Prompt #6: Carlson

The culturally competent teacher communicates in ways that demonstrate sensitivity to sociocultural and linguistic differences, using a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques that encourage positive social interaction and support learning in their classrooom.

* As you might have read in my first official post, the classroom I tutored in was pretty loud. There was certainly a lot of energy in that room! When the teacher needed quiet time, she would either turn the lights on and off once, or put one finger to her mouth in a "shh!" sign and hold the other fist in the air, which was the class' signal to sit and listen. Whoever followed her lead and did the same signal in their seats would get a color change on the board, which is always an appreciated reward. Once all the students were in their seats and quiet, my teacher had several activities that would encourage quiet interaction and learning.

* If quiet time happened closer to the end of the day, my teacher would have the students wind down by reading a book with a buddy or their table group. This gave students the chance of interacting with others and helping eachother with their reading skills. The bookshelves in the class were absolutely full of every kind of book, and when I looked through them one day while my reading buddy was making a selection, I noticed that the characters on the covers of the books represented every culture and race. And even better, I observed that the students in the class did not just read books about their own races or cultures. They appreciated the book for the sotry, not the kind of person it was about... which is how it should be! I thought this was a great example of my teacher demonstrating sensitivity to sociocultural differences while promoting learning of other cultures, as well.

* Another activity students could do during quiet time is sit down on the reading rug as a class and be quizzed with Fun Facts. My teacher had a stack of cards with questions about the capitals of States, animals, math equations, etc. and she would read one out to the class. Whoever guessed it right would get Kennedy Kash, with was fake paper money for the school store. Sometimes the students would have no clue what the answer to a question was, but were amazed when the teacher read out the answer and they had learned something new. The questions were really varied and focused on any part of the world, so the students were always presented with a new piece of information and their learning experience opened up even more. They were learning things together as a class, which also promoted positive social interaction.

* Throughout my whole tutoring experience, I kind of wanted to ask if my teacher had ever read Dennis Carlson before, because it seemed pretty obvious that she had his theories down pat. Carlson, the author of the article "Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community", focused his writing on a "democratic, multicultural community curriculum". This curriculum centered around challenging essentialistic worldviews of fixed meaning and recognizing that students are made up of so many different factors, and helping young people build alliances across these different factors with other students. It is clear that reading time did exactly this, by providing the class with books about all different cultures. This way, students could realize similarities between themselves and children of other races, realizing that race itself doesn't define a person. With Fun Fact time, students learn information about places all over the world, information that anyone can learn, no matter what their race, gender, age, etc. I felt that both situations of quiet time were really opportunities to teach Carlson's multicultural curriculum.

* Overall, this tutoring experience has been amazing! I learned so much from my reading buddies, and it was incredible to watch their progress in their reading skills. This was a great experience for me, and it began to show me what kind of teacher I want to be... definitely a culturally competent one, that's for sure! I want to thank my assigned class for being wonderful to me and all the bloggers out there for sharing and commenting on their experiences, too! Good luck to everyone on the rest of their journey to teaching!

P.S. Really sorry this looks like one giant paragraph, but it won't let me indent or space them.. the paragraphs are there, though!

Prompt #5: John Dewey

The culturally competent teacher involves and works with families and community resources, understanding the differences in families, the important influence of family participation in students' learning, and the benefit of collaborating with the wider school community.

If I were the teacher of this classroom, the main challenge I would face is the linguistic differences and barriers among the students' families. Although all the students in my particular classroom speak English, I have noticed at pick-up time that many parents do not, which might be a problem when trying to collaborate together to talk about their child's progress in school. Another challenge would be that some parents work at different shifts and times, so after-school collaborations may not work for some. Of course, I would want to somehow work out solutions to these problems, because the concerns and contributions of parents are very important to me and communication between teachers and parents is key. So what would some solutions be?

Let's start with the linguistic barriers and differences. Although a solution could be to have the students translate at pick-up time between their parents and I, this might not be such a good idea, as the student might not be so honest about what I am saying, perhaps the parents do not want their child present, or the parents might be offended that I am not trying very hard to collaborate with them. I have noticed at pick-up time, however, that many parents speak Spanish. I took Spanish for four years during high school, and although I am not fluent, I would be comfortable to try to communicate with parents myself until I took some lessons to learn the language better. It would be a good idea for me to take lessons in a particularly popular language spoken in Providence if I were to work in a school in that area. Another solution may be to have a bilingual teacher present at pick-up time to help the parents and I understand eachother. Having another authority figure present would seem more respectful than having a student translate.

