Promt 6 JOHN DEWEY

In a classroom, I think, that the best thing a teacher can do is communicate to his or her students. I believe this not only because I believe it demonstrates sensitivity and responsiveness to sociocultural and linguistic differences but also I believe that teachers learn just ask much from their students as you teach them.

In my classroom at FNED Elementary school I do not see my teaching communicating much with the students. When I arrive at the class the students are just getting back from lunch and recess so, I will admit, the students are acting a little crazy, but the teachers angers towards the children seems to be a little much. She does not seem patient with the students, she yells a lot. When students try to talk to her you can tell that she is not really listening and most of the time she won’t answer, she’ll tell the student to go sit down, or her answer will be short and heartless. The students are very afraid of the teacher and this is relevant in class. Some students have even told me that they avoid using the bathroom during school because they fear asking the teacher to go because she will yell. This makes me feel bad for the students because she shows no interest in listening or talking to them. Since she does this, it makes it clear that she does not demonstrate sensitivity and responsiveness to sociocultural and linguistic difference.

I try to do things different while I tutor the students that I work with. As we go through the work I tell stories that relate to what we are doing and they tell me stories too. I see that while my group and I work in a separate class room that they are happier. I have had one child tell me that she loves working with me because I make learning fun because I allow the students to tell stories. I feel the same way about working with the students because they tell me things about their lives that actually teach me also. What they do at home is different than things that I do in my home. Both the students and I love working together because we show sensitivity and responsiveness to our differences, and we learn from them.

Even though the students I work with are only second graders they can tell when the teacher is not communicating with them, not showing them any sensitivity, or responsiveness. Dewey argues “For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been concerned with education as it may exist in any social group. We have no to make explicit the differences in the spirit, material, and method of education as it operates in different types of community life”. This is basically the opposite of what my second grade teacher is doing. She is not acknowledging the sociocultual or linguistic differences or her students. It seems to be that she has developed a sense of colorblindness. She does not demonstrate any sense of sensitivity to her students and the students realize this. Dewey speaks a lot about society. In my diverse classroom the students, as well as the teach come from a number of societies. Dewey argues that even though there are a number of difference societies, education levels the playing field. I think my teacher needs to take this into consideration! I know I will in my future as a teacher!!

Prompt 5 LISA DELPIT

Like I have said before my classroom is very diverse. It is clear that the students come from a variety of different backgrounds. I image that if I were the teacher in this classroom I would face many challenges when collaborating with the students as well as their families.

While collaborating with the parents of my students I would think I would face challenges because I would not know them as well as I would know their children. From what my teacher has told me I understand that my students and their families have a wide variety of differences. I think that while I collaborate with the parents problems will come up because I am not familiar with their life experiences or their past. It is clear that in my classroom the families come from a number of societies. Some of the families are poor, some are wealthy, and some are middle class. I would assume that I would face challenges because of this because in order to understand a society you need to learn about it and be told about it.

In order to address these challenges I would go out of my way to understand the students and their families. I would spend time with the parents and I would listen to the stories that they tell. I feel like this is the most important because in order to collaborate with someone you need to understand where they are coming from. In some classrooms teachers have a day that is completely devoted to the student and their culture. If I were the teacher in my classroom I would have a day like this. I would have a day where the students and their parents could come in and talk about their culture and their society. On days like this the student and the parents could bring in things like artifacts or foods to help show important things. I believe that days like this are very important especially in a younger classroom because from a young age the students are being taught about other cultures and societies, and it also gives the teacher a chance to be familiar with the parents. In another classroom I worked in every Friday and parent of a student would come in and read to the students or teach a lesson plan. I would like to do this too in my classroom because it gives the parents and the teacher a chance to collaborate more often, which is always good!

Lisa Delpit argues “the culture of power” She then proposes the five aspects of power. 1. Issues of power are enacted in classrooms. 2. There are codes or rules for participating in power, that is, there is a “culture of power”. 3. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power. 4. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture make acquiring power easier. 5. Those with power are frequently least aware of or least willing to acknowledge its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

This would connect to my collaboration with the parents in my classroom because we would come from different cultures. Rule 4 would be very important to me as a teacher. Delpit points out that members of any culture transmit information implicitly to co-members. However, when implicit codes are attempted across cultures, communication frequently breaks down. As a teacher dealing with parents from all different cultures I would need to make sure that the communication does NOT break down. I will do this by learning about the cultures and like Delpit says “being told explicitly the rules of that culture”. This connects to what I want to do with a multi-cultural day or having parents always be in and out of the classroom working one on one with me and the students.

Prompt 3 VIDEO

This is a video I found on YouTube. Its a short video title How Do you Support Second-Language Learners in the Classroom. Even though the video is short I believe it has the key point you need to know in order to teach Language Learners.

Prompt 4 ALLAN JOHNSON

Although I know its almost impossible to be completely free bias I like to believe that I am very close to it. I grew up in a big city where black and his

panic was dominant. I also have lived in Narragansett, which is a small rich town where very few people were anything but white. I like to think that because I have experienced living in such opposite places my understanding for diversity is strong. The school for my service learning is much like the elementary school I attended when I was young. However it is much different than the Elementary School in Narragansett that I worked at.

I think my personal history helps me in my service learning. I think that because I went to school in a school much like the one I teach at I can relate to the students and the teachers. When they are frustrated about being under funded and no having the write supplies to learn, I understand because I have been in the situation. On the other hand because I went to high school in such an opposite place I feel like sometimes I loose track of where I am because now working at the school in Narragansett is what I am used to.

