Prompt 6-Connection to John Dewey

        In order to be the best teacher I can be I need to be a culturally competent teacher who communicates in ways that take into consideration sociocultural and linguistic differences of my students and their families. I need to use many different techniques, including verbal and non-verbal communication that will encourage positive social interaction between myself, my students, and their families and support learning in the classroom. At Brown Long Elementary school I have seen Mrs. Hope take into consideration her students cultural differences to a certain extent while teaching. Sometimes I feel she over looks students behavior that associates with their socioculture and linguistics.
        As I have states a couple times Lee is the one student who comes to mind when I think about communication between a teacher and their students. I feel there is a great lack of communication between Lee and Mrs. Hope. I also have not seen any attempts on her part to break those communication barriers. I also think of another student Alex. Alex is an African American 1st grader who acts like an adult. He does not communicate nicely with the other students nor does he listen to the teacher. He walks around rapping songs that include swears and the word “nigger”. He also tells others students they are “African monkeys”, and if something doesn’t go his way he tells other students that he will “bang them in their face.” When I first heard Alex talk like this I was shocked. I could not believe the things that were coming out of this first graders mouth. I can also recall him putting a student in a choke hold one day in class. I try to explain to Alex that what he says to other students is not nice and hurts their feelings but I don’t think he understands because he just laughs. I would imagine that Mrs. Hope has heard Alex speak like this before, and has seen his action or has heard about them from other students yet I have never seen her sit down and talk to him one on one. When I went into Mrs. Lewis’s class I noticed that most of her communication to the students was yelling. I did not really see any non-verbal communication the day I visited her class. I do not believe that yelling orders at her students all day creates or encourages positive communication between her and her students. I feel that the students sometimes might fear her and not want to communicate with her.
        While I was tutoring students at Brown Long Elementary I believe I did communicate with the students on a verbal and not verbal way. I was able to have the students read to be and help them where they needed help. I was also able to help the students improve on their reading skills by making flash cards and playing games like goldfish with them. I also believe I was able to communicate non-verbal with the students when I felt they were misbehaving I used my hands to help get my point across. When the students were being too loud I was push my hands in a downward motion of put my finger up to my lip. I also believe the students could tell from my body language when I was proud of them and felt like they were doing and good job and when I was upset with them for not seeming interested and not listening.
        These experiences made me think of The Democratic Conception in Education by John Dewey. John Dewey stated that Education is a social function, and that learning happens by being active participants. This is where I believe Mrs. Hope and Mrs. Lewis failed. I don’t believe Mrs. Hope communicated with some of her students enough to encourage positive social interaction between the students in her classroom. With Mrs. Lewis I feel she was not active with her students. The hour and half I spent in her classroom I observed her giving students orders. I did not see here actively working with her students. How are students suppose to learn when the teacher is not actively working with them to improve their skills? John Dewey also believes in a mobile society. A mobile society is when each individual has a chance to change. In order for students to change certain behaviors and grow as students they need positive encouragement and communicate from their teachers. As future teachers we need to remember that not every student comes from the same culture, and not all students are the same. That is why we as future teachers need to recognize every student and not ignore certain behaviors. We are reasonable for giving our students the best opportunities to succeed in our class.

Prompt 5- Connection To Lisa Delpit

        As a teacher you need to be able to communicate with not only your students but your students’ parents or guardians as well. As I stated previously if I was the teacher of Mrs. Hopes first grade class I could have some major problems communicating to parents or guardians who do not speak English or do not know English well. If a parent or guardian does not understand English then they might not be able to help their child on homework. Also if I send letters home letting a parent or guardian know a student didn’t behave in class or has improved in class and they don’t understand what I am saying they will not be able to discipline their child or reward their child for doing a great job in school.
        In order to better communicate with my students parents or guardians there are very simple steps that I could take to make both communication with the students parents easier for myself and the parents. For example if I need to have a parent teacher conference and I know the parents primary language is Spanish I can have a interpreter sit with me throughout the meeting. By having an Interpreter with me I would know that the parent is aware of what needed to be addressed in the meeting and would not be struggling to understand what I was saying. I would also be able to understand what the parent is saying. This would not only benefit the parents and me, but it would also benefit my students.
        The second step I could take is have the homework instructions in English and Spanish, seeing as more than half of the students who attend Brown Long Elementary school are Spanish. Also, when writing notes home I can try to write the notes very simple using basic words. I can also put smiley faces or sad faces on the letters depending if the letters are about a student behaving badly or doing good in class. I know I am not going to be able to actively communicate 100% with all of my students parents but as long as I show the parents that I am trying, and try different methods to communicate with my students parents hopefully in the end my students will benefit from my efforts.
        I immediately related this to Lisa Delpit. In Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other Peoples Children Delpit talks about how communication if very important not only for the teacher and his or her students, but communication is also very important between the teacher and the student’s parents. Without being able to communicate with your students parents may not give the parents the opportunity to communicate with their children on school related topics. Lisa Delpit believes there are rules for participating in power. In this case parents who speak Spanish are in power because more than half of the schools children are Spanish. Delpit explains that the “codes that relate to linguistic forms are communication strategies, and presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting”. Therefore as a teacher of a classroom where the majority of my students are Spanish if I present myself well to the parents, use different strategies to talk to them including an interpreter, use different writing techniques, and just show my students parents that I am a hard working teacher, dedicated to my students, I should be able to effectively communicate with my students parents.

