Prompt #6 : Kliewer

I believe that as a teacher it is very important to be able to respond and communicate effectively to your students. When in the classroom, you need to be able to take into account the socio cultural and linguistic differences of your students and be able to communicate with sensitivity and responsiveness to that. A teacher must respect the different cultures in his / her classroom and be able to communicate with their students in a variety of ways.

One Friday afternoon when the kids were a little too hyper, the teacher decided to read them a book and have them do a writing assignment to try to get them to calm down. The book was about different families and the different foods they eat, specifically rice. While reading the story, the kids kept interrupting to say things like “Oh I eat that kind of rice all the time” or “I’ve never heard of that before”. The teacher let the students talk about the differences in their families. To them, they were talking about rice. But in reality, it was a discussion about all the different socio-cultural characteristics in the classroom. After she finished reading the story, the kids wrote a couple sentences about their own families and how they eat their rice. They also got to draw a picture. It was interesting to listen to the kids communicate with each other while they were doing this assignment. Some kids would find it so interesting hearing about someone else’s family. Others were excited when they found out a friend ate rice similar to what they ate. The pictures were very different; some with their family around the kitchen table, while others were cooking in the kitchen with their mom or their dad, or both. The teacher was able to communicate with her students with respect to all the different socio-cultural differences. She knows there is diversity in the classroom, accepts it, and turns it into a way for the students to better learn about each other and different cultures.

Christopher Kliewer, in “Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome” speaks about human reciprocity, which relates very much to democracy and communication in a classroom. Human reciprocity is basically when you are in a society where everyone works and interacts with each other. Each member of the community has something different to bring to the table and every one else in the group values what they bring. Cultures are able to be brought together and the community is able to learn something from one another and help each other. The ideas that are learned through the culture contribute to the individual and their personality / how they live their own life. Kliewer also talks about Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, who was a psychologist. He believes in a higher ordered thinking, which makes us all unique in a way that we can exist in both social and cultural relationships. It is important for children in a classroom to make these relationships in order to better communicate in the classroom community.

Prompt #5 : Dewey

As a teacher, working in a diverse classroom can bring with it some challenges, many of which we have talked about throughout our semester in class. Challenges with parents of the students you are teaching may also arise. When working in this type of community, you will come across a variety of diverse parents, with many different backgrounds, linguistics, etc. This can cause the communication between teacher and parent to be a bit difficult.

I can imagine that parents in a community such as the one that my school is in may have English as their second language or some may not speak much language at all. This can cause the communication to become quite hard to keep. A teacher needs to be able to find ways to communicate to parents in a variety of ways, depending on their background or lifestyle. There are many ways to address these challenges. You could physically show the parents how their child is doing by showing them past work. Showing a parent something a child did in the beginning of the year compared to something at the end of the year could show the parents the growth the child has made while being in the classroom. No matter what the teacher does to communicate, they need to make sure they show respect for the parents. You can not let the parents think that because they are the minority and may be at a disadvantage that you believe you are better than them. That will just build the lack of communication. A teacher needs to show that they do not empower them in any way by speaking and responding effectively to the parents; talk to them as one adult to another, not as a teacher telling them what they need to do better to help their child grow and succeed.

John Dewey speaks about two desirable traits throughout society; those being having a common interest and interaction. A teacher must show the parents that they are not above them, but on the same level. Teachers and parents have many common interests, one being they both want to see the child succeed. Sometimes, however, teachers forget about this commonality between them and just see the diverse culture that is in front of them. A teacher must remember this common interest when collaborating with parents. The other desirable trait, interaction, goes right back to the communication. It is so important to a child’s growth that the parents are involved with what is happening with their schooling. It is just as important to keep ties between parents and the child’s teacher. Without some sort of interaction and a lack of communication, a wall is built up and that is when challenges arise. According to Dewey, no communication leads to no support, by the parents and by the teacher. Dewey says that learning is developmental, and we can not, as teachers, expect this to happen without communication and interaction between communities outside of our own. Education is a social function and teachers must remember that when encountering parents.

Prompt #4 : Delpit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr5Pgf8i2VQ

My experience in my tutoring has really been eye opening. In my high school, there was definitely a majority of white students, probably about 90%. So I’m not exactly used to being in an environment where there are Black and Hispanic as the majority. I was always aware of diversity, but I don’t think I necessarily realized how much different it could be until I started tutoring in this school. Everyone has a bias, whether they like to admit it or not. If you are brought up in a community where there are little to no non-white students, you could develop a bias towards them. It could be the other way around as well.

As a teacher in this classroom, I feel like I would have some challenges. I understand the diversity in the school. It’s just very difficult to take all these children’s different backgrounds and experiences and work them into the lessons. There will sometimes be one or two students that will be unintentionally confused, left out, etc. As a teacher in a classroom such as this one, I would need to be able to do my best to integrate every child’s diversity into whatever type of lesson plan I would be teaching.

As a teacher, we need to be able to recognize the diverse cultural groups that are present in our classroom. Everyone has had different experiences and grown up in different environments. It’s important as a teacher to not only be aware of the diversity in your classroom, but to integrate that and the knowledge you have into what you teach day by day. Lisa Delpit in “The Silenced Dialogue” talks about the culture of power. Basically, she gives five aspects of power then can connect to the role of a teacher and also, the role of the students. As a teacher, Delpit says that you need to be aware of this power to be able to positively integrate other aspects of that into the classroom. There is a “culture of power” in almost every classroom. These are basically codes and rules that go along with this power. Many challenges can arise if a student does not know or understand the culture of power. So if you have a student with a diverse background, they could become lost without knowing the rules or codes, and basically give up all together. The teacher needs to make sure that all the students in the classroom participate in the culture of power so that every student can progress to the best of their ability. If you have a student that does become unaware of the rules, then it’s best to tell the student exactly what the rules are. You can’t expect a student to understand the culture of power if you do not tell them the rules and codes first. It is our job as teachers to take those challenges that come up in the classroom and turn them around into advantages for the students.