Blog #8: Rodriguez and Clinical Observation

Richard Rodrigeuz speaks on a central point in his texts. He describes becoming billingual as almost a bad thing. His whole point is that there are two, or maybe more than that, ways of teaching students in schools when it comes to language barriers. I think that students learning a second language is absolutely crucial to their development, and it should be mandated in schools. However, his take on the matter seems a bit extreme. 

To claim that his family was torn apart (to some degree) by having to learn a second language is a bit dramatic. What did he expect to happen when he came to America? That would be like me going to Italy and expect their school systems to start teaching in English because it would have made me feel, "...less afraid. I would have trusted them and responded with ease". He makes it sound like it's a bad thing. 

While I agree there is a time and a place to speak one's native language in school, I think that it's more important to learn the language of the country that you are presently in. For instance, I'm currently studying French because it's a dominant part of my heritage, and because I would like to visit French speaking countries in the future. So, I haven't gone to any of those countries yet because I cannot speak their language yet. To me, it's disrespectful to go into someone else's home and expect them to bend to your will. 

I'm not saying that he believes that, but to me that is the message that was conveyed. He did, however, bring up a very good point in the beginning of the reading. He states that his classmates in first grade could have become billingual easier than him. I can't speak to whether or not they would have had it easier, but I can say that children are much more susceptible to learning a language when they're young. This is because the brain is still heavily developing, so it is open to more things. The older you get, the less open you brain becomes. This is why it is so difficult to learn a language as an adult. 

I don't believe that he wrote those texts with malintent behind them. To me though, it just seems a bit dramatic for the scenario that he is describing. 

School Observation:

I have been working with a second grade class at Frank D. Spaziano Elementary school. For the most part it has been quite educational for me. There are a couple stragglers in each class, but out of roughly 45 or so students, that's not too bad. I help with two classes technically. Since the school I'm at is ESL, my class gets switched between English and Spanish throughout the day.

The hardest part is helping the kids that speak little to know English. I try to use my phone to help translate, but some of these kids are totally lost, which isn't their fault. Most of the kids can speak good English, which helps me tremendously. 

There isn't a whole lot more to say. Working with elementary school students wasn't my first choice, but I have definitely learned a lot these past several weeks doing it. These kids are completely innocent for the most part, so I've learned how susceptible they are to any mannerisms that we may give off. I also know now how hard it really is teaching elementary school, so I have a newfound appreciate for elementary school teachers. 

Blog #7: Video, Oakes, and Finn

Between the video and the two readings there is one central idea: grouping students by their "ability" can be detrimental to their future instead of beneficial. 

In the video many students are interviewed and questioned about the idea of advanced placement, honors, and regular classes in their school. The school had tried a new system in which the students were allowed to go against the better wishes of their teachers' recommendations as to what class they should be placed into. 

As a direct result, these students chose where they wanted to be, and in turn had their own successes and failures. For the most part, the students did very well. Towards the end of the video, one of the teachers mentioned the fact that a parent had complimented a student by saying that they were very bright. Little did this parent know that that student had previously been labeled as special needs. The video is a great representation of the idea that there is more than what meets the eye.

The two articles supported the same theme. While I do agree that "tracking" or grouped placements for students can often be biased, I will add my personal account on the matter. 

When I was in high school, I struggled in 9th grade English. I opted to take an honors English the following year, and I did well. This was partly due to the teacher, as she was known to be a little less harsh than others. However, after that year (10th grade English), my teacher did not recommend that I take another honors class. 

When I got into my 11th grade college prep English, which was the standard class, not honors, I was immediately bombarded with work. To this day it was the hardest English/literature class that I have ever taken. My point behind this is that that class was a CP class that my former teacher had recommend I take. So while sometimes it may be good for students to branch out and challenge themselves, other times it's a good idea to take into account what the teacher has recorded for notes on that student and go from there. 

Here is an article that I found supporting the claim of the video and the two articles: 

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/getting-children-off-the-track/ 

Blog #6: Kohn and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Our classrooms are a respresentation of us: what we like, how we think, or even how we function outside of our classroom. 

The guidelines that Kohn gives in his document are just that; guidelines. Though most of them are good, some are subjective. For instance, one of his guidelines states that "Textbooks, worksheets, and other packaged instructional materials predominate; sense of enforced orederliness" is a red flag for classrooms. He also states "Room overflowing with good books, art supplies, animals and plants, science apparatus; sense of purposeful clutter" is a good thing to see in a classroom. While too much of both can be seen as a bad thing, I believe that it is a subjective matter. You wouldn't expect to see art supplies or animals and plants in a high school classroom. Alternatively, you wouldn't expect to see a bunch of textbooks, worksheets, or heavy educational material in an American elementary school classroom. This is why I believe the guidelines, while made with good intention, are subjective to the environment that they are placed in.

