A Lot to Learn (prompt 7)

This tutoring experience has shaped my teaching identity in numerous ways. First of all, I didn’t expect to enjoy this experience as much as I did. The reason for this was that I’m planning on going into secondary education and I didn’t know how tutoring elementary school age children would help me. To be honest, as much as I enjoy teaching the younger kids, it has enforced the fact that I want to teach high school. My only reason for this is that younger kids have a lot of energy especially when there are 25 of them in one classroom. This experience has also taught me how to deal with certain situations especially when it comes to dealing with a child who won’t listen. I had this problem with one of the children in my kindergarten group. He just had no interest in what we were doing and was continuously saying how he would hate the games we were doing. I have had problems with this child for a couple weeks and I finally found a way to reach this child. When he was being distracting to the other kids I would ask him to stop and focus on what we were doing. This often didn’t work but I found that when I would ask him how his parents would feel if they knew he was misbehaving, he seemed to respond better. Also when I would ask him individually what the first sound in a word was for example, he would respond better and participate more. I have also found a kind of teaching style that the kids seem to like. I picked this up from the teacher in my first grade classroom. The way she speaks to the children is in more of an informal way and the kids seem to really respect her because they can relate to her more. I found the more that I did this with my first grade group of boys; they seemed to respect me more and just enjoy the reading games. I especially loved working with my group of first grade boys because they were respectful, they liked the games we would play and they would just get along really well with each other. They were friendly and were always excited about different things they wanted to tell me. I was also impressed with how smart they were, they seemed to know most of the sight words, they could separate the phonemes of most words correctly, and they could usually form intelligent sentences with their sight words. I think the most important thing I learned from these kids was, kindergartners and first graders, was that they’re all just kids. They don’t care what the color of each other’s skin is, what languages they speak, or what kind of socioeconomic background they come from. They’re all just kids who love to run around on the playground together, who’re all talking about the new kids movie coming out, and what they’re hoping to get for Christmas. I think adults could learn a lot about the innocence of these children.

Empowering the Marginalized (prompt 3)

Teachers need to address the different socioeconomic, linguistic, and ethnic cultures of the classroom. As I’ve said before, my first grade and my kindergarten classrooms are very diverse, usually with very few white kids. I haven’t noticed the way my first grade teacher acts with her entire class because I don’t get a chance to observe them, I just have 4 of the first graders in my reading group. In my kindergarten classroom however, I do see different socioeconomic and ethnic cultures addressed. For example, in this classroom there is a Hispanic teacher’s assistant, Mrs. H. Sometimes if one of the children that are bilingual in Spanish and English is misbehaving, she will speak to them in Spanish dealing with whatever the problem is. I think this is a very good strategy because I noticed in one little boy’s case; he was more responsive in listening to Mrs. H. He speaks English very well but I think that just because Spanish is probably spoken in his home, he’s more likely to listen to what Mrs. H. has to say when she speaks to him in Spanish. I have also seen the regular teacher Ms. M. deal with the socioeconomic status of some of the children. I addressed an example of this in one of my previous blogs about when another student bit Jane after Jane bit her. Ms. M. understood that the parent of Jane couldn’t bring Jane to a regular doctor so she was going to help Jane’s parent find a free clinic to take Jane to. These situations can be related to Ira Shor’s article, Empowering Education. In his article he discusses how teachers have to empower the marginalized students or else their voices will continue to be suppressed. He brings up the fact that people are “born learners” and that “education can either develop or stifle their inclination to ask why and to learn”. What he means by this is for the teacher to encourage the students to ask questions and to be critical thinkers. And to do this, sometimes in order for a child to understand, it needs to be explained in a way that relates to that students culture whether it be ethnically, linguistically, or socioeconomically. If a child doesn’t understand how to ask questions and isn’t encouraged then it will be much harder for them to develop into critical thinkers. If especially the marginalized children don’t develop into critical thinkers, then they will never grow up to challenge the status quo and it will remain unchanging and the marginalized group will still be marginalized. I don’t know how one could make a huge impact on this at the at the kindergarten age, but little things like speaking to a student in their own language may just be the start in empowering the marginalized.

Collaboration (prompt 5)

As teachers, we will find ourselves not only dealing with the students in our classroom but the parents of the students as well. I know in my future teaching experience, I will be dealing with friendly parents who are easy to work with, and parents that may be a little bit harder to deal with. I have seen the teacher of my kindergarten class deal with a concerned parent before who had trouble understanding the teacher was having with this child. The problem was that the little girl, (Jane), has trouble paying attention and sitting still in class. The other students will sometimes be her “buddy” for the day to help her focus during class, but this doesn’t always work out and the Jane will get frustrated with her “buddy”. In this case she did have a problem with another child in the classroom one day and proceeded to bite the other child. Then the child who was bit decided to bite Jane back. There was skin broken in both cases and the first child was dealt with by the principle after the children were sent to the nurse. The next day, the parent of Jane called the teacher during class to discuss what had happened. From what I heard on the teacher’s end of the conversation was that the parent of Jane was having trouble understanding what had happened and that Jane sometimes has trouble focusing and interacting with the other children. The parent also didn’t understand that she needed to take Jane to a real doctor to get the bite checked out for any infections. She said that she couldn’t afford to take Jane to the doctor because she wasn’t covered under insurance. The teacher just tried to explain the situation as best she could and stress the fact that she needed to get Jane to a doctor and that there were free clinics in the area the parent could take Jane to. In this situation, I think the teacher handled the situation the best she could. I don’t know if the biting could have been prevented but the teacher handled the after effects of the situation pretty well in explaining it to the parent. She kept the parent well informed and was looking out for the welfare of Jane in stressing the trip to see a doctor about the bite. This situation can relate to the article “The Silenced Dialogue” by Lisa Delpit. In this article, Delpit discusses the “culture of power” and how the parents may not fall under that culture of power. This is a different form of the culture of power because the parent didn’t understand that the child needed to be taken care of. This parent thought of it as “the school’s job” to take care of the child. Delpit stresses that this doesn’t make the parent a “bad parent” but it just means that the parent didn’t understand certain codes and rules. This isn’t asking the parent to necessarily change the way her child is treated because as Delpit says, that would be “cultural genocide” but to understand that she needed to get Jane help. I think this teacher also stepped outside of the culture of power because she understood the parent couldn’t afford to take the child to a doctor so she was going to give her a list of free clinics that she could take Jane to. This collaboration is absolutely necessary when a teacher is dealing with parents.

