Prompt 6-- Carlson

To be a truly multicultural teacher, one must be able to speak to a variety of different social and ethnic groups. The teacher must be able to get their point across in order for their students to be able to learn what they need to know to be successful. They must be able to do this across a wide spectrum of different groups. This could be challenging to teachers because of these differences.

In my classroom, I have been able to communicate to each group successfully. After reading Lisa Delpit, I realized that I couldn’t use the language I was used to hearing my teachers use in the classroom. I then decided I was going to use direct language instead of veiled commands. By doing this, I was able to make sure that all my students understood exactly what I was saying. This was being sensitive to all the different social groups by allowing all of them to understand what they need to do.

This prompt can also relate to Dennis Carlson’s article “Gayness, Multicultural Education and Community.” In this article Carlson not only talks about gays and lesbians, but including every group as their own and incorporating them into the curriculum. He states that only people and groups that are considered “normal” are included in the curriculum.

When I am a teacher, I will have to be able to do what Carlson says about including different groups into my curriculum. I cannot just include white middle class history, but the histories of Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and even gay Americans. I will have to be able to speak to each different group by including them in the studies. By including different groups, I will be able to speak to different groups successfully. This will help each student broaden their views of the world, and will hopefully lead to a more accepting future for every different ethnic group.

Prompt 5 -- Delpit

As the teacher in my tutoring class, I would have numerous challenges concerning communication between my students’ parents and myself. First and probably most significant is the language barrier. Almost half of the students in my class are Hispanic and speak Spanish. I can guess that many of them come from homes where English is not the primary language, but Spanish is. This would make parent-teacher communication very difficult for me because I cannot read, write or speak Spanish outside of a few very simple words and phrases I learned in my two years of high school Spanish. Without having a strong background in Spanish, I can imagine I would not be able to effectively communicate with parents about their child’s progress. This makes teaching a struggling child more difficult because I would not be able to enlist the help of their parents without talking to them. One thing I could do to help this situation is to find someone else in the school (a teacher or administrator) who knows both English and Spanish who can help me write a parent newsletter in both languages, or who can translate in a parent teacher conference. While this may not be the best solution, it could help me communicate with parents more effectively.

Another problem I might encounter in this classroom is the wide span of cultures represented within the class. Some cultures do not mix home life and school life, but keep them separate. This would make my job as a teacher more difficult because the parents would not cooperate with helping the child with schoolwork when they are at home. This is an extremely tough situation for any teacher and I cannot honestly say I would know what to do in it. The best thing I can think of is to give the student more one-on-one support from me or a tutor who can help them.
This makes me think of Lisa Delpits arguments about the culture of power. In her article, “The Silenced Dialogue,” Delpit discusses how we cannot really achieve a true multicultural education system because of the culture of power. All societies have some culture in power that decides what is best for everyone. In our country, it is the white middle class. All schools run on white middle class values and beliefs. Anyone who is not in the culture of power is considered an outsider, and those who do not abide by the rules of the culture of power are seen as “lower” than others.

This prompt directly relates to this prompt, because if I were to teach in an inner city school, many of the students and parents of my class would most likely not be in the middle class culture of power. Because of this, they may not know that being involved in the child’s school is consider normal, and is expected. Since they are not in the culture of power, they don’t know the rules. As a teacher, I will need to be able to help transmit these rules and codes not only to my students, but to my students’ parent’s as well. Once they know the rules, they will be better equipped to learn in our school systems.

Prompt 4 -- Johnson

Everyone has his or her own personal history and everyone’s history is different. People live in different communities and are part of different groups which lead to different experiences. This is true in my tutoring classroom. Although I am from a white, middle class town, my students and I have many things in common. For one thing, I went to public school in the same district as these children for two years. Because of this, I understand how it is difficult to go to school in an inner city school where you don’t get everything other students get. This was made more obvious to me when I moved to the town I live in now. My new school had better books, desks, supplies, and computers in every classroom, while my old school was struggling to find paper to do simple classroom assignments. This would definitely give me an advantage to teaching this classroom because I know how difficult it is for the city kids to learn under these conditions. I know where the kids are coming from and I would definitely be able to connect and sympathize with the kids. Because I did go to these schools when I was younger, going into this tutoring experience I cannot think of any misconceptions I had of various groups. I went to school and was friends with many people who are of similar backgrounds. I think this gave me a huge advantage because I had already been in similar classes and knew what to expect.

