Prompt #4 and Johnson

No one enters a classroom without a personal history; thus, no one enters a classroom completely free of bias. The more I attend the school which I volunteer at, the more I realize how true this is. Where I come from, the town I grew up in and the school that I went to, although only 45 minutes away, seems to be a totally different world. Every time I visit, I add one more thing to my list of what sets the two schools apart. No matter where I end up teaching, my personal history or sociocultural characteristics will intersect with those of my students. This may occur in a variety of ways. The most obvious way that this may occur would be through our differences in language.


If I were to teach at a school like the one I currently volunteer at, I would be teaching students who speak a primary language that is different from my own, and it would most likely be Spanish. A difference in language would obviously bring up many conflicts, of course as the student’s age, they will become more comfortable with English but that is not to dismiss the fact that issues in the communication between an English speaking teacher and an ESL student will be completely diminished.

As a teacher in a classroom filled with many different backgrounds and cultures I don’t think that I would have any sort of advantage, but rather I’d like to think of it as an environment where everyone, student and teacher alike, would have something to contribute and teach to the other members of the community within the classroom.

I would never say that because I will be a teacher with an English speaking background, coming from a predominantly white town with a predominantly white school, I am better than my student who may come from a non-English speaking background, and a predominantly non-white town with a predominantly non-white school. To fight and not be willing to accept the differences I may come across with my students, would get me nowhere. Of course challenges will arise, but don’t all differences cause some sort of challenge? It would be naïve to think that I will never encounter an issue with a student caused by our different backgrounds- it will just become a matter of learning to make it work.

During this experience so far there is one misconception which I have come across. Up until not too long ago, I assumed that a student who spoke more than one language, for example Spanish and English, would first of all speak English second to the other language, and secondly would struggle with reading compared to a student who is white. But I learned that just because a student speaks two languages, it does not mean that they speak English as a second language. Perhaps their parents were born elsewhere and hey speak Spanish primarily, but then gave birth to their child in the United States who has grown up speaking English. Furthermore, I learned that just because students are bilingual, it does not mean that they will not read English just as well, or better than, a white student.

It can be said that the ideas and concepts just talked about, would relate to theorist Alan Johnson. Johnson believes that the issue of race is still alive and well in this country. The given prompt creates the image of a classroom full of diversity and Johnson says that “the strange and unfamiliar bring out some innate human tendency toward fear of the unknown and intolerance of difference”. But as future educators, we must not be afraid of difference amongst our students and ourselves. Instead, we must do as Johnson says and “champion diversity, promote tolerance, celebrate difference”!

Prompt #3 and Shor

As teachers, when we design instruments to evaluate our assessments, or tests, we must be sensitive to the individual needs and backgrounds of our students. We must, ultimately, be responsive to the linguistic, ethnic and sociocultural characteristics of the students that fill our classroom. Perhaps the characteristic which we must pay the most attention to, the one that is of the greatest importance would be the linguistics of our students.


To begin, it is possible that because of a student’s ethnic or sociocultural characteristics, their linguistic uniqueness has been affected or is different from those of the teacher. For example, this is easily seen with English as second language students. Because understanding English would already come as a challenge, it is more than likely that an ESL student would have an increased amount of difficulty compared to a fellow English speaking student because he/she does not speak English as a primary language, and depending on the age and or background, may not really even understand English all that well. If a student who speaks English as a second language struggles with the language as it is, how well will they grasp the instructions on an assessment? And in turn, how well will they perform on that assessment if they don’t have a profound hold on what is even expected of them? The answer is, probably not well- it seems to be a vicious cycle for these students which is why as teachers we must be aware of this situation and do our job as efficient educators to provide the best possible opportunities for these students by creating alterations, etc. adjusted to the individual student’s needs based on these characteristics which will, in time, result in better and more proficient test scores.

This concept relates to the ideas of theorist Ira Shor and his article “Problem Posing: Situated and Multicultural Learning”. Shor believes that “student speech, community life and perceptions are foundations of the curriculum”, and although his articles focuses mainly on the participation and involvement of students, he does seem to weigh heavily the background of the students and how that effects each classroom, in turn affecting how participatory a classroom is apt to be. Shor goes on to talk about how it must be for a student who knows another language better and is more comfortable with, than what has come to be known as the “superior language”. He says, “Imagine no matter how hard you try to master the “superior” language, elements of your own language keep creeping in”. This automatically made me picture a student, sitting at their desk with a state assessment in front of them, and not knowing how to even start because due to the language they know best, and the fact that it is not English, they are lost. They look around the classroom and see all the other students writing and reading and doing what they are suppose to do, but then they look down and they feel just an overwhelming sense of helplessness because they have been thrown into an education system that does not acknowledge his/her individual needs, and would rather just recognize them as the score on that state test that lies in front of them.

