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.