I can relate this prompt to Allan Johnson’s works. In his article, “Our House is on Fire,” Johnson discusses white privilege. The article explains that white privilege is everywhere, especially in our schools. Students in “white” towns have better books, supplies and teachers. Students in inner city schools get very little basic supplies. This creates a major inequality in our school systems with the white getting more powerful, and the poor getting less powerful.

This relates to this prompt because in the school I tutor, there are very little basic supplies. All the posters are hand written on large poster paper. In schools I went to when I was younger, posters were bought with everything neatly typed up. This makes white privilege very prominent to me. It shows that poor schools are not getting the supplies they need, while white schools are getting much more. This will be a major challenge to me if I am a teacher in a school like my tutoring assignment. I will need to try to figure out how to manage with the inequalities and try to break the reign of white privilege.

Prompt 3-- Brown

In the school that I tutor in, there is a variety of different socio-cultural and ethnic needs. Some of my students are Hispanic or Asian, while others are African American or white. Most of my students come from working class families, with many of them at or below the poverty line. Because of this, it is difficult to address the needs of all the children in the classroom because their needs are so different from one another. However, I have seen some good ways to try to help the students, even if the do have different needs.

While I was tutoring, my teacher gave the students their weekly spelling test. Many of my students are Hispanic and speak fluent Spanish, so I was curious to see if the teacher would make any adjustments to meet their needs. When I was in school, my spelling tests would consist of the teacher saying the word and giving the word in a sentence. This was not the case in this classroom. To start, the teacher said, "What letter makes the ‘oooo’ sound?" the students said the sound aloud and then wrote the letter on their paper. Then she started testing with actual words, "The first word is hand, sound out the word hand." The students did so together and wrote the word on their papers. This is how she conducted the rest of the test. I was amazed at the way she did give the test because I have never seen a spelling test given this way. I believe this is and excellent way to help all the students pass their test because it is teaching them about the sounds the letters make so they can learn to spell. This will also help the students who have English as a second language, because they are learning how the letters and sound relate in English. I believe this is addressing the needs of all the students.

This prompt can also relate to Lyn Mikel Brown’s article “In the Bad or Good of Girlhood.” In this article, Brown compares the experiences of girls in a working class city, with girls in an upper/middle class city. She describes the “metonymic fallacy,” which is the assumption that the middle class woman’s experience is the same for all women regardless of socio-cultural or ethnic background. The article then goes on to describe how the working class girls have a much different experience than the middle class girls. The working class girls live in a culture where they feel as if they need to prove themselves to each other and really compete for the teacher’s attention. They also feel as if they need to fight for the things they want or need.

In my classroom, almost all of the children are working class and are either at or below the poverty line. If I were the teacher of this classroom, I will have to take into consider the fact that the children in this class are not middle class like I am. Their experiences will be vastly different then my own were, and I cannot assume that all the girls go through the same experiences just because they are girls. What I may see as “acting out” might really be how the child was brought up in their culture. I have seen this in my tutoring. My teacher holds the middle class ideals in her mind, while the students, who are not middle class, do not. There is a major miscommunication between the teacher and students because both grew up in different groups. It as Brown stated, “The teachers seem unpredictable and irrational, in part because the girls come to school with different conceptions of the relationships among gender, knowledge, and power and because the signs and codes of the culture of power had never been clearly stated or explained to them.” As a teacher, I will have to take these differences in cultures and try to help my children ease into the culture of power, but also try to get them to speak up for themselves and try to get them to change things for the better.

Prompt 2 --Goldenberg

As I entered my classroom, the students in my assigned class surprised me. As I looked around at the students, I only saw one white student and one Asian student. The rest were African American, or so I thought. As I started working with the kids and playing their favorite game (Candy Land, but with a reading twist) I realized many of them were actually Hispanic. I should have expected this as many of the signs in the front of the building are in both Spanish and English, but judging by looks alone, it didn’t seem like it. According to the Infoworks website, 54% of the students at my school are Hispanic and 28% are African American. Only 18% of the students are white or Asian. Out of all those students, only 23% receive ESL education.

I was very surprised to see that only 23 % of the students at my school receive ESL services. This surprised me because while I was playing the games with my students, one of the students, John, got distracted and wasn’t paying attention until one of the other students, Bob, started speaking to him in Spanish. Knowing a bit of Spanish, I could understand that Bob had told John something along the lines of “sit down and play the game.” After he went back to sitting down and playing the game with myself and Bob. As he moved the spaces on the board, I could hear him mumbling in Spanish. “uno, dos, tres” This event made me wonder why more of my students do not receive ESL services.