Seeing Beyond the Stereotype

I would be lying if I said I didn’t go into this school completely free of bias. My school consists of mainly African American children, with Hispanic, Asian and white children mixed in between with the white kids being the minority. I think the main bias I had going into this tutoring program were my assumptions that it’s the parent’s fault that many of these children are high risk and have especially struggle with reading. I assumed that many of the parents of these kids were just lazy and didn’t have any concern for teaching their children to read and assisting them in their homework. Granted, I know that some parents do send their children to school just saying that it’s just the teacher’s responsibility to teach these children. But while the teacher does do most of the teaching, work must be done at home as well in order for the child to be consistent in their learning. I witnessed this with one of the parents in my kindergarten classroom. The parent was blaming the teacher for the student’s poor academic performance. This is where a lot of my assumptions were made. But I also realized that it isn’t just the case of lazy parents in a lot of situations, but some of the parents may be single parents who are working two or three jobs where they don’t have time to help their child to read. This is a very difficult situation because teacher’s can only help their students so much and without a parent’s influence, it’s hard to encourage a child to continue reading at home. These assumptions can be related to the article by Allan Johnson, What it Means to be involved in Privilege and Oppression. In this reading Johnson discusses the path of least resistance and how that’s the path we usually find ourselves on, “regardless of whether we think about where they lead or the consequences they produce”. In making my assumptions that parents just weren’t taking responsibility for the care of their children, I was falling into a general stereotype that a lot of people make. I was falling into a “pattern of oppression” without realizing it and I made that assumption before I thought that a reason some of these children don’t receive help at home may be because their parents just don’t have the time to help with homework because they are just trying to make enough money for their family to get by. I’ve learned that I have to let go of these misconceptions and realize there may be more to the story. As Johnson says, we have to avoid making these stereotypes, and start taking the paths of more resistance until people start to notice and you can start to make a difference.

First weeks

I've now been to my school twice and I'm loving this experience.  I have to admit, before we started I was very nervous about it.  I grew up in a very small school in a rural community where everyone was white so this was a totally new experience for me.  Driving through the neighborhood of the school, I noticed how very poor this area is.  Everything is very rundown and I could tell that it's a very diverse community.  The area around the school was actually very nice though because it's a fairly new complex of about 3 different schools.  Inside the school was also pretty nice because of the newness of it and my nerves started to go away when I actually got inside and was around the kids.  My first week we didn't actually work with the kids but just went through a sort of orientation with the literacy coach.  I couldn't believe it when she said that about 80% of kids aren't at the reading level that they should be and that many of the schools just don't have the funding for teachers to spend the amount of time needed with these kids to help them learn to read.  We were told that that was one of the poorest school districts in the nation.  The coach even told us that some of the kids at this school were refugees from other countries where it used to be their job to pick up dead body parts.  This was unbelievably sad to me and I just can't believe the lives that some of these kids had been forced to lead.  

This past week we were actually put in the classroom.  This school is very diverse where white is actually the minority.  The poverty of some of the children was noticeable as some looked as if their hair hadn't been brushed and they were wearing too small or disheveled clothing.  At my school I'm working with kindergartners and first graders.  In the kindergarten class this was especially noticeable.  They also seemed very high strung and it seemed like the teacher doesn't get a chance to get a lot of teaching done because some of the children are very disruptive.  A lot of my time was observation but with the little bit I worked with the kids, it was amazing the amount of words they didn't know.  It actually really shocks me to know that some parents just don't take care of their children properly, doing things like helping them learn to read and do well in school.  There was one little girl who didn't know simple words such as in and she has a very hard time paying attention in the classroom and was continually disruptive.  It's sad cause they all seem like good kids, they just don't have the guidance they need at home.  I am glad though that I actually felt very comfortable with the kids right away, often helping the teacher keep them under control and paying attention.

The first grade classroom I was in was much less hands on at first and the teaching style was very different.  This teacher was more laid back and seemed to gain more respect from the children.  There was also a huge difference in the maturity level here and I don't know if it's because of the one year difference or because of the teacher.  In both classrooms I noticed that the teachers demand a lot of respect and focus a lot on the behavior of the children, doing their best to make sure that the class isn't disruptive.  I also spoke with the first grade teacher and was told once again of the poor reading level of these children.  She told us that even when she taught fourth grade, the reading level of the kids was awful, when she knew she had already taught some of the same students in first grade the same things.  I hope that the rest of my time spent in this school goes well and that I make at least a small impact on the students in helping them to read.

1st post

I'm Alysha, a sophomore studying history secondary ed.  So far the semester is pretty good though tougher than last year.  I also play ultimate frisbee, babysit, hang with friends, dance, and just like to have fun :) I'm looking forward to the tutoring experience.