Prompt 4 and Delpit

When I first entered my service learning school I thrown into a lot of different experiences I have never had before, meeting a bunch of third grades, worrying even within my last visits if I know enough to help these students among many other things. I tried to take note of the diversity of the classroom but I was constantly busy working with individuals. I think it was because I was thrown into something totally new that may experience in a different cultural group didn’t really take on the meaning it might have. I myself can be considered a cultural group of power, meaning white, middle class, able person, as Lisa Delpit would describe. The students in my classroom are mainly not of the class of power, being of minority race, usually lower class and some disabled (being in an inclusion class). Even though I did not immediately notice that I was one with cultural power over the students, I did actively try to learn from as well as teach the students I was helping. By working with students of all races one on one I was able to free some of my bias expectations, like that all the children with cornrows would have a destructive attitude and that all children with a disability will need constant help. Both of my own stereotyping of children have been broken, all the students I have helped are always courteous and try to be attentive, and I have been sometimes amazed by how much the students know, not only the material that they are being taught but just life knowledge and understanding. With all this insight I now can identify with students on many levels besides the race, age and economic background. (Even though by this time in the semester they probably have more money in their piggy banks then I do in my checking account.)

Cartoon of Delpit's description of power, how white are innocent until proven guitly while minority races have to prove thier innocents.

Delpit discusses the “Silenced Dialogue” which is the absence of discussion about how different students need different teaching methods to learn, and that the majorities of white moderate teachers do not really listen and believe that this is true. This may be what is happening in my service learning classroom, not with the main two teachers but with the teacher aid, she has previously said to me how well her own children succeeded in homeschooling while the children in this classroom are lazy and waste time watching TV, while in my own experience I have seen all the children work with their upmost ability, granted a few have good and bad days. I believe the teacher’s aid could be projecting her, self frustration and previously constructed idea onto the students, almost setting them up to fail to her expectations, which I feel is strongly unfair. I do understand how this could happen, if you do go into an environment with set ideas and a few instances happen to sustain these ideas, one could not have an open mind to assess the situated actually present. Delpit says this in one of her 5 aspects of power “Those with power are frequently least aware of it or least willing to acknowledge its existence” which goes along with the fact that “ those with less power are often most aware of its existence” myself and the students have less power than the teacher aid as we are able to identify her misuse of power, even little first grade who were in our classroom on day were talking amongst each other how “that lady is a meany pants” after the teacher aid scolded them for being there, when they were supposed to be sitting. By no means is coming into a new setting without bias possible, everyone comes from somewhere and no one comes from nowhere, to quote my professor, yet it is very possible to keep an open mind about your new environment and situation, to once again mention Delpit to be a teacher who allows flow of idea, and to give power to students by “being told explicitly the rules of that culture” in order to succeed in the classroom and in life.

Prompt 5 and Dewey

In my classroom parent involvement would seem to be essential, with the number of special needs children, the few English Language Learners and attention to the rest of the 3rd grade class. I know that each student has a paper in their homework folder that their parents sign every night. I asked one of the teachers in my classroom if they meet periodically with the special need student’s parents, her answer was no, but that she has journals passed back and forth between the teacher and parent and that one of the parents does very well with it, writing, commenting , warning sometimes if the student had a bad weekend, but with the other student the teacher said she hasn’t seen the journal in two weeks, and when it does arrive there will be just an “ok” written across it. Parent involvement is requested by teachers but not always taken by the parents. Not to say the parents are to blame though, there may be many reasons a parent would not respond. This is one of the many difficulties a teacher would face, not only uninvolved students but parents who don’t speak English fluently and may be embarrassed or parents who feel their lack of education means that they cannot help their children in their learning. It would be a teacher’s responsibility to make the parents feel welcomed and needed. The other involvement with parents I see in the classroom is as a punishment. One girl Taya who week depending will be a sweetheart or a drama queen, is constantly threaten to have her mom called when she acts out, not to say this isn’t an appropriate action, I believe it is, just as another example of parent involvement. A positive interaction I see within the school and the community is the basketball program at the school, on the last day I was there; all the students in the school along with any parents and volunteers were invited to watch quick games between all the teams made from the school. My school also has many fundraisers not only for the school benefit, but they had a “Pennies for Patients” drive and a fundraiser for relief after the Haiti earthquake. Showing a sense of community that expands out into the world and is featured in the school.



John Dewey’s article focuses on the relationships between social groups. Social groups are made of people with common interest and common ideals. The students in my classroom are a social group, caring about their own lives and interacting with others, like the group for Pennies for Patients. Schooling as a whole is a process of “extract(ing) the, desirable traits of forms of community life, and employ them to criticize undesirable traits and suggest improvement” meaning that in a classroom each students bring different traits from their home community and incorporate and change them to traits illustrated in the classroom . For communities to interact they need to do just that, communicate, connect between each other. It is a teacher’s job to start this communication between his or herself and between the students. Such a activity could be the class drawing up the classroom rules. With this example students can see what other students have experienced before, and from it learn and grow from the experience, what Dewey says “bring(s) peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connections with one another” going back to the teachers role, a teacher can also bring parents into the classroom and find similarities with them to make connections and strengthen the school community.

Back in Action!

All may read and critize my three blogs
I know that prompt 1 and 3 both relate to Shor, I decided to keep it like that and I plan to make a connection to different theorist in every one of my post.

Enjoy as much as you can!

meh. During the next week I'll be revising probably all my posts, somehow I missed that I had already connected one to Ira Shor. Ill post another post when I'm done with these revisions

In the meanwhile since you took time to visit this blog heres some amusing things

prompt 3 and shor

My classroom is diverse on many level, race, ability, and to some extent on economic background. But so far I have seen little addressing by the teachers to this fact.
While observing a math lesson, one in which the students were first introduced to mix numbers, as in a whole number and a fraction. The teacher used to example of shoe sizes as a model for when mixed numbers appear in real life applications. This example is claiming that the students know about half sizes in shoes and watching the students many appeared to not have this knowledge. Truly I cannot say I knew my shoe size in 3rd grade, usually my shoes were brought by my mom and I just wore them. This knowledge may be unknown also because students don’t have the luxury to go to stores to try on a lot of sizes where they may be introduced. Not that this example of shoes sizes is necessarily a bad example, but this is the only example the teacher gave of mixed numbers. If a student didn’t understand this example then the whole concept of mixed numbers may be lost to them. This idea is also explored by Ira Shor saying that by not understanding an example or being consisted put down or unheard results in “negative emotions; self doubt, hostility, resentment, boredom, indignation…” This could be seen in the classroom as students tried applying what they were taught, or not taught, to a worksheet. Shor quotes McLaren in saying that “the process through which children learn to critically appropriate knowledge existing outside their immediate experience in order to broaden their understanding” Breaking down to meaning you need to acquire what the students know and from there apply the lesson being taught. A better way to introduce a lesson on mix numbers would be what examples can the student think of for mix numbers, after accepting a few, a teacher should be able to give multiply examples trying to give every student full understanding of the concept.



About the video
I like what the first man Darrell Brown, shares his experience from being in both low and high income schools, saying that in both setting students have the same hunger, same passion and ability for growth. Yet thier growth is limited by their economic mean, Kozol had worked and advocated to close the gap between both races and classes. This connects with the prompt in saying that the needs are the same, but teachers need to be able to address lessons in different ways. Patricia Gomez says that her elementary students tend to ask many questions, a trait I sadly see little of in my classroom, whether this is from understanding of the lesson or if the will of the student to ask questions have been diminished already by the 3rd grade. Other parts of the video since it’s a voluterring orientation video have little connection to the prompt.