Last weekend during my inspiration journeys
surfing in the internet, I found a wonderful movie. It is called “In front of
the class”; the tittle called my attention and I was thinking of problems with students,
especially with those ones with economic difficulties, who pretend resolve
everything through violent actions. My surprise was when I started to watch
that the movie, I was watching a teacher with Tourette syndrome. It is really
interesting because it is common to find students with learning difficulties
but I had found a teacher with Language difficulties caused by this syndrome.
His name is Brad Cohen, he lives in United
States and the movie was based on a real story. The scenario is a student with
funny and incontrollable sounds whose teachers demanded his attention and good
behavior in class, so who can control something that anybody knows?. Brad
visited each psychologist his parents could find but the result was the same: a
weird boy, incapable to read and a negation caused by his parents´ divorce, in
other words “a problematic boy”. He could not get in a library, he was rejected
in classes by his teachers and classmates, but he had a wonderful and marvelous
mother who tried to help him. She started to read many psychologist book in
order to know how her baby presented this phenomena. She discovered Tourette- I
guess you are asking yourself what is it?- The Tourette Syndrome is a
neurological illness which is characterized by repetitive and involuntary movements and the production of vowel sounds
called tics. This syndrome is called Tourette because of was discovered by
George Gilles de la Tourette.
If we follow to Chomsky, Halliday, Austin,
Hymes, we could say that this teacher does not have the competence and
performance in order to teach, especially to second grade. However, I think
that the language is more than ability, it is the essence of our lives.
According to Kumaravadivelu, Language includes three important aspects, which
have an interrelationship: Linguistic, use and knowledge or ability. Bred Cohen needed those aspects and a deep
wish to overcome this inability. Learning and teaching languages must be based
on your deeply wishes. I called those deeply wishes motivation.
Motivation is the magic word to teach English
as a second language. If Mr. Cohen had not had a motivated mother, who never stopped
to investigate and encourage her child to overcome the disease, he would not
have achieved the award of Teacher of the year. Our schools need motivated
teachers, that encourage students to overcome difficulties, through looking for
new strategies, observe, study, change, improve, apply, know their students,
follow processes but we as teachers need the administrative people to support
and collaborate our classes like Mr. Cohen was supported by them.
Finally, I would like to invite you to watch
the movie and let me know your comments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZowuVPLTP4
http://www.classperformance.com/
http://www.bradcohentourettefoundation.com/
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/ency/article/000733.htm
