PROMPT 6: Relating to Shor

To be a culturally competent teacher we need to show our sensitivity to sociocultural and linguistic differences. We have to come up with different techniques that will encourage our students to participate and interact so they can learn. In my classroom we have different days were we have to do stations, and that day we had to do Phonics. The point of this section was to help students learn how to spell words. These kids seemed so bored that they didn’t want to do the work because it didn’t keep them interested. Melissa said, “Do we really have to do this? It’s boring.” She just wouldn’t sit still. I sat and thought for a second and I knew I had to come up with something that will interest them and will also help them learn. We had a board of pictures that were meant for something else. The thing that came to mind was that I had to come up with game, so I did. I decided to use the board with the pictures and I asked the students if they wanted to play a game like Bingo. They were excited and said “YEAH!” I told them that we had to look for something to use as chips and one of my students went to grab the bag that carried the plastic pennies. We had the flash cards but I knew the game would be too easy for them so I told them this was going to be a little bit more different then the real Bingo. The rules were that every time they had the picture of the word I said they will have to sound it out and tell me the first letter it started with. Then if they had the whole board full they will have to say “ALPHABET” to let us know they won. In the end they will have to sound out all the words to the rest of the students. They loved the game and they thought it was fun. They thought they were just playing a game when in reality they were all participating and learning.

The action that I took to have these students participate reminded me of Ira Shor who wrote “Empowering Education”. In this article Shor says, “Participation is the most important place to bring because student involvement is low in traditional classrooms and because action is essential to gain knowledge and develop intelligence” (pg 17). What I did with this group of students was that I paid attention to what they told me and I used new ideas to change the traditional classroom. We showed the communication that the students and I had. So they were able to participate and learn in a way that they had fun with.

PROMPT 5: Relating to Delpit

As a culturally competent teacher we are encouraged to work with the family of our students. If I was to imagine being the teacher of the classroom where I volunteer at, I believe I would encounter some challenges. The students in this classroom are diverse and this means that they have different backgrounds. They get a different type of education back home from their parents which they consider important to have as survival skills in their environment. With this said some students in the classroom have a tough time listening to Ms. Klaire. At times she has to repeat things and when that doesn’t work she has to raise her voice and then they know it’s serious. It is tough to know how our student’s parents are racing their students and this is why it is a good thing to interact with the families. As a whole school we can have different types of activities that allow their parents to participate, the only problem is that sometimes we will not get the best amount of participation. In this case we will have to come up with many new things to help us get to know our parents better.

At times it is our responsibility to get and understanding of why we are not getting the respect of our students. In some cases students will not take us serious because we have a different type of way to show our authority. The theorist, Lisa Delpit, talks about this situation in her article, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children”. Lisa beliefs teachers should adapt to the children’s culture. Learn what they know and integrate that into their learning. We should not tell our students that the way that they are being brought up is wrong but we should show respect to their parents cultures.

PROMPT4: Relating to Johnson

As a teacher we need to be aware that we are about to step into a diverse environment. Being new at all of this we have to keep an open mind and look at the many different things that our students can bring to the table and can help us teach them. I am Hispanic and English is my second language. Even though I am Hispanic, like our many students, we still have different beliefs and different cultures. Personally I don’t believe that my personal history or sociocultural background will intersect with those of my students.

I have experienced many of the similar things that our students have to deal with in public schools since I was in them my whole life. Being a teacher I have the advantage to know how the students feel. I will have the advantage to be able to communicate with my non-English speaking students. I believe that being bilingual is going to help me a lot in the future, when it comes to helping my students that are struggling with their learning because they are non-English speakers. I am also going to be able to communicate with their parents perfectly fine if they speak English or Spanish. This can also be a disadvantage because my students can get a little bit too comfortable because I speak Spanish, so I will have to limit myself to the amount of Spanish I speak in the class.

