Teacher with accent

This situation is being spoken of more and more particularly at the college level where professors and teaching assistants speak with heavily accented English. Your question doesn’t sound prejudiced - it sounds practical.

I’d still say, though, that if this is an awesome teacher, the children are lucky to have an awesome teacher regardless of the difficulties they may have in understanding him. Not too many teachers can be considered awesome so hang on to them when you’re lucky enough to get one.

In the meantime, if the teacher is truly awesome, some student or the parent of a student should be able to gently and kindly approach this awesome teacher and tell them that their child has trouble sometimes understanding what he’s saying. Would he mind, ask him, if he/she wrote things on the board when a student doesn’t understand? Would he/mind if a student asked him to repeat things?

Listening to accented English from an awesome teacher cannot do LS students harm. It can only inconvenience them and their teacher should be willing to help out a bit with that.

Yours is a valid concern that has nothing to do with prejudice. I’d say it depends on the child, his/her specific deficits, and whether or not she/he is learning. My own child was moved out of a 8th grade English class taught by a teacher from India— her sped. teacher could tell by the look on her face that she was totally shut down and not able to sustain attention. What are your options?

Well, my option was to keep the student with the teacher or put the child in my room. I pulled the kid back into my room but not just for that reason. Anyway, the parent and student are happy and less frustrated. We have a high Hispanic population. It is also great to have a good male Hispanic role model. I just didn’t want to hurt the feelings of this very good teacher and if the issue comes up again, it helps to know if others have experienced problems or if this is an isolated circumstance.
Gertrude

What about using an assistive listening device with the student and the teacher? I am hearing impaired and one of my best college professors was a fast talker with a heavy chinese accent. Everyone complained about her accent but me and it was because I wore the assistive listening device. I was able to keep up with her and in time train my auditory memory to undertsand her speech. I was able to let her know when she was speaking too fast and get her to slow down and repeat things when I could see other normal hearing and english speaking students were confused and had the I am lost look on their face. :-)

I talked to her today and she gave me a hug and congratulated me as I am almost finished with my masters program…

This is one of these well… questions. If the problem is *really* the listening, sure, change classes. On the other hand, I heard this one far far too much with teaching assistants and now sometimes high school teachers; basically it’s a good excuse to cover up prejudice, math anxiety, laziness, and general spoiled-bratness. When the black high school students picked on the wonderful gentle man with the PhD and made fun of his *African* (Nigerian/British, well-educated) accent, it was pretty clear that they were just sharks in a feeding frenzy. Be cautious with this one.