This experience relates to Claude Goldenberg. In his article “Teaching English Language Learners,” Goldenberg discusses how we as teachers should help ELL’s (English Language Learners) learn English and their other subjects as well. He states that we should teach the children in their primary language, then help them transfer what they already know in their first language to things they are learning in English. He also states that we shouldn’t only focus on teaching English and reading, but teach other subjects again.

At my school, very few of the children receive ESL or ELL services. The example with the two boys I previously wrote about shows how much these services are need in these schools. These children are having a difficult time learning to read and it is probably because they don’t understand what is being said in the class. This puts them behind in the classroom and then on state testing. This school should be using more ELL techniques in the school. This would definitely help this school raise the test scores and help these children in the future.

Promt 1 -- Shor

The school I go to is located in a residential area. The buildings and homes surrounding it are old and worn. It is also located close the state house. Next door to the school, there is a large playground with swings and a field for ball games. Upon arrival, the school looks as though it is a small school with only two floors. However, the school is actually relatively big with another floor in the back of the building. When I walked in, the signs near the front doors were in not only English, but Spanish too. This immediately told me many of my students would be Spanish Speaking. As I walked to my assigned classroom, I noticed the walls seemed to be very bare. The doors to each classroom were decorated with the teacher's name and grade they taught.

When I entered my classroom, I noticed the posters hanging up. One was big with the class rules prominently displayed. While I was there, my teacher yelled for most of my visit. This continued for almost all of my visits. It seems that she yells over every little thing. In one instance, she was getting ready to call a group up when one child asked her to sharpen his pencil. She responded by yelling, “I’m not doing that right now! Can’t you see I’m calling groups up? Go do your work!” The child looked frightened and went back to his seat, but later was yelled at because his writing wasn’t dark enough. It seems as if the children and their development aren’t valued, but the teacher’s rules and her superiority are. Everything seems to revolve around her, and her wants. This doesn’t help the children at all. The other posters in the room seemed to be reading or spelling words for different groups. There were also posters with the new math words the students had learned. This told me that reading was definitely going to be valued as well.

I also noticed that the children did not sit in desks, but large tables allowing for group work and collaboration. Even though they did sit rather close together and set up for collaboration, I soon learned my teacher frowned upon this. As I worked with the children, she was constantly yelling at students working together at the tables and computers to stop talking, even if they were using "indoor" voices. This surprised me, because at the computer station and the games station where I was working, it was very difficult to get anything done without talking at least a little bit. These centers required talking because there were only two computers for groups of four, and the games center required reading aloud. I was very surprised that the teacher would frown on any kind of talking or group work, considering the set up of the classroom.

This reminds me of Ira Shor’s arguments. In his article, “Education is Politics,” Shor argues that the key to a students learning is participation in the classroom. In a participatory classroom, authority is not only placed on the teacher, but some of it on the students as well. This helps the students to “see” themselves in the curriculum. The students will actually want to be in school and learn because they feel as if they are valued in their classroom. Shor also states that in classrooms where the teacher is the highest power and students are not encouraged to participate they act as if school is just something to be dealt with. Without including students in what they are going to be taught, they feel bored, frustrated and want to just be done with school.

In my classroom, there is no participatory environment. The students are not encouraged to voice their opinions, but are instead told to sit down, do their papers, and be silent. This is the direct opposite of what Shor proposes teachers should do. My students look miserable in the classroom and I have to wonder if this is the reason why. They do not feel included in what they are being taught. As I look around the classroom, I often see the kids fooling around with others, or just simply not doing their work. When I do leave my classroom, I wonder about how this will influence these children later on in life. They are already being taught (they’re only in first grade) that school is only something to put up with. It is a place where the teacher yells and makes you do boring worksheets. If they are beginning to get this attitude now, how are they going to behave in high school? Will they even have the desire to go to college? These children need to see the value of learning, especially at their age. Their teacher is not helping them do this at all.

About Me

Hi! My name is Sara Angelino. I am currently a freshman in my second semester at Rhode Island College. I am studing to be an elementary and special education teacher. So far, my semester has been going pretty well, and I can already tell I am going to enjoy my classes. I am especially excited to begin tutoring for FNED. I love working with children and cannot wait to begin this new adventure.
When I'm not at school or doing schoolwork, I enjoying hanging out with my friends and going shopping. I love to laugh and have fun. See you all in class.