Prompt #6: Brown

Today was my second to last visit to my classroom. I must admit I am sad to see the time has gone by so fast, and this whole experience has certainly been one that has helped to assure me that teaching is the career choice that I would like to pursue. I absolutely commend and admire the teachers who are able to handle such high energy and diverse classrooms on a daily basis.

The culturally competent teacher communicates in ways that demonstrate sensitivity to sociocultural and linguistic differences, using a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques that encourage positive social interaction and support learning in their classroom.

What has continuously astounded me is that even in a room filled with five and six year olds there exists cliques and different groups throughout the room that do not in any way pertain to race as I have discussed before. I call these cliques because they exists amongst the genders and classes, nearest I can tell there is already a population of the class considered to be the “popular” students who the other children either admire or act spitefully towards. The challenge lies in how a culturally competent teacher can handle these situations in order to demonstrate sensitivity and use a variety of techniques to encourage positive interaction and learning within a classroom.

It was not until today that I realized that subconsciously I am sure, Mrs. Medos is aiding the students in maintaining the cliques of students, which enables her students to pass judgments, and become at odds with fellow students. Today I was working with a group and while they were handling the task of writing names on the top of papers two little girls began contemplating how the other wrote their name. Within minutes it had turned into a flaming competition in Spanish to decide who had the most letters in their name. It was a pointless competition with very little academic relevance, especially when considering the hostility surrounding the situation. It took me minutes to get the girls back under controlled and focused on their workbooks from what had seemingly been their match up to assert some type of dominance over the other. Meanwhile Mrs. Medos lectured the entire class on the noise level and discussed how they would loose recess, never singling out the two girls that were clearly the cause of the entire ruckus.

The point I can make with these girls as my example is that they are seemingly the two girls in the class who the other children either admire or feel spiteful towards. These girls may later in life be classified as the “middle class” girls as Lyn Mikel Brown discusses in her piece on “In the Bad or Good of Girlhood”. These girls may not be the definition of lady like, the ones Brown discusses, however in comparison to the “working class” girls in the classroom they are separated and seem to generally more accepted. The real issue I found with this situation is the student who was reprimanded during the chaos in room 118. The very quiet girl with broken English who often seems to work on her own was walking around the classroom voluntarily picking up the other students scissors for them after she had completed her work. Mrs. Medos immediately addressed the girl, explaining she had no right to be out of her seat and surely she was part of the cause of the classroom madness.

After pointing a finger at the student who was clearly not responsible from my point of view, I began to understand that Mrs. Medos was unconsciously contributing to the cliques and class separations that exist in her classroom. As Brown explained, “The problem, in fact, seems not to be that the teachers do not care, but that there are subtle, unexamined class and cultural divides preventing shared understanding between the girls and their teachers”. Certainly Mrs. Medos would never want to create such distinctions between her students, or make assumptions based on predetermined biases, however it is something all teachers must learn to recognize and avoid. Some teachers just simply have trouble relating to every type of student or category of student who enters their classroom. This has been a valuable lesson I will hold onto, I will do my best to demonstrate a sensitivity and responsiveness to all students equally in order to be the best culturally competent teacher I can be.

ps. In almost all situations Mrs. Medos is a very fair and culturally competent teacher and I feel that she in no way intends to support the cliques throughout her classroom, it is hard to take all considerations into account 100% of the time, but overall I think she is a wonderful Kindergarten teacher.

Prompt #4: Carlson

The culturally competent teacher is aware of the diverse cultural groups represented in his/her classroom, investigates the sociocultural factors that influence student learning, and is able to integrate this knowledge into his/her teaching.

My visit this past week fell on the Tuesday immediately following Easter. It was a very hectic day all around, the children were anxious to discuss their weekend, the recent flood, and we had a fire drill almost immediately upon my arrival. Once the students were finally back inside, seated, and back under control following the drill they resumed writing the sentences they were working on. Upon sitting down with my usual group of students to help them with their writing, one little girl quickly began discussing her Easter weekend. She discussed food, family, and of course, candy. Then after I questioned her, she explained to me the pictures of eggs they had colored the previous Friday in light of the holiday. I had no idea the door I was opening simply by asking “So you had a nice visit from the Easter Bunny?”