The video on culturally relevant pedagogy approaches the matter from the elementary level. A nice quote that I liked was, "sutdents approach learning not as cultural blank slates". The narrator then explains that sutdents already have their own background to build off of. Most schools use the "one size fits all" method as the narrator explained. This could be detrimental to students because not every student will learn the same way. Looking back to "Precious Knowledge", those students were given a Chicano studies class. Before the class, the drop out rate was over 50%, and the graduation rate was terrible. The students felt like they didn't belong, and that the school didn't care for them. After the class, however, those rates started to change. Less students were dropping out, and in turn more were graduating. This shows a direct correlation with students who learn with the influence from their cultures did better than those without. 

Troublemakers in the Classroom: School Observation

Prompt: Describe one child in your school placement who might be one of the troublemakers described by Shalaby. Be as descriptive as you can be. Describe the child. Describe interactions that have occurred in the classrom and with the teacher and others in the school.

 

As I've observed and interacted with more students in my classroom over the past several weeks, it has been hard to notice any true "troublemakers". Most of the students in both classes (they since from Spanish into English so there are two classes) cooperate and are willing to learn. There are a couple that tend to stick out more than the others, but to pick one student out from the rest is difficult. 

In my observation this past week, I worked with two students who couldn't speak any English. I tried my best to communicate with them and do the basic reading and speaking comprehension, but I wasn't getting through to them. Eventually I had to ask for one of the other students to come in and help me with translating. However, even when that student came in to help, the students I was working with just wouldn't listen. 

Choosing one of those two students, I will go with the student named Bella. From my first day there my teacher had warned me that she was very unfocused, easily distracted, and was difficult to keep on task. After working with her first hand, I unfortunately have to agree with that statement. I know that it's easy to put the ADHD label on students, but with her I genuinely think she has a type of attention deficit disorder. She wouldn't stop laughing, even when no one was saying anything. When I had the other student in there to help me translate, he had difficulty because she just kept saying things that either didn't translate well or just didn't make sense to him.

No matter what I did, I couldn't keep her attention for more than a couple of seconds. I understand that this is a second grade classroom. However, just that morning I worked with a different non-English speaker and he did fantastic. He was focused, stayed on task, and seemed like he really wanted to be there and learn. 

With this, it was incredibly difficult to keep the other student that I was helping (not the translator) on task. This is due in part to the fact that he never had any formal schooling from where he came from, so to this day he had only had a couple of months of formal education. That made it difficult enough, but with the added distraction of this other student, I found myself feeling frustrated and dismayed. I had never felt that way up to that point, so leaving school that day I was a little disappointed. 

That being said, I know that I tried my hardest to work with these students, and I will continue to do so because it is my duty as a future educator to provide these students with the best education that I can, regardless of their previous educational backgrounds. 

Blog Post #5: Troublemakers and Changing Educational Paradigms

After watching the video and reading the texts, one thing is abundantly clear to me: there must be a shift in the educational standards in the pursuit of the best education for our students. Within the first 60 seconds of the video, for instance, the narrator states that years ago a college degree was generally the best course of action for students as it was most likely to lead to employment. Now, a college degree, while still not a bad thing, is incredibly subjective, and much less sought after. 

Throughout the rest of the video, the narrator covers topics like education being a money game, schools being organized like "factory lines", and even drugging our children through their educational experience. 

Personally, I'm inclinded to agree with all of these claim. ADHD is skyrocketing at an alarming rate in schools K-12. According to studies conducted through the NIH, ADHD rates have risen from 6.1% to 10.2% from 1996 to 2016, just 20 years. There is speculation about why this is happening, but that's not the purpose of this post. With these numbers, more and more children are being prescribed medications such as adderall to "stop" their attention deficiencies. For some children this medication could be good for them, while for others it can be detrimental. The struggle that we're in is finding a proper way to teach kids who struggle with attention disorders WITHOUT having to medicate them. 

In addition to this, schools are very much organized like factories. We have bells to signal when lunch is or when school is over, some schools have uniform requirements, and as a whole, school is taking away the imagination from our students. 

There's a fine line between self expression and being inappropriate, and I think that's where a lot of schools today get messed up, because they can't see the difference. I've seen this first hand at my own schools growing up, kids not being allowed to wear certain things or act a certain way because it doesn't fit the narrative. I'm not talking about dressing inappropriately or cussing, I'm talking about, perhaps, cultural affects or trying to make light of certain lectures and teachings during class. Teachers often times, and those above them, will try to silence students who don't match the "norm", which could harm kids because now they have it in their heads that what they did was "wrong" even though it probably wasn't 

At the end of the day, it's our job to look after our students and make sure that they're getting the best education possible while ALSO keeping their imaginations alive and well so that they can use them in the future to help them better succeed. It's not our job to make robots, it's our job to make success stories. 

Here's a link to an article I found supporting the ADHD statistics previously mentioned:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9616454/#:~:text=The%20past%20couple%20of%20decades,the%20causes%20for%20this%20trend.