Prompt 6: Kliewer

The teacher in the class I volunteered at never stopped to explain to the others in the class what it means to have a parent unemployed, when SHE brought it up. Maybe she thought they all knew what it meant, but that would be an assumption and the kids had no way of knowing if others in their class were going through the same home problems they were. It could be that she covered sensitive topics like employment and religion before I came or while I was out tutoring students. She was always pushing to keep on schedule and little outside of academics was discussed unless she had questions for the students.

My personal experience with a touchy subject was told in a previous post. The child I was tutoring asked me a question that I could not answer and she said that it was ok because she and her dad were going to prey for answers. This was early on in my service learning and I just replied with an ok. Thinking about it now I should have asked how she felt about people who didn’t prey or preyed to different things. Recently two students were telling me how I should get a car so I could visit them when I was done with college. I told them I had no money and one said to just have my parents get it for me. I proceeded to tell them that my parent s had no money too. One stated that they knew what I was talking about, but the other said that their parents always had money. I didn’t push the issue past saying that he was lucky. In response he lowered his head and continued playing the game. This made me think that it might be all a front and he was saying things to make himself seem better or cooler than the others.

Author of Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome Christopher Kliewer talked about something called Human Reciprocity. This is the idea of a society where everyone works together and each member is valued for what he/she brings to the group. It could be their culture or their ideas but everyone helps each other to better everyone’s lives. At the time these events at my school happened I did not know how to explain this concept to elementary students so I let them just continue with the felling that the student with money was better than the one without. I know they felt that way because that is how I felt.

Another theorist that helped me prepare for another encounter like those above is Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. His thoughts on higher ordered thinking (the thing that makes us all unique), was that: first, it happens between children and society through communication. And then once those children learn to make concepts and think logically on their own, those ideas the child learned through their culture contributes to their individuality. To me he is saying that what we teach and say to children help develop them into the adults they will become. In that statement a lot of pressure is put on the backs of the older generation the children interact with. We can teach them to value all their peers or how to hate them. In this thinking a quote from Spiderman comes to my mind that best describes the responsibility teachers have. “With great power, comes great responsibility.” We have the power to plant seeds that shape the future of the world.

Thinking about it now, in all the situations that the children put me through I would have asked them questions. Questions dealing with things they may have never been ask before. Like other religions and what is so great about having money? And in the end ask them, do those things/differences change how you view others? Knowing that what I say will impact them for the rest of their lives.

WE ALL MUST CHOOSE WHAT WE WILL TEACH,THE GOOD OR THE BAD?

Prompt 5: Goldenberg

The teacher in my classroom did something awesome. She was asking the class to come up with sentences that include the words on the board. One child told her that her mom was home all the time now and they were able to spend a lot more time together. The teacher proceeded to ask if she lost her job. The child said no she just retired. This was good to see because it showed that the teacher had knowing of what was going on in her student’s life.

As a teacher you have to be aware of how the student’s homes lives are. It is at home were the children will learn to read and study for tests. It is where a lot, if not most of schooling actually happens. If the student is having family trouble they could lose focus and start failing. It is up to the teacher to make open communication with all the parents of their students so that they feel comfortable enough to inform the teacher of changes that could affect the child’s performance in school.

When collaborating with parents, especially in an intercity setting one big problem that I can see is lack of communication. These parents not only have to work one or more jobs but a lot are from different countries that speak different languages, including the two students I tutor. Education theorist Claude Goldenberg, author of Teaching English Language Learners, talked mostly about educating children that use English as a second language, but I do not see why the same facts would not work for adult English language learners. He says that a child being educated in English, who does not have English as a first language, do not learn what is being taught because they are too focused on trying to figure out what was actually being said and miss concepts. My thinking is that this same concept can be applied for non English speaking parents. They would be too focused on trying to understand individual words and miss the issue their child is having or the fact that they need to do something to better the child’s education.

Goldenberg also makes it a point to say that because these students cannot understand the language the subjects are being taught in, does not make them learning challenged. They fall behind in their class, grade wise because they do not know what is being said, not because they do not hold the capacity to understand the academic concept. Non-English parents have an extra hurtle to overcome. If you ask them in English to sit and do math homework with their child and they don’t, it’s not because they do not care, it is because you failed as a teacher to identify a barrier that limits communication. Having a transltor is one way to combat this but also trying to speak their language, even if its just one word would show them that you care about them and their children, by learning some of their culture.

Even if the child is doing well it is still good to open communication between both teacher to parents and parents to parents and that way if one has a problem they can talk to each other if they do not want to go straight to the teacher and help each other as a community.