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.