Question 6

The school I had been placed in during my VIPS experience was extremely diverse but the white students were definitely the minority. Also, most of the teachers were of white descent and had few colored teachers. This seems to be the case with most urban schools in American. The majority of teachers are white who are teaching a majority of diverse children. I think it is very important to be sensitive to their sociocultural and linguistic differences. My classroom teacher did not speak another language other than English but she was from a nonwhite background. I think her being a Hispanic person helped her students relate to her, some of who were of the same background. Also, some of these students had another language as their primary language. The teacher in the class I was in had taken extra time in explaining the foundations of reading and writing in English. She also focused heavily on phonics and phoneme to help build confidence in their speech and spelling. However, I had never heard any of the students speak Spanish during or after class which made me think that it was not allowed. At this time I was not aware of the studies and fining of Claude Goldenburg and other researchers that found evidence that students who speak in their first language help them in learning English. I think this might have helped the student get a better understanding of how proper English worked. However, this teacher was very understanding and patient with the students and worked on repetition until they had mastered the subject of English they had been covering. The teacher I had been observing also sometimes asked the students to share experiences about their own culture and language but did not speak their primary language on a regular basis. This class was not a critically thinking classroom because the teacher did not want to use that approach in her English class. I will give this teacher credit because these children were three to four years behind in their English but she had made significant progress with most students in the few classes I attended. The students in this class were also required to repeat words and phrases that helped in spelling and sentence structure. She gave rewards for those who participated by giving out grades for that area each class. This made the class a little more incentive to give more input to the class exercises. The teacher and I had wanted the students to answer the questions on their own or in groups but still provided guiding tools for them. The teacher had great respect for these students and their parents by keeping her goals and expectations clear and consistent through out the whole time I was there. This would help the students understand what they had to do on a day to day basis and would contribute to their success. I will again state that I think using their primary language to learn English would help these students excel at a higher rate because of evidence uncovered by Goldenburg. Hopefully this teacher will adopt this type of teaching in the future.

question 5

Being a teacher and working with the community and the student’s parents would always bring challenges and obstacles. I think it would be no different being a culturally competent teacher in regard to the number of complex challenges facing a teacher. However, I think some of these challenges would be different for a family coming from a different culture than that of a white, English speaking family. I think that some of the challenges facing the culturally competent teacher would be that there could be a language barrier that would hinder progress of constructive discussions. This could be avoided by having a person in their community present that speaks both languages to eliminate any frustrations. Another challenge with these parents could be that they disagree with the quality or quantity of work these children are doing because they want their kids to have more timing doing something that their own culture demands. One example is a student from a Muslim family would have to take more time out of their day for religious practices or even that something in the curriculum interfers with their religious beliefs. This would be difficult to deal with but I think that if the parents are told that their children’s future depends on their education being completed at a high level they might be able to make certain exceptions to rules or religious beliefs. In this area of religious or cultural beliefs, respect must be kept in order to maintain the students and their parents trust. In the class that I observed the teacher had numerous meetings with parents of students in the classroom. My teacher had invested a lot of hours in informing the parents of their students progress and explaining to them how important it was to keep them on pace and focused. This teacher also told me that some of the parents would never show up to discuss their children’s fate in the school system which brought on more challenges. In addition, she told me that many of her students had parents that did not speak much English or understand how the school system worked. This brings me to my next point, which is that many parents of diverse cultures are not aware of what Lisa Delpit calls the culture of power. These parents in diverse schools do not know the rules of the school system and as a result can not participate in the decisions being made by the government and schools. In addition, they can not understand why certain decisions are being made for their children. A majority of the children I had worked with in my class had parents that were from another country or their parents were only the second generation in this country. As a result, these parents are new to this culture and find it difficult to learn the rules and guidelines of a white dominate culture. Deplit believes that this unknown knowledge, about schools in particular, is not transferred to people of other cultures properly and leads to them becoming marginalized. I agree with Deplit who wants the culture of power taught to everyone who is from different culture but also, more importantly have schools and society change so that the dominate culture of power is eliminated and replaced by a fair balanced approach to schooling. I think that this would be the biggest challenge when reaching out to parents in a diverse school. However, I also think it is the most important because everyone needs to understand the rules before participating in changing a system. They need to understand that white teachers have a different approach to teaching teacher than a diverse parent teaching their children. I think that this is the greatest sign of respect, when a culturally competent teacher explains what the status quo is in the school system. This knowledge is important for these parents to have a chance in changing the system to benefit everyone, including the currently marginalized. This could also show that the teacher wants the family and community of the students to be proactive in their young childrens education.

Question 4

I think this question is very important for every potential teacher to answer and to be honest to themselves and their students, so that those teachers can understand why their students might think differently. It is essential that teachers and upcoming teachers need to recognize their backgrounds and how they might differ from their students because it will help the students understand material easier and the teacher can also learn from the students. In regard to my own personal background and history it will be a challenge to understand where some of my future students will be coming from. Since I want to be in an urban, diverse school my upper middle class, white, Christian background will be different from many of my students. I believe that if I want to be an effective teacher in a diverse school like this I would have to confront the white privilege that has taken root in our school system since the beginning of public schooling. Here, I agree with Alan Johnson and his argument that teachers and administrators must change the system to champion diversity, celebrate difference, and promote tolerance. As a white teacher it could be easy to just fall into the status quo but I feel that it is essential to follow a strategy like Johnson explains in “Our house is on fire”. The teacher that I had examined and worked with in my VIPS classroom was of Hispanic dissent which gave her a different perspective then mine because we had different cultural backgrounds. In that class there had been no white children but a variety of other cultures that I had not faced in my own high school. Being in this class had let me see that these children, that were in an inner-city school, were just as smart and able to learn as anyone in my other schools, in which there was no diversity. There are many myths about urban, diverse schools that I am happy to have dismissed myself through this experience. Just as Johnson had stated, I felt that the system of white privileged was more the problem in this school than the children’s capabilities. What I mean by this is that people of color are not considered when school or curriculum related decisions are being made. Since our society has been dominated by a white presence in positions of power the diverse population is overlooked and underprepared for schooling and life after school. As a future teacher I want to give every student the chance to succeed at a high level no matter what their background or skin color. As a result, I would fight the status quo, lined with white privilege, and try to make positive changes helping the school system evolve. I was able to be in the classroom when the ten students had taken their standardize tests and what I saw really shocked me. The students were confused and frustrated because they had not been prepared for the test. What I mean is that the students were not given proper guidance through their academic life to absorb the proper skills they need to be successful on the test. The teacher of the class told me she saw the same thing every year in her extremely diverse classrooms and it had nothing to do with their intelligence or effort level. These tests are flawed in their design to accompany all cultural backgrounds and learning skills. The students in the class had been passed up through each grade without additional help or understanding that these kids had come from a different background then most of their white teachers. I was really surprised at how many misconceptions that this one class had let me unwrap and find the truth under the grossly misunderstood system.