Prompt #2 and Goldenberg

The linguistic, ethnic and sociocultural characteristics of the students in the classroom which I am tutoring in are characteristics that are very different than what I was surrounded by when I was in elementary school, and even when I was in middle and high school. My observations of the linguistic characteristics which occur in my classroom would revolve around one main point: that many of these students speak another language, predominantly Spanish, and may even speak that language better or more often than English making them English as second language students.


Seeing this dominant trait in the classroom brings to mind Claude Goldenberg and his articles about teaching English language learners. Now, granted my students seem to speak English much better than those students Goldenberg referred to in his writing, there are still areas of comparison. For example, I see the struggle the teacher I work with sometimes goes through because of language, like when we did ‘R’ words and Mike, and obviously Hispanic child, couldn’t help but roll his ‘R’s’. I thought about the school I went to and the school I was in at that moment and it brought to mind when Goldenberg talked about how expectations created by state academic standards are sometimes overwhelming for teachers. After all, how could our states government expect the same results from a school with 22% of ESL learners compared to my elementary school with 4%. The ethnic characteristics go hand in hand, for me, with the sociocultural characteristics of the students in the classroom which I tutor.

Considering the ethnic and sociocultural characteristics, it is fair to say that the students being immense cultural capital or cultural force to the class. There are of course many ways to see where the students are coming from, but my favorite example would be when I was talking with my student Jason who I do a lot of one on one work with. He asked me if I had ever had a Sammy Burger. When I asked him what it was, two other boys overheard our conversation and came running over to tell me how much they loved Sammy burgers. By chance they were all Hispanic children who I knew lived in the same area. It was just interesting how we all lived in the same state, not even 45 minutes apart, yet the differences in our location created differences in other aspects of our lives. But perhaps I am more aware of the cultural capital which the students bring to the classroom because the school which I tutor at is so different than the one which I attended as an elementary student. Depending on the individual who is asked, there are obviously many assets that can be developed that will strengthen our society and democracy.

What I feel is most important is that we being to focus less on our more affluent schools and praising them as it is clear that they do not need our help, and rather on the struggling schools and developing them to the point at which they can start to even be compared to the schools that have been successful and are at the stage where the y should’ve been all along. Our education system seems to focus too much on closing the “gap” between white and minority students, rather than just bringing up failing school to where they should be.

Prompt #1

The neighborhood, in which my school is located, is an urban, bustling environment. The school is located off one of the main roads in the city, and rather close to the capitol. The outside of the school building is made out of big cement blocks, with lots of metal post and beams. To get into the building one needs to ring the buzzer. The school building does not seem to be too big when standing in the front; it only looks about 2 floors tall. But when you stand on the side you can see that there is one floor “underground” and the building extends far back. The name is not posted on the front of the building which I thought to be uncommon. Once inside, the signs are not only in English but in Spanish as well. Immediately I knew that this school was going to have many Spanish speaking students who came from different backgrounds than my own. At first this caught me slightly off guard, because where I am from, there were never any signs inside or outside of schools with different languages on them other than English- or anywhere else in my town for that matter. As I was walking it I noticed there were not flowers or anything welcoming on the outside of the school. There was however, trash everywhere. It kind of saddened me, it was as if no one cared.

When I walked in, I noticed the lack of color right away. It was just kind of bland and didn’t really give off an incredibly welcoming feeling. Everyone I met, including the people in the office were helpful and pleasant, but it seemed they didn’t really want to be there, or at least working in that kind of environment. One even asked me “so are you really sure you want to be a teacher? You can run now.” She laughed but it was definitely uncomfortable. The overwhelming blandness and lack of color of the school made it seem as though there was an immense amount of space. On the first floor, this space was filled with sporadic posters, most handwritten, with positive messages about learning, etc. There were more pictures and information, however, about the man the school was named after. On the other hand, I was relieved that when I went downstairs to the second and first grade classrooms, the walls were full of colorful and vibrant student made pieces of art.

When I walked into my assigned second grade classroom, the word that best describes what I experienced is chaos. The room was just so stuffy. There were piles of things everywhere. The teacher was trying to go over corrections for a previous lesson but she had to yell over all the students because they would not stop talking. She would ask them to quiet down, and they would, for about 5 minutes. Then the cycle started over. But as I spent more time in the classroom that day, and in my visits after, it was obvious that the teacher was making due of, the sometimes hard situation, that she had been dealt and really did care about teaching the students and making sure that they were learning and developing as best as possible. Even the students, as chaotic as the classroom sometimes was, were eager and excited to read with me and learn new things. The teachers and the administration in my school are hard on the children, not out of anger, but rather because they want the student to be looked at as equal to all the other students in this state, on all terms. The community of the school is willing to make the best of what they have, and really, really work towards achieving that goal.