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.