Prompt 4-Connection To Allan Johnson

        Everyone in life has their own personal history. Not everyone can relate to a person’s social and cultural matters because not everyone is the same and has the same culture. When I first entered Brown Long Elementary school I could tell right away that I most likely was going to have a completely different personal history and culture then the students I would be working with. After working with my students my initial thoughts were true. The majority of students in Mrs. Hope’s class were either Spanish or African American. Growing up In Glocester Rhode Island I was never expose to Spanish or African American children, this could pose a few problems for me if I was the teacher of this class.
        The first problem would be communication. Never being exposed to Spanish culture could pose problems with communicate between not only myself and my students, but with my students parents as well. When I was growing up I had all the tools needed to succeed in elementary, middle, and high school. This is not the case for schools where the children are mostly Hispanic or African American. Most schools that are not predominantly white don’t receive enough funding to give their students some of the tools they need to help them succeed. It would take some time to get use to as a teacher not having some tools that could help your student succeed like new books and computers. I might also face challenges when relating to students and life outside of school. I cannot just assume that every student has computers, their own room, a good environment to do homework, and supportive parents to help them with their schoolwork. For example today I was working with Mark a first grade Spanish boy when out of nowhere he looked at me and said “my mom left me yesterday.” I asked him to repeat himself because I didn’t know if I was hearing him correctly. He then said “My mom left me yesterday because she doesn’t have a job and I live with my grandparents now.” My heart broke when I heard tell me his story with this sad look on his face. I didn’t know what to say to him because I have never been in that situation before.
        The advantage of teaching this class would be the knowledge I would gain from being around other cultures I have never been exposed to and know nothing about. I would finally be able to learn about other cultures and lifestyles. This would help me as a teacher inside and outside the classroom. Although I do not know much about other cultures the one advantage the students gain with me as their teacher is a hardworking dedicated teacher who cares about all her students and would learn about their cultures so I would be giving them the best chance to succeed.
        I related this to Our House is on Fire by Allen Johnson. Johnson talks about “white Privilege” and how it occurs in schools. I completely agree with this because after tutoring at Brown Long Elementary I compared Brown Long Elementary to my elementary school and I can recall having more computers, better books, better desk, and much more artwork throughout the hallways. I also remember just having an overall better building. It is time for a change. If we give all students the same test and expect them all to perform well we need to as teachers be given the proper tools to be able to give our students what they need to become the best student they can be. We also need to don’t treat students the same because as I stated before not everyone is the same and not everyone comes from the same culture.