I have both advantages and disadvantage working in this classroom. The children in my classroom at mostly Black or Hispanic. Because I have gone to school and became friends with Blacks and Hispanics I somewhat understand some of their experiences but because I am not them I do not completely understand. Another disadvantage is that some of the students that I work with are multilingual. This is a disadvantage to because I am not. I feel like if I were I would be able to connect to the students on another level.

I like to think I do not stereotype people or anything of the sort but I realized that I did have some misconceptions about various cultural groups. Once I worked with the students one on one it was easy to see that what I had thought was wrong. And after getting to know my students and learning about their lives and experiences it was easy to see what was wrong about what I was thinking.

After reading Johnson and reflecting on my life I realized white privilege is real! I moved to Narragansett because my older sister did not pass the test to get into one of the better inner city high schools. Now that I’m older and look at the situation I realize that most families do not have opportunity to do such a thing. Johnson defines privilege as a social advantage that is both unearned and come to people simply because they happen to belong to a particular social category. After reading this I felt almost guilty because I realized that I do have this privilege. When I think about this and how I myself can change I think of when Johnson says “we are participating in something larger than ourselves”. I feel awful writing this. I feel like having privilege is so bad.

Prompt 3 CLAUDE GOLENBERG

During the time in my classroom I have not seen my teacher give many assessments. However while I am working with the students they will often ask me to help them with their spelling or vocabulary works. After spending sometime with the students I began to see the students who were ahead of the class, and the students who were behind. While helping the students with their works I noticed that the students who are behind in the class are a different set of words then the other students. For the most part all of the words have the same concepts, the long O sound for example, but the students who tend to be more behind have an easier set of words. Also being in the classroom for the spelling tests I have observed many things.

The teacher gives the test separately. The group with the harder set of words went first. I noticed that the teacher went fast through the test. The students did not need that much time to realize the word and it spelling. Also the teacher did not need to repeat the words that many times. When it came to the second test the teacher did things differently. She would say the word once, then she would say it again slower, she would give the students more time to think about the word, and then she would say it again.

I usually work with the group of children that my teacher refers to as the “slower children” I have observed that these children are the children that do speak other languages and have diverse backgrounds. Sometimes when given other assessments like reading or math these students are sent to another classroom to work one on one with other teachers. Because I have been working with these students I know that in order for them to be successful in what they are doing they need more time to do the work and more explaining of what to do. I think that being separated from the class and given one on one help really benefits those students.

I relate this to Claude Goldenberg’s Teaching English Language Learners. Goldenberg speaks about “academic English” that refers to a more abstract, complex, and challenging language that will eventually permit you to a participate successfully in mainstream classroom instruction. He goes on to say that student who are english language learners struggle with this. I see this in my classroom. The students who my teacher refers to as the “slower children” are those who english is a second language. The students struggle and are behind in class because while the children who only speak english are just learning the material the students who are ELL are learning the material on top of trying to learn the english language.

Prompt 2 IRA SHOR

Like most Providence public schools today the curriculum that is taught at FNED Elementary School is scripted. The teacher is given the lessons and is told to read word for word a script that goes along with it. After the first or second day in m Elementary School I could tell that this was not working. The children were just not interested in the boring lessons. Which makes it even worse is that as I watch my teacher interact with the students in the classroom I notice that she doesn't seem interested in them. My class has a diverse group of kids. Informationworks shows that half of the schools populations is African America, 27% Hispanic, 22% white and the rest of the population are either Native America or Asian. From my classroom observations the statics in my classroom are close to this. As I watch her work with the children I realize that they will say things about there home life and personal experiences but she will just keep going on with her teaching, completely ignoring the things the students have to say. I understand that when she is teaching the class as a whole it is hard to listen to these things but I have observed her doing it even when she is working one on one with the children. I have yet to see my teacher be responsive to any linguistic, ethnic, or sociocultural characteristics of any student. For the time that I spend working with the children I feel like all they do is talk to me and want to tell me things because they just want someone to listen. I was working with a child, Stephanie, and she would not stop telling me about herself and her family and personal stories. I listened to her because I know that in order to be a good teacher you have to listen to the student and have a interest in what goes on in there life out of school. I feel bad for the students because as I watch the teacher she just seems like she does not want to be there which affects the kids.

Seeing these things in the classroom make me think of Ira Shor's article Empowering Education. In the article Shor quotes "You must arose children's curiosity and make them think about school". A scripted curriculum does not excite students to learn and it doesn't encourage teachers to make their students excited about school. Shor talks about cognitive and affective. In my classroom I have observed an absents of both. With a scripted cu it is hard to integrate emotions into a lesson. Because there is no emotion connected to the lessons that the children in my class learning the children are not thinking. Because the students have no passion to learn and because the script requires not thinking at all the students seem to be all over the place. My teacher seems to do more yelling to try to control the students than teaching because the students do not want to pay attention since there is no emotion in the classroom. A scripted curriculum gives the child the impression that thats the way it is and things wont change. As a teacher this is not what you want your children to be thinking about. You want to teacher you students and empower them to think about what they learn and interpret everything there own way.

It is obvious that Stephanie is slower at learning concepts than the other kids in class. When I am not working with her in class I can see that she is confused and most of the time she is doing other things than what the teacher is teaching. When I work with her and I listen to what she is saying I can see a change in her and her work quality. After reading so many articles in FNED I know to listen to what she has to say and then use that to encourage her to learn more and be interested in the things she is learning.

Information Works RI

http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2009/default.asp