During one of my tutoring sessions I was working with my usual students, who are Jasmine, Melissa and Nelson, I was shocked to hear a comment. When doing phonics, which they have to show me they know how to sound out words, it was Jasmines turn and she was taking a while because it seemed like she was trying to sound out the word in her head before saying it. But she never got the chance to finish because Melissa, who is Asian, said “she doesn’t know she’s Spanish that’s why she is not going to pass to second grade.” It hit me hard that I didn’t even know what to say, all I said at the moment was that it wasn’t her turn and that she needed to respect her classmate. The only thing that Jasmine did was rolled her eyes. Even though all the students are minorities they still have some type of racism going on even if they do not notice it. This relates to Allan Johnson who wrote “Our House is On Fire”. In his article he talks a lot about racism and privileges still occurring in our community and we are too blind to see it. This is true, in my FNED 346 class we took the IAT (Implicit Associated Test) which showed us that our surroundings influence the way we think about another person being from a different race, but doesn’t mean we are racist. Even though many of us did not like our results this test has been proven to have accurate results.

PROMPT 3: Relating to Carlson

In order to be a good teacher sometimes we need to break the barriers and make some change. We, as teachers, need to use a variety of assessment techniques appropriate to diverse learners and accommodate sociocultural differences that affect learning. As seen on my last prompt there are many students that have English as their second language. The way they are being taught and assessed is affecting their learning. We need to come up with different type of activities that will teach and help our students understand that there is more out there rather than just our “normalizing community.”

At some point we will need to accommodate to a need of our student. When it comes to testing a student, that are English Language Learners, we need to either give them more time while testing or give better examples that we believe will help. On one of my tutoring sessions, Ms. Klaire asked me to test Jasmine, Melissa and Nelson, out in the hallway. She gave me a list of 20 words and told me to first read the word to them, then give them the word in a sentence and finally to repeat the word to them. I thought it would be easy to test the children, but I was wrong. When I began testing them I noticed none of them wrote anything on their paper. I decided to sound out the word for them a few times to see if it would help. I kept encouraging and telling them that they could do it if they tried, and they did. Ms. Klaire came out to see what was wrong because according to her I was taking too long because she was done testing the rest of the class using the same words. I apologized, and began to do it her way again but the children had blank marks on their paper. Ms. Klaire needs to give the children a better opportunity to show what they know, because I was able to see their capability with the bit more time that I gave them. This reminded me of what we discussed in class about “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), a program with a goal to see improvement in the future with Reading and Math. The NCLB has a great goal but fails when it sees all students being the same. They don’t see that there are students that are ELL’s or students that have disabilities, and are testing them all alike.

Not everyone realizes that we are all unique in a certain way. We have the ability to do a lot but sometimes we need to do it a little bit more different than others. At times we need to help people see that there are people that need respect and a type of opportunity. As a competent teacher we should teach our kids that there are sociocultural differences. There are some people that stick to their norms and avoid the fact that there is more out there then just their norm. In example we have ELL’s that are not receiving the same help at home like other English speaking students. All of this reminds me of Dennis Carlson who wrote the article, “Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community”. In this article he talks a lot about gay people being treated wrong but he also focuses on the five components of Democratic, Multicultural Curriculum. He talks about us, as teachers, having protection and equality for differences and protection of minority rights. He says we should challenge the “essentialistic worldviews”. He tells us that we should cross and rupture the boundaries between different people. We should build alliances and hear what people have to say from their personal experiences.

PROMPT 2: Relating to Goldenberg

As I mentioned in my last blog many of the students walked up to me and asked me questions kindly. One of their many questions was if I spoke Spanish, when they heard that my answer was yes they all had a smile in their face. I noticed that out of the 24 students in the class, about 20 of them are Hispanic and there are only about 4 students that are Asian. I believe that they were excited to see that I spoke the same language as them since Ms. Klaire and the teacher assistant do not speak Spanish, since they are both Asian. As I looked at the data in Infoworks.com I came across specific information gathered from the school. They say that 62% of the students in the school are Hispanic, 17% of the students are Asian, 12% are African American, and 9% of the students are white or Native American.

