been teenagers and everything. But overall, it's a good experience working with them.
  • 54:42 Norman: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing. I don't know, I want to give you a few more minutes just to share whatever that's on your mind in the last part of the recording. But if not, no worries. I want to thank you for being here, and we look forward to working together again soon. So thank you.
  • 55:01 Lilian and Paula: Thank you.
  • 55:03 Lilian: It was nice talking to you. 
  • 55:05 Norman: Yes, thank you.
  • 55:07 Lilian: Thank you too.
  • 55:08 Paula: Yeah, so nice to meet you.

Citation

PGCMLS, Bladensburg Branch Library , “Lilian Chi and Paula Amadeo Interview,” PGCMLS Special Collections, accessed February 9, 2025, https://pgcmls.omeka.net/items/show/81.

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