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.
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Kayla,
ReplyDeleteI have also had a similar experience in my class like you had in Mrs. Hope’s room. Whenever I go to my tutoring the teacher is constantly yelling at the students and barking orders to them. She does not encourage a participatory classroom at all. She actually goes against everything Shor states in his article. I agree with you that teachers need to include the students more in their classrooms including having them participate. Shor would definitely promote participation of the students, but how are they going to do this when the teachers do not give them a chance to try? When we are teachers, we will need to use this experience as more of a “what not to do” instead of a model of what to do.
You are also correct in saying that if we don’t connect with our students, they will suffer in the end. Teachers should try their absolute best to connect with their students so the students will want to learn. This also relates to Shor’s concept of affective learning. By connecting with the students on an emotional level, it will be easier to teach them and really have them understand whatever we are trying to teach them.
Good Luck!
Sara