Within seconds one of the students in my group got very defensive and yelled quite loudly, “There is no such thing as the Easter Bunny”. I instantly realized the trouble I had gotten myself into as the other students in my group began to argue with him and got rather upset. I realized I made that statement based on my history of believing strongly in the Easter Bunny at their ages. However, I was forgetting to recognize the diverse cultures the class is made up of, and I had not realized that many of the students did not share such beliefs. After clarifying with the teacher, her egg coloring was in no way associated with the Easter Bunny, she just explained to the students it was a coloring activity associated with the Holiday of Easter.

This lesson is one I can relate do Dennis Carlson’s article, “Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community”. Although this situation does not deal with gayness, it very directly relates to his discussion of the “normalizing community”. For the classroom I am volunteering in, the normalizing community includes the celebration of Easter. Although in all cases it does not include the Easter Bunny, it is assumed and practiced in the class to celebrate Easter, and those who choose not to are separated from the normalized community of the classroom. The same little boy who did not believe in the Easter Bunny also explained his family did not do anything to celebrate the previous Sunday, this made the other students very frustrated with him and they alienated him from the conversation.

All in all, this week provided me with a number of revelations. First and foremost, it is important for a teacher to know the sociocultural makeup of a classroom before they create a lesson plan. In general the normalizing community of America includes the celebration of Easter. Very similar to the situation of gays, this practice creates a gap between students who do and do not celebrate. Obviously, just by making assumptions based on my own personal history got me into a very uncomfortable situation in the classroom this week. My misconception about the students various cultures beliefs have allowed me to recognize I need to be much more careful and considerate before discussing anything with the students. Hopefully in the future I will be able to set aside my own history and biases, and do my best to integrate based on my student’s backgrounds, rather than my own.

Check back Soon :-)

Prompt #3: Goldenberg

The culturally competent teacher should be able to use a variety of assessment techniques appropriate to diverse learners and accommodate sociocultural differences that affect learning.

This week was a high energy day in the classroom. I assume it was the weather that was keeping the kids locked inside, which made their energy levels go through the roof. High energy is not a bad thing though, it was just a day to be on my toes and try to harness their energy and use it towards their academic tasks. I noticed Mrs. Medos was doing just the same thing, while she assessed the students in a variety of ways today.

Other than energy, there is another large issue when it comes to testing the children of room 118. As I have discussed in past blogs, the children come from very different backgrounds considering linguistics, ethnicities, and sociocultural characteristics. Although they make the classroom very diverse, which undoubtedly benefits the students, it makes assessing them fairly a difficult task. Throughout my time in the room today the students were assessed in three different ways.

Firstly the students were assessed as a group verbally, Mrs. Medos asked them to sound out a number of words and took notes of which they struggled with. Their second assessment was to work on their own and write/illustrate a story. This task allowed her to observe how well the children can sound out words individually, and it was a written exam rather then oral. The final assessment was pulling the children out one at a time and asking them to sound out the words individually, to note which ones they had difficulty with on their own. Each of these three assessments showed tremendous flexibility to best incorporate the students, which I believe allowed Mrs. Medos to accommodate testing the strengths of each student.

This accommodation was never ending, not only did she provide a range of oral, written, group and individual assessment techniques, Mrs. Medos never punished the children for having difficulties with any task, and did her best to accommodate their needs in order to achieve success. I found this to be a connection with the teaching methods of Claude Goldenberg. Goldenberg suggested that you allow students to learn in their first language, and then they will be able to become more successful when they transfer that knowledge over to their second language.