Prompt 3-Connection To Ira Shor

        As future teachers we need to be able to use different techniques to teach students that are from different cultures. We also need to uses different ways of testing student knowledge based on the fact that not every student is the same, not every student comes from the same culture, and not every student learns in the same way. We need to find other ways besides given lectures and orders to connect and communicate with our students. Teachers need to take into perspective a student’s linguistic, ethic, and sociocultural characteristic when teaching students.
        In Mrs. Hope’s class I did get the impression that she took the students culture into consideration while she was teaching. Her room was filled with many different books and reading games to make any child happy. She did not just lecture the student and send them on their way to complete the work on their own. She took the time to go over instruction more than once and work with students one on one if they needed extra help. The only time I felt Mrs. Hope was not as committed as she should have been was when it came to Lee, a student who was in one of my reading groups. As I stated in my previous blog since I have been tutoring at Brown Long Elementary school I have never heard him speak. I gathered from other students that he never speaks in class. I am not even sure if Mrs. Hope as heard Lee Speak. While she is working with the students on their reading skills she has the students read out loud. I have never heard her call Lee to read out loud. I am not sure if Lee is just a very shy student or if he does not use English as his primary language and is not comfortable speaking a language he doesn’t really know. I feel it is her responsibility as a teacher to find ways to help Lee not ignore the situation.
        On one of the days I went to tutor Mrs. Hope was absent so I went into Mrs. Lewis’s classroom,another first grade classroom. This classroom was completely different then Mrs. Hope’s room. Mrs. Lewis strongly believed in lectures and giving orders to get her point across. The whole time I was in that classroom that day. She was loudly giving orders to the students. She would just give the students papers or tell them to work on their work books. Then she would call them up one by one to correct them. I remember on student going up to her to have his papers corrected and I could hear her asking him “What is this? This is all wrong, go back and do it all over again.”
        When I encountered both the experience with Lee in Mrs. Hope’s classroom and my whole experience in Mrs. Lewis’s class room Ira Shore came to my mind. Ira Shore states that “The teacher plays a key role in the critical classroom. Student’s participation and positive emotions are influenced by the teacher’s commitment to both.” In this case I believe Mrs. Hope was not commitment to helping Lee therefore he was not an active participate in class. In Mrs. Lewis’s classroom I noticed she was not working with the students as much as I believed she should. Therefore she was not being an active teacher leaving a lack of commitment and disconnect between her and her students. If we as teacher do not commit to our students then our students are going to suffer in the end.

Prompt 2- Connection to Kozol and Goldenberg

        When I first entered the classroom at Brown long Elementary school all the students stopped what they were doing and began to stare at me. At that point I felt like an outcast. Most of the students in the classroom were African American or Hispanic and the teacher Mrs. Hope was of Asian or Chinese decent. They were staring at me as if they have never been around a White blonde haired female. After looking up the school on infoworks I understood why they were staring at me. The truth is most of the students have probably never spent a large amount of time with a blonde white female. 54% of students who attend Brown Long Elementary school are Hispanic, 28% are African American, 9% are Asian, and 9 % are white. After the students got over the “shock” of seeing me many of the students ran up to me and began to ask me questions. Many of the African American girls in the classroom began to tell me how pretty I was and how they loved my hair. One student Mary even went on to say she wished she had hair like me. This reminded me some what of Jonathan Kozol experiment with the black doll and the white doll. The outcome of that experiment showed that most African American student responded to the words nice and pretty with the white doll. As much as the students were interested in getting to know me I was also very interested in getting to know them, and learning more about their culture. When I was in Elementary school my Elementary school was 95% white, 1% Asian and 1% Hispanic and I can recall all of the teachers being white. Much didn’t change as I went into middle school and high school.
        I would work with the same group of students every time I went to tutor. The students were split up into groups of two. For the first 45 minutes I would work with one group and for the remaining 45 minutes I would work with the other group. The first group I worked with included Mary an African American girl, John a Hispanic boy, and Dave a boy who was white and African American. I had a hard time understand John when it came time for the students to read to me. I could tell just by the way he spoke that his family’s first language is Spanish. I usually had to spend more time with him breaking down the words and going over the proper sounds of each letter. Then I would have him repeat the words to me again until I felt it was the best he could do. Listening to Dave gave me a better understand as to why Brown Long Elementary students are at a reading level a year or two below what they should be at.
        Another student that really troubled me was Lee, he was in my second group and he was of Asian or Chinese decent. Since I have been working with him I have never heard him speak. When I first worked with him it was his turn to read out loud and when I asked him to read a sentence tears began to fill his eyes and he put his head down. The other two students in his group Natalie an African American girl, and Ann a Chinese student told me Lee does not talk he “whispers”. The girls then went on to read the sentence for Lee. I tired everything to make Lee feel comfortable and to speak out loud. I tired talking to him alone and whispering to him but nothing worked. He would only answer my questions by nodding his head. I have never come across a young boy who does not speak and honestly had trouble working with him. I came to the conclusion that English is most likely not his primary language.
        I related both my experiences with John and Lee to Claude Goldenberg’s article Teaching Language Learners. Goldenberg explains it perfectly by saying “Now Imagine that you don’t speak English very well. Your job is to learn what everyone else is learning, plus learn English.” This statement I felt related to Dave the most because as I stated previously Dave is expected to learn what every other student in his class is learning but he has to work harder to learn how to read and pronounce words correctly in the English language. By Dave taking more time to learn how to read and pronounce words properly he is taking time away from learning other skill like math. It is harder for Dave to learn the proper English language because of his culture capital. At home the primary language is Spanish and when he goes to school every day he is thrown into an atmosphere where you are expected to know English. The reason for this disconnect as Goldenberg explains is the lack of help the English Language Learners are receiving. The solution is finding better ways to help and communicate with English Language Learners. Without giving English Language Learners the proper attention and help them need is setting them up for failure not only in school but also outside of school.