Being involved with parents and the community is essential for culturally competent teachers. Yet, as I have said before, this can be hard when parents work at different times during the day. That is why, to be sure that anyone could be involved, I would have Parent-Teacher Conferences and meetings at all different times throughout the year to be sure that a parent could make it. For example, I might have a conference at any time between 3 and 8 PM. To show that parents' contributions are important, too, I think it would be really fun to have a Parent Day, when parents can come and show the class what they do for jobs, or lead a fun craft or story time. It would be great to have a Culture Day, when parents and their children could bring in a snack or craft that represents their culture or family. This would involve parents in their children's education and show the interesting differences between different cultures and families in the class.

As John Dewey, author of the article, "The Democratic Conception in Education", wrote, there are many different societies out there, and communication and mutual interests are key factors in forming a society. He also argued that, unless people share the same experiences, they will have a hard time relating to eachother, and cliques or classes may form. I know that my classroom would contain many little societies of different ideas and cultural backgrounds. To involve the entire classroom in the community, I would have a fieldtrip once a month or so, for which, each student can write a story about a certain community service activity they have done before, and the whole class can vote on which one they would like to do for that month. Activities could be: working at a soup kitchen, having a winter clothing donation, or working at an animal shelter. This will give the entire class the same opportunity to share the same experience and maybe see a side of the community they have never seen before. This will open up communication between students, since they are all experiencing the same thing and becoming involved in the wider community.

Dewey said that, when different viewpoints come together, isolating barriers are broken down. That is why it is so important for culturally competent teachers to break linguistic and cultural barriers down by acknowledging the contributions and concerns of parents and including them in their teachings. Students come from all different backgrounds, and they should know where everyone else is coming from.

Prompt #4: Allan Johnson

The culturally competent teacher is aware of the diverse cultural groups represented in his/her classroom, investigates the sociocultural factors that influence student learning, and is able to integrate this knowledge into his/her teaching.

If Allan Johnson ever visited Scituate High School, he would be shocked. As author of the articles, "Our House is on Fire" and "Who, Me?", both of which concern diversity and social systems, if he took one look around my high school, all he would see is residential segregation and a huge population of students belonging to the system of privilege. That is because almost every student going to my old high school is white and typically comes from middle class families. And that is seriously not a generalization. Scituate is an incredibly rural town with cute, country houses that come with a hefty pricetag. But this is where I grew up, it is my personal history and, consequentially, might provide a challenge for myself as a teacher in a classroom. To be quite honest, tutoring at my school this semester was the first time I had stepped into a classroom that had more African American students than it did white students. It worried me for quite some time that I may not be able to relate to a diverse classroom as a teacher, but, thanks to Johnson, I have an idea of how to handle the situation and maybe change it, too.

A common misconception country bumpkins sometimes have about non-white, city students, is that they are tough, "gangster", unkind or bad students. I certainly do not agree with this viewpoint, but it does exist. Yet, as Johnson argues, these associations only exist because non-white, city students do not appear to fit into the definition of the "dominant category" [white, country students] and therefore are illegible for the system of privilege. And by system of privilege, I am refering to "a social advantage that is both unearned and comes to people simply because they happen to belong to a particular social category". So in Scituate, while white students, born and raised in Scituate, have the privilege of being treated politely by some teachers and trusted by other locals, non-white, city students in this school system might not share this advantage.

Yet a culturally competent teacher would be aware that such systems exist and would work to fight against them. As long as the systems of privilege exist, it will have a positive influence on some students' learning and a negative influence on others. So how would a teacher fight such systems? After a few weeks or so of tutoring, I noticed that, once the bell rang at the end of the day on Friday, several students would run over to my literary coach's room. I soon learned that, on every Friday, my literary coach hosts a reading and snack time for students after school. There is a bus that takes students back home afterwards. This is an example of a teacher who has recognized a sociocultural factor, such as: some students may have working parents who are not able to pick them up after school, and has integrated this knowledge AND fought the system of privilege simultaneously by providing busing so that any student could go! Now any student has the opportunity to continue their learning after school and this opportunity does not depend on any sociocultural factor. I believe Johnson would give a round of applause to that.

