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.