One of the accommodations Mrs. Medos makes in her ESL classroom is allowing the children to converse with each other during both the group and individual assessments in order to help the struggling children understand the task at hand. Since her curriculum suggests that she does not teach the children in their native language, she simply allows the children to assist each other in their first language, during certain assessment situations. This is following the advice of Goldenberg. He explained how children often times struggle with their grades because they cannot understand the task, or they cannot communicate well enough to fulfill the requirements. “Imagine you don’t speak English very well. Your job is to learn what everyone else is learning, plus learn English”. I feel that Mrs. Medos is showing sensitivity to those issues, and is being very considerate when planning and executing her assessment practices.

That’s all for this week, check back again soon :-)

Prompt #2: Johnson

The culturally competent teacher should be able to account for, demonstrate awareness of, and respond to the sociocultural distinctiveness of her or his students, families, and communities when planning for and delivering instruction.

Hello Again,
Today I thought I would write about the linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characters of the students in Mrs. Medos class. Just from looking around the classroom as I have mentioned before the students are of mostly Spanish decent. After talking with a few students it sounds as though most of them are originally from Guatemala and various other South American countries. It is easy to spot the variety of cultures, ethnicities, and languages just by spending a small amount of time with the students in the classroom.

With a little further research online I was able to determine that ninety-five percent of the students in the entire elementary school receive either free or reduced lunch. This directly correlates with the number of students living either in or very close to poverty. 71% of the student population is Hispanic, 14% African American, and 10% White. What surprised me was the number of students in the ESL program. 17% of the students in the school participate in an English Second Language program, which is nearly one fifth of the students, who can barely speak the language of their own country. In light of all these facts, bearing poverty and language barriers, only 24% of the students are proficient in mathematics, and a mere 32% in reading.

Certainly speaking different languages and practicing differing values and beliefs makes it difficult for many of the students to relate to one another. I would say that my teacher does a great job trying to facilitate the differences the students have. She seems very aware that they often find things appropriate to do with the other students and she very calmly will respond “I know that may be okay at home sweetie, but that is not how we do things here in room 118”.

Discussing the cultures, ethnicities, and languages of the class made me think of the Johnson article, “Our House is On Fire”. In that article Johnson discusses the issue of White Privilege in our society, and he proposes that we all can recognize this innate privilege. Then being more aware, we can start to adjust to a more equal society. This relates to Mrs. Medos classroom in an interesting sense, because only two of her students are white, and the two students in the ESL classroom that are white are actually some of the most shy and uninvolved students in the classroom. Now obviously a white student whose first language is not English is not what Johnson was using as his example, however the most interesting part is to see who has fallen into this privilege category in the classroom.

In the classroom, made up almost entirely of Spanish students, including a teacher of Spanish decent, the privilege interestingly falls with the Spanish students. Recognizing this has allowed me to realize that perhaps Johnson talks so much about White privilege because we originally started as a mainly white country, and it just shows that whoever is part of the majority holds the privilege. This explains why given the current demographic of the country and classroom, the privilege needs to be adjusted to a much more equal playing field.

Prompt #5: Delpit

The culturally competent teacher involves and works with families and community resources, understanding the differences in families, the important influence of family participation in students learning, and the benefit of collaborating with the wider school community.

Dear Bloggers,

Today I am going to discuss the challenge of incorporating parents and the wider school community into the classroom. Mrs. Medos, the teacher whose classroom I am volunteering in, is very involved with her student’s parents. However, in most circumstances it is not a positive conference between the two. Most often she speaks to parents concerning their children not doing their homework, acting out in class, and arriving late to school. This is a challenge that she encounters when trying to collaborate with the parents on a daily basis. The problem, I believe, is one that Lisa Delpit explains quite well in her article “The silenced dialogue”. Delpit says the schools are failing to recognize that “if the parents were members of the culture of power and lived by its rules and codes, then they would transmit those codes to their children. In fact, they transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive their communities”. I strongly believe that this is the problem that Mrs. Medos often deals with. The parents of her students have instilled rules and codes into them that may not be appropriate for the classroom, and they themselves live by the rules, which can cause a large gap in communication and collaboration between the parents and their children’s education.

