“Oh, you’re so smart. Kiss your brain,” Magali Williams says to one of her students, demonstrating by kissing her hand and touching her head.
It’s a sunny Tuesday morning and Williams, a bilingual teacher at Dirksen School in Schaumburg, has gathered 20 of her elementary students into the “sharing corner” for class news. Hand after hand rises as the 38-year-old teacher asks for interesting bits of information for the students to share with each other.
“Hoy vinieron otros nuevos estudiantes,” one student says.
“Who can tell me that so I can write it in class news?” Williams asks, taking suggestions for the best English translation of the statement that other new students came today. During the exercise, the students read the sentences aloud and spell the words they are supposed to know.
This is one of Williams’ strategies for her multigrade bilingual classroom, where she teaches reading, writing, history, language arts, social studies and science to 30 students in Grades 1 through 6 with varying levels of English proficiency. Spanish is the first language for most of her students, but she also has taught children who speak Chinese, Polish, Japanese and other languages.
Part of her job is to ease students into the English language and American culture without supplanting the language and culture they already know. Rather than force English through tedious and repetitious exercises, Williams incorporates English into other subjects and uses visuals, drama, role-playing and the students’ native languages, when possible, to teach them.
“She teaches languages in context. She makes the language come alive for them. They see English for a purpose,” said Ngoc-Diep Thi Nguyen, head of bilingual education for Schaumburg Township School District 54.
Class news is an exercise Williams could have used as a 6-year-old immigrant in the United States. Her family moved to New York from Puerto Rico in January 1968 and Williams, a 1st grader who did not speak English, was put in a kindergarten class where no one spoke Spanish. She spent much of her time in class alone.
“It was sink or swim,” said Williams, who essentially taught herself to speak English. “For a while, the teachers ignored me; they didn’t know what to do with me. When they saw that I could do math, they saw that I was capable of doing something and they started working with me then. But most of the time, I would just go to the classroom and sit there.
“It’s not a good experience for children. It’s not a good experience for anyone . . . to be placed in a situation where you don’t understand anything that is going on.”
It is an experience never to be repeated in her classroom.
Her traumatic childhood education has fueled a successful teaching career, one that recently earned her the 2000 National Bilingual Teacher of the Year Award from the National Association for Bilingual Education, based in Washington.
Williams has been at Dirksen for six years, two as an instructional assistant and the last four as a bilingual resource teacher. When she is not teaching or planning for class, she is working toward her master’s degree and spending time with her husband and two children.
Williams, who has two instructional assistants, tries to provide a classroom environment where students are free to take risks and know that their ideas are valued.
“What I do is give them a sense that they belong in these classrooms,” she said.
There is an apparent warmth between Williams and her students that grows out of years of interaction and trust.
“You grow up with these kids. It’s like they’re your kid,” she said. “You know their little nuances, how you need to work with them. You know when they don’t have a good day and what you can do to make it better. All those little things. And they help each other so much. They’re like a little family.”
DIRKSEN SCHOOL
More than 400 students in kindergarten through 6th grade attend the Dirksen School in Schaumburg.
For the past three years, the school has offered the unique feature of multiage education for Grades 1 through 6, where students stay in the same classroom for two years. For example, 1st- and 2nd-grade students are taught together.
“Most of our students stay with teachers for two years, and there is a nice bond that is created when students know that they are going to have teachers for more than one year,” said Principal Kathleen Polach. “Another multiage benefit is that every child gets to be a leader at some point, and the self-confidence and the self-esteem that provides is something that we were not able to provide in single-grade classrooms. That experience is priceless.”
Also, thanks to a school district grant, students have Spanish class three times a week. — Lisa Fingeret
MAGALI WILLIAMS
Age: 38
Title: Bilingual teacher
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business administration in management information systems in 1984 from Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y.
A favorite part of her job: “I love having a multigrade classroom and working with all of the different grade levels and seeing the interaction between all the students of various ages.”
Biggest challenge: “The schedules that I have to deal with, because they all have different schedules.”
Latest book: “Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Hearts and Rekindle the Spirits of Mothers,” edited by Jack Canfield.
— Lisa Fingeret
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COMMUNITY FOCUS SECTION
Schaumburg & Hoffman Estates
This section on people who make a difference is the second of four Tribune special sections about Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates in 2000.
The next, coming Aug. 30, will focus on programs and issue that affect local education.