After tutoring at my school, I have witnessed several teachers who are clearly aware of the sociocultural factors affecting their students' learning. That, and reading Allan Johnson, has really provided me with the encouragement I needed to realize that I will be able to handle a diverse classroom, no matter my personal history. Yes, there will be challenges, of course, but all I need to keep in mind is that, in the long run, every student is simply a student. It is society that has marked each student of a different race with different privileges and stereotypes. And as we work towards fighting these set systems of privilege, we will, as teachers, become culturally competent.

Prompt #3: Goldenberg

The culturally competent teacher should be able to use a variety of assessment techniques appropriate to diverse learners and accomodate sociocultural differences that affect learning.

A few weeks ago, after I finished reading with my reading buddies, my assigned teacher was giving a spelling test to the class. All the words were grouped around the letters "-eam" and "-ean". One of the words on the list was "stream". There was silence throughout the classroom [quite a rare occasion] after the teacher had announced the word and I saw confusion on a couple of students' faces. Then one boy called out, "What's a stream?" Several other students questioned likewise. The teacher replied by saying, "Like a river... you know, a small body of flowing water." Some nodded their heads while others clearly did not understand but were too focused on spelling the word correctly. As for myself, I stood there, slightly shocked that a second grader did not know what a stream was. And then I remembered I was in a Providence school, and the chances of one of these students seeing a stream in their everyday life was most likely small. Growing up in a small, rural town, by elementary school I was well aware of rural-like terms, such as stream. I had never thought that certain words may not be as frequently used in an urban setting until that spelling test day.

In FNED, we are learning that, as teachers, we will have to take into account many factors and positions that makes up a student in our classroom. Whether these factors are lingual, ethnic, sociocultural or setting, they each shape the student and affect their performance on different assessments. For example, a student who lives in the city and has never heard the word "stream" before might have a difficult time spelling it correctly. On another level, a student who primarily speaks Spanish may have a difficult time on a spelling test in English. That is why teachers should use a variety of assessment techniques appropriate to the diversity in the classroom. On a future spelling test, my teacher may decide to use words that are oriented around the city, such as: sidewalk, block, taxi, etc. Or a teacher in a classroom with Spanish speaking students may use spelling words that are found in their culture. Each are examples of a culturally competent teacher who is paying attention to the differences that make up a student body.

I believe this prompt and lesson on culturally competent teachers strongly connects to the theorist Claude Goldenberg, who wrote an article entitled, "Teaching English Language Learners". In this article, Goldenberg discusses different techniques on how to teach children who are in the process of learning English because it is a second language. He specifically wrote about "transferring", a process by which, if a student has learned something in one native language, it can be easily learned in another language, because the knowledge is already present in some form.

Personally, as a VIPS tutor I work with two students who primarily speak English, and I have not had much of an opportunity to work with any students in the class who do not. So I am going to apply Goldenberg's lesson on transferring to my example. Think of rural and urban settings as two different "languages". If a student from the city knows the widely-used word "river", a teacher could transfer the knowledge of what a "river" is to the lesser-used word "stream"- stream being something found in a rural language. Goldenberg also dissused a process of "scaffolding", in which a teacher gradually introduces something to a student. A teacher in a city school might gradually introduce words found in other settings into a city-set curriculum, in order to introduce their students to a variety of spelling words.

Literal language barriers do not always have to be the factor that sets students apart; students may also be diverse in their ethnic "language" or cultural "language". It all depends on certain techniques a teacher uses to take these factors into account.

Prompt #2: Lisa Delpit

The culturally competent teacher should be able to account for, demonstrate awareness of, and resond to the sociocultural distinctiveness of her or his students, families, and communities when planning for and delivering instruction.

During the past few weeks of my service learning, I have noted the linguistic, ethnic and sociocultural characteristics of the students in the classroom in which I am tutoring. As I mentioned in my first post, a little more than half of the students in my assigned classroom are African American, with 4 white students, 5 Hispanic students and about 2 Asian students, as well. I have not had an opportunity to speak with all the children, but those that I have spoken with primarily speak English. I further researched student characteristics for my particular school on Infoworks and found that 35% of all the students are white, 33% are Hispanic, 26% are African American, 5% Asian and 2% Native American. According to the site, 68% of the school's children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, which coincides with the ethnicity statistics. A whopping 100% of the students do not receive bilingual educational services.

