Saturday, March 27, 2010
Prompt #2: Johnson
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.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Prompt #5: Delpit
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.
Monday, March 8, 2010
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.