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.