The children in my assigned classroom are obviously coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. They each have their own set of ideas about family, behavior, attitude towards school and even what to wear to school. I noticed [and I am not sure if this was done on purpose or not] that the teacher has set up groups of desks in the classroom, in which students from each racial and ethnic group can be found. I feel this is a great way to get the students to share their ideas and ways of thinking with eachother. On another level, the set up of the classroom may be an important lesson: when students from all different backgrounds are together in a group, one background isn't pushed to the side and ignored. Instead, everyone is given an equal opportunity to work together and get to know one another.

Although my service learning time slot ends at 3:00, I walk out with the students and the teacher, after one day when a reading buddy asked me to say hi to her mom. While out in the parking lot surrounded by a sea of parents and students, I noticed that many of the parents do not speak English. My teacher reports behavior to parents at the end of the day, and takes this language barrier into account by bringing along with her the color slots she uses to represent good and bad behavior in the classroom. When telling one parent, who only spoke Spanish, the particularly bad behavior of her son that day, my teacher held up the red slot and the mother got the idea [unfortunately for her son].

That moment in the parking lot reminded me of theorist Lisa Delpit, who discussed in her article, "The Silenced Dialogue", the importance of explicitly teaching the rules and codes of a particular society in order for an individual to gain power. By reporting to a parent the good or bad behavior of her students, my teacher is allowing the parents an opportunity to discuss with their children what is and what is not expected in the classroom society. Therefore, the children can learn from their behavior what is acceptable, so they may have good behavior in the future and do well in class. When the students do well in class after class, furthering their education, they are gaining power in the education society. And when all students in a class understand what behavior is acceptable, the society will be strengthened in a positive way. Obviously, good behavior means uninterrupted, smoother lessons during the day, which everyone, including the teacher, can benefit from.

Prompt #1

For the VIPS Program, I am tutoring two second grade students in reading fluency. I have visited the elementary school three times so far, and each time I feel a little less nervous than the last. I must admit, on my way to the school on my first visit, I was so anxious, my hands kept shaking! However, once I saw the school and was greeted by the administration, my worries shrunk a little...

To begin with, the neighborhood in which the school is located is quite friendly, quiet, with closely-knit houses and not too much traffic. The school itself is simply a small rectangle in a small parking lot. I was a little surprised to notice there was no playground. I haven't seen much of the school itself besides the office and two classrooms, so it is a little difficult to describe the space and structure of the school. What I can explain is that, beyond the main office, there are several younger classes in one hallway, separated by two main doors that lead to more classrooms and the gym. This makes sense to me, because the younger classes tend to make the most noise, and a little separation might stop the noise from leaking into other classrooms.

One of the first things I noticed while walking to my classroom was a painting in the hallway of two smiling children, one white and one black, with a sign over their heads that says something about acceptance. This really explained that the school values diversity.

When walking in to the classroom I tutor in, the first thing that hits me each time is... the noise. The students are running around, stepping on each other's books, and there is always a guaranteed fight. The teacher explained to me on the first day that, when I arrive, the students are in "transition" time, transitioning from one activity to another, which explains the craziness. The teacher always seems like she's running around trying to control the class with her voice. The class is semi-diverse, with 4 white students, several hispanic students, 2 asian students, and the rest are black students. The classroom is set up so there is a rug for reading time, a half-circle for science experiments, and three groups of desks, with some desks around the teacher's, which is set off at one side of the room. I like this set-up, because each part of the room has a particular purpose and feel. Besides the set-up, the classroom looks fairly old. The windows are made of gigantic slabs of wood that look practically antique. Yet the teacher makes the room look fun; there are posters and alphabet lists hanigng up all around the room.

It is clear that good behavior is valued in this classroom. Behind the teacher's desk is a board with an envelope for every student in the class. In the envelope is either a green [good behavior], yellow [warned once], orange [warned twice] or red [bad behavior] slip of paper.

Overall, I do like the school I am in tutoring in. I discovered I had nothing to be really anxious about after all and it is a great place and opportunity for me to gain experience in a classroom.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Alaina Carnevale. I'm 18 years old and an El-Ed major, concentrating in Special Education. This is my second semester as a freshman in college, and so far it's going pretty well. I like all the classes I'm taking right now, but finding time to study and do homework is a little tricky. When I'm not in classes, I tutor [besides VIPS], am the secretary of the F.E.E.T. club [you should join in you're an elementary ed/early childhood future teacher!], give campus tours and work at Panera Bread on weekends. When I'm not in class or doing outside-of-school things, I love watching movies with my roomie and making midnight-snack road trips to Taco Bell.