Prompt #6 Dewey and Delpit

Last week Ms. King had been absent so when I arrived at the school the secretary told me to go to room 112 instead. When I walked into room 112 the teacher told me there were four students from Ms. King’s class in the back and I’ll be working with them. They were four students that I haven’t worked much with this semester but I was eager to see how they were doing in school. The students were excited to be working with me, that is except for Juan.

I began talking to the students and asking them what subject they were working on. Three students told me it was math while Juan sat back with his arms folded. I told the three students to get started on their assignment while I pulled a chair over and sat down next to Juan. I asked him what was going on and he replied in a heavy accent saying “I don’t like math.” I told him that just because we didn’t like a subject it doesn’t mean we don’t have to do it and I handed him a pencil and asked him to get started. However, he just put the pencil down and sat there staring blankly at the paper. Pablo then told me that Ms. King usually works with Juan one on one for math because he has trouble reading the directions because he speaks Spanish.

I wasn’t sure what to do, seeing as how I don’t speak or understand Spanish. I once again pulled a chair up alongside of Juan and sat down next to him. I began reading the directions slowly to Juan while I used my finger to underline the words as I said them. He began to lean forward and look on with me as I explained that it was addition and subtraction with two digit numbers. He began to grin and I could tell he could understand what I was saying but I continued by showing him how to do one of the problems. I pointed to the first problem on the sheet, 11+21. I told him that we have to start by adding the first two digits, 1 and 1. I then held up one finger on my left and hand and one finger on my right hand and asked him to put up how many fingers total. He raised his hand and put up two fingers and wrote it in the box. Next I put up two fingers on my left hand and one on my right and without asking Juan put up three fingers. He wrote the three in the box and began to smile. I told him he did a great job and to call me over if he needed any help.

This relates both to Dewey and to Delpit. I believe it relates to Dewey in the sense that he says education is a social function and that we learn from our differences. I believe it was in a way social because had a student not told me about Juan’s problem I would have just assumed he didn’t want to do the work. I also learned from our differences and I now know that I shouldn’t assume that a student doesn’t want to do the work but that he may not understand the work and be afraid to admit it. This also relates to Delpit through her aspects of power. It very strongly relates to aspect four, being told explicitly the rules allows acquiring power easier. Had I not explicitly told Juan the rules he wouldn’t have been able to acquire any power at all.

Prompt #5 Delpit

As culturally competent teachers we must both involve and work with the parents and community from which our students come from. As I have noticed, after many visits to the school, a child’s development in the classroom has a lot to do with what goes on at home with their parents.

The student that I tutor, for example, was talking to me the other day and mentioned that she was so tired. When I asked why she told me she was playing her Nintendo DS until 1 in the morning. I then asked her if her mom or dad got mad at her for staying up so late; which she replied to by telling me they don’t care and that she doesn’t have a bed time. For a second grader I think going to bed at 1 in the morning not only takes away from her time sleeping, it also has an impact on her presence in the classroom the next morning.

One major problem that we as teachers may run into is parents that simply don’t care about their child’s education. I personally have witnessed this problem on two separate occasions with the same student. The first time was as mentioned above and the second time was when Brandy was very sick but still went to school. She said she had both a headache and a stomach ache and it was clearly affecting her in the classroom because whenever Ms. King told her to get to work she would complain about either her head or her stomach. Finally, Ms. King decided to call Brandy’s mom and let her know what was going on and ask her to come pick up Brandy but she simply said “She’s fine, she’s probably just being lazy.” Ms. King attempted to continue talking on the phone but was stopped midsentence when Brandy’s mom hung up the phone.

I feel that the connection between teacher and parent just isn’t there, not because of Ms. King but because the parent simply doesn’t want to get involved. This reminded me strongly of Lisa Delpit because in her article “Silenced Dialogue” she talks about how one of the most important connections is between parent and teacher. This worries me because Brandy’s mom has the attitude that “as the teacher you should be able to help them while I sit back and watch.” However, this clearly isn’t the case, as Delpit says it’s a combination of both the parents and the teacher.

This is quite a difficult challenge address seeing as how the parent doesn’t see it to be a problem. One way that I as a teacher could address this issue is to attempt to speak to another guardian (older sibling, father etc.) of Brandy’s that may care a bit more and try to put education higher on Brandy’s list of things to do. Perhaps, this way the student won’t be going from a classroom where education is a priority to the home where education is an option.

Prompt #4 Johnson

Having come from a different part of the state, coming to this school was rather a culture shock for me. As I’ve said in previous posts the elementary school I went to growing up was pretty much a segregated school in that we had no more than a handful of non white students. Seeing as my elementary school was predominantly white the school never ran into a problem such as students speaking different languages.

While tutoring at this school I have noticed that as the prompt says “no one enters a classroom without a personal history.” At the school in which I tutor at it seems that the primary language of most of the students is Spanish. I feel that this is where my personal history and their personal history could intersect. When I think of the word intersect, what comes to mind is two things meeting at a certain point and I believe that I could meet the students half way and we could help each other to better understand our personal histories and languages. This would not only improve the relationship from teacher to student but it would make learning for the students much easier. If I share my knowledge of the English language with them and they share their knowledge of the Spanish language with me I don’t think there will be a cultural barrier that we couldn’t break down together.

However, some students may not be willing to cooperate and this could face me with a challenge. I am the only white person in the classroom I teach in, so not only was it a surprise for me to see no white students in the classroom; I’m sure it was a surprise for the students to see a white teacher in the classroom. One of the challenges that I have faced in the classroom is when trying to talk to a student who was upset about something that happened outside of school he said “you’ll never know what it’s like at my house!” Once he said that, I didn’t know what else to say. The student was completely right, after growing up in a different setting as these students I don’t know what it’s like coming from the kind of household these students come from.

The biggest misconception that I faced coming to this school as a Reading Buddy was I didn’t think the students would be able to read well at all. I thought I would be teaching them the bulk of their reading knowledge, but I was way off. The student that I tutor one on one struggles quite a bit with reading but is not as bad as I expected.

I think that this prompt directly relates to Alan Johnson because he states that race is still an issue in this country and that schools are still not diverse. At this particular school I can clearly see that the school is not diverse and that race is an issue. If I were an African American student I don’t think the student I was talking with would have told me that I didn’t know what it was like at his house. I think that we must all come together and do as Johnson says and “celebrate our differences” rather than use them against each other.