I personally would have a very difficult time trying to bridge the gap between parents and their children’s education. One direct correlation of the difference in culture is that many if not all of the parents only speak Spanish. This alone creates a huge problem in trying to coordinate their involvement with the classroom and school, when the students are there to study and speak English. So I believe the best solution to this problem is to have the parents work with their children outside of school, in Spanish if necessary, and work on teaching them the values and rules they need to practice inside the classroom. This way the parents can be involved, and the students will arrive on time, do their homework, and not act out in class, which will greatly supplement the time they spend learning in school. With more productive students and knowing they have enhanced their ability to learn in school the parents will by much easier to collaborate with, and the teachers will certainly respect them and thank them for their contributions.

The final aspect that is mentioned in the prompt from the Cultural Competence Teaching Areas is that attention needs to be paid to the differences in families. Delpit suggest that the schools must provide the children the content that other families from different cultural orientation provide at home. I think this is a great strategy to not only recognize the differences in families, but to teach the children the differences in culture and allow them to be more culturally aware. Since most of the children in Mrs. Medos class are mainly from the same country and culture, this is not a huge conflict, however, I feel any differences are explained to all the children and accepted by the teacher as something that is okay, or something she needs to teach the children to make exceptions to while they are in the classroom.

Prompt #1: First Impressions

Hello Bloggers,
Today was my third visit to a local kindergarten ESL (English Second Language) classroom at Mary L Elementary School. Perhaps it has to do with my background, coming from a school system in rural Maine, but I was very surprised to see just how much of an urban setting the school was placed. With no parking lot, and very narrow one way streets running through numerous houses, apartments, and many other not so appealing buildings, surprised may be a lenient word. The building itself is a large brick building with no decorations on the outside other than one run down sign. I noticed the apparent lack of a play area for the children both outside and also inside the school. Not only was this a huge contribution to the sense of seriousness I felt, but after entering the building and witnessing the children walking in silent lines, carrying passes, and witnessing how pertinent the staff was to strangers in the building, my sense of seriousness was confirmed.

Entering the building, the halls are very wide and tall, have very few posters, and are mostly cement. However, I was very happy to see how well decorated the actual classroom was. Hundreds of educational posters, symbols, and pictures cover every wall nearly from floor to ceiling. So, perhaps educational decorations are not valued by the school, but they certainly are by Mrs. Medos. Her classroom is set up with a number of tables that break the children up into about five groups, however, I have noticed almost the entire time I am in the classroom; the students are all sitting on the carpet together. The carpet functions as a form of control for Mrs. Medos, it makes it much easier to watch all of the children and keep them seated and paying attention.

Being an ESL classroom, the twenty-four students consist of two Caucasians, two African Americans, and the remainder is of Spanish decent. I am certain that the main focus and value in this classroom is the learning and development of the English Language. However, after spending a few mornings in the classroom, I have discovered that even though there is such a huge value placed on English, the teacher herself places a huge emphasis on the importance of behavior, respect, basic skills preparing the students for first grade, and attendance. She gives the students and parents are very hard time if they arrive to school late, have incomplete homework or are missing signatures on papers. Mrs. Medos tries very hard to help not only the children, but their parents, understand the importance of showing up on time and trying your best in and out of school. With a few exceptions the students all seem to be highly motivated to learn and explore new concepts. I think Mrs. Medos is very good at providing a variety of learning strategies to best accommodate all the children and she is a very patient but serious woman who has earned the respect of her students.

introduction

Like most of you probably know I am one of the two Courtney's in our class. I am a freshman transfer here at RIC. I started my college experience at the University of New Hampshire last semester, however, after a short period of time I realized not only the school, but also my animal science major was just not for me. So here I am, Rhode island college hopefully pursing my real calling, Elementary Education. Currently my free time is spent socializing, studying, and basically enjoying college, during the non-academic part of the year I spend my time mostly outside, with animals, decorating cakes, and working. I am very excited for the experiences this class is presenting and cannot wait to become involved with elementary level students. I am sure this experience is only going to further convince me this is what I would love to do :-)
Bye for now,
Courtney