The three students that I have one on one time, every time I go to the school, are all Spanish speakers that have more trouble reading in English. Jasmine, one of my three students gets help from her classmates because she does not speak English at all. Her two classmates always talk to her in Spanish to help her understand the class assignment. I had a feeling that Jasmine was shy and she didn’t like to speak in front of the other students. One day I let the other students do a different activity while I took Jasmine aside. I asked her, in Spanish, to tell me what she knew in English because I sensed that she understood and knew some words. She let me know that she understood little words in English but that she did not know the ABC’s neither in English nor in Spanish. I was shocked to hear this, I wrote down the alphabet for her and I began to sing the ABC’s with her. She told me that it was the first time she heard that song and she let me know that no one in her house spoke English. This gave me an understanding of the reason why she was having a more difficult time then the rest of the students.

The situation with Jasmine reminded me of the article that I read for class from Claude Goldenberg, titled “Teaching English Language Learners”. Goldenberg made us feel in some sense how it felt to be brought up speaking one language and then being thrown into school where they only spoke English. It is a challenge for a child to get through when they are not receiving the appropriate help. Goldenberg talks about their being a lack of success when non-English speakers are not receiving the appropriate help. Goldenberg talks about teaching ELL’s (English Language Learners) to read in their first language and then in their second language because it can help them succeed in their reading. I believe that if this was to happen in this elementary school, Jasmine would be given an opportunity to succeed with the rest of the school and improve their test scores.

With the diverse school the children love to show their cultural capital. Nelson, one of my one on one students, knows we are both Hispanic but have different cultures. He likes to ask me random questions like if I had ever had a certain food that he knows or if I had visited a certain place that his family usually goes to. The diversity in this school allows us and the students to learn things and get new experiences from one another.

PROMPT 1

Living in Providence I was not so shocked to see the type of neighborhood that surrounds the elementary school that I was placed in. This school is close to a highway and to its right stands a liquor store. The neighborhood is very loud because it is part of a main street. As I walked towards the red blocked building I noticed that the school only had two floors and was not as big as other elementary schools in Providence. The building had a small parking lot located in front of the building where only about ten cars fit and a large blue dumpster that they have. At first I was confused which door was the main door because they all seemed to look like side doors.

As I walked through the hallways I saw many signs that where in English and in Spanish, most of the signs had rules of the building and others just had class pictures. I was so nervous to walk into the class because I did not know what to expect. I was welcomed by Ms. Klaire who introduced me to the students; they all greeted me in a very kind way. As I stood waiting to be instructed, I looked around the classroom and I noticed that the classroom was split up into different sections. Such as a library section, a science section with plants they are growing, and they had posters of the words they were focusing that week. The students each had their individual desks but they were put together in groups of four or six.

As I got to meet the students they all seemed very nice and were excited to have me there. These students are taught to value respect, it shows a lot by the way they greeted me and four out of their five class rules have to do with showing respect. Their first rule says to stay in your seat and work quietly, the second one says to raise your hand and wait quietly, the third one says to keep your hands feet and objects to yourself, and the fourth one says one person talks at a time while others listen. Another way that they also showed their good manner to respect was that a few students walked up to me and asked kindly if they could ask me a question and as I answered yes they asked if I was really pregnant, children and their curiosity but the way they asked was very nice.

This school feels like all the teachers have good communication with each other and they share things that they all appear to do. It seems like they share ideas because I noticed that they all have their students in two lines when walking out of the class; one with boys and the other with girls. They all also have the students place their finger in front of their mouth to show that they are quiet and ready to walk out. The teachers all seem to know each other very well which to me is a great thing.

About Me

Hey guys! My name is Rosenda. This is my fourth semester at RIC. I recently switched my major from nursing to elementary education. I am 19 years old and as some of you guys might have noticed I am pregnant, I'm 6 months now and expecting my baby boy to arrive early in June. When I first found out I was going to give up on school, but I realized I now have someone to lookout for and it should actually motivate me to finish. I mostly come out to be a shy person because it takes time for me to actually get comfortable. But this semester has started off good for me and I hope it continues to do so in my service learning placement. Good luck to everyone! See you guys in class!