Prompt 1-Connection to Kozol

        When I first heard about the service learning project I was very excited. I am the oldest of six and I love working with children. Before my service learning actually started I decided to go find Brown Long School. I wanted to find the school ahead of time so I knew exactly where I was going on my first day, and would not be late. When I first pulled onto the street where my school was located I thought to myself this cannot be the right street. The street was very narrow with apartment building basically on top of each other, very little space. When I reached the middle of the street there was the school. The school was a brick building, decent size but there was very little parking space. They were cars up and down the whole street.
        I started my service learning on February 8, 2010. When I walked up to the building I tried to open the door but it would not open then I noticed a buzzer that I had to press in order to get buzzed in. When I first walked in I noticed a lady sitting at a small table working on some papers. I then went into the main office. It was very small with only two desk and two women working and then a door that lead into the principal’s office. I waiting for about ten minutes then me and some of the other service learning students were told to go to a room upstairs to meet with the schools reading coach. The school was very bare, throughout the hallways there was very little color and no pictures or art work on the walls. It felt somewhat cold. When I was in middle school and high school and I can remember students art work being displayed all over the school. I met with the schools reading coach who seemed like a very nice lady who really cared about the students. She went over a ton of activities she does with the students to help improve their reading skills. She went on to explain how she and other teachers have meetings to find other ways to help improve the students reading. I could tell just by talking to her that bringing up the students reading skills was very important for this school. I understood even more why it is so important to bring up their reading skills when she mentioned the most of the students that attended this school were a year to two years below their expected reading level.
        I then went to the classroom I was assigned to help during my service learning. My class room was on the first floor. I could remember that two of the other reading buddies said their classroom were in the basement. I thought to myself what school has classrooms in the basement? Maybe there are so many kids they need to have classrooms in the basement to accommodate the students. I later found out that Brown Long Elementary had 520 students who attended their school. When I entered the room there was a Chinese female teacher with a bunch of first graders surrounding her. Her name was Mrs. Hope. She was giving them directions to go work on their workbooks. I was in there for about five minutes then a bell rang and some students left the room and some student entered. I noticed that most of the students in the class were African American, Spanish, or mixed. There was only one white student and two Chinese students. The class room was a fairly decent size with a colorful rug in front of the teacher’s desk. There were six desks in the room where the students worked and three computers in the back of the room. There was also two other doors on each side of the room connecting to other classrooms. I could tell that reading and writing skills were valued in this classroom because there were many reading and vocabulary games throughout the room. Also when I was working with my assigned students the teacher was working with half of the class on their reading skills by going over the sounds of the letters as well as having the students read out loud. While this was going on the other half of the class room was working on their workbooks which consisted of more reading and writing.
        After my first day of tutoring Jonathan Kozol came to my mind. In Still Separate, Still Unequal Kozol explains how segregation still exists in American public schools. I found this to be true when the majority of the students in my class were Spanish and African American. He also goes on to explain that we are segregated by economy. I also found this to be true with Brown Long Elementary school. There was not one house on the road where the school was located, just apartment building's. I also found out the 93% of the students who go to that school received subsidized lunch, and almost all of the families who have children who attend that school are considered poor. Once again proving Kozol's point that we are segregated by economy.

About Me

Hi everyone, my name is Kayla Christine Kopka; I will be 20 in June. This is my second year at Rhode Island College. During my first year I was a nursing major. I realized nursing was not for me so I switched to education. I am the oldest of six; the youngest is 5 months old. I love having younger siblings I feel it gives me so much experience for teaching. I would love to teach either second or third grade. I plan to move out of Rhode Island after I graduate. I recently went to South Carolina to visit my boyfriend Kyle of three years (couldnt ask for a better boyfriend) who is a Marine and I loved it there. I would not mind moving there at all. I am pretty happy with the way my life is going. I am pretty much your typical girl. I love hanging out with friends, getting my hair done, going to the beach and of course shopping. I hope everyone had a good year and is ready for summer, I know I am. It was a pleasure getting to know you all. Good luck in your teaching careers.