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.