Stories from Advanced ELL Students
These stories were written in an ELL 065 class taught by Kelly Cover-Tam and Anna Podnozova with the story prompt A person I Admire.
I was very excited to join this project and to have my students contribute to the resources available for beginning English language learners. Initially, our curriculum for the quarter didn’t include any writing assignments that would work for a narrative writing project. Luckily, my brilliant co-teacher, Anna Podnozova, had the suggestion to transform our “A Person I Admire” presentation assignment into a narrative writing assignment.
The result is a collection of beautiful stories that students wrote to honor the important people in their lives. I felt privileged to read the moving tales that students wrote for the assignment and grateful that several of them were willing to share their lovely stories with the world through this project. One student created his own artwork, making the entire piece that much more touching. Another student asked for the opportunity to have her niece design the artwork for the story about her sons, truly displaying the importance of family in her life. All of the students worked incredibly hard on these stories, and I hope that you will enjoy reading them as much as I did.
Kelly Cover-Tam, Professor English Language Learning and Basic Education
It is next to impossible to overestimate the impact of the project ELL-Art project for all its participants: The future readers as well as the authors. Our students were excited to learn that their wonderful stories are going to be used for other students’ learning, for reading and discussion. The opportunity to do something valuable and important for the community is the best motivation for a human being. It gave our ELL level 6 students an amazing opportunity to support their counterparts in lower ELL levels and to feel a part of the big synergized college community.
Our students wrote essays “The person I admire”. This topic helped them to retrieve and to honor the people who influenced, cultivated, and inspired them throughout their lives. Not only do those stories tell about empowering individual life journeys, but also they tell about the history of all countries our amazing students come from. The History seen through the eyes of common people is so much more interesting than any tedious history book. This wonderful project helped our little class community to unite, finding a lot in common in terms of shared values and sorrows, to inspire and to learn a lot about the English Language, contemporary world history, and world cultures.
We all enjoyed being involved in creating this project. We hope our readers will enjoy reading it.
Anna Podnozova, Professor English Language Learning and Basic Education
