Promt #7:

After observing and working with the students and the teacher of this second grade classroom I’ve had many valuable experiences. During this experience I tried to focus on the two main points that Kahne and Westheimer make in their article “The Service of What.” They describe both charity and change models. In “The Service of What” Kahne and Westheimer states that both charity and change is a question that “inevitably merits the attention of teachers, policy makers, and academicians who take seriously the idea that learning and service reinforce each other and should come together in America’s schools.” During my service learning experience I tried to keep both charity and change models in mind. I did the best that I could to try to help my students learn how to read better. At the same time, I tried to make it enjoyable for them since the classroom environment that they were in was very stressful. Many times I dreaded walking into the classroom because the teacher was so dysfunctional. But I tried to keep that judgment aside when it was just me and the two students.

When I would walk into the classroom the two students that I work with would have this relieved look on their face because they could escape from the chaos. Since I knew how much they enjoyed escaping I tried to take advantage of their motive to learn. I tried as hard as I could to make sure that I changed these students’ negative reading experience into a more enjoyable, comfortable one. When I walked into that classroom I tried strongly to not just be there for a charity model. I did not want to go there to just complete my fifteen hours that I needed to pass my FNED class. These students really needed someone who cared about them and needed someone with patience.

Many of the reading activities that we did were both beneficial and competitive. The activity that we did the most was timed reading. They were reading almost four books (reading them three times in a row) in less than an hour and a half! Since these students’ reading levels were so low this was a major accomplishment. We would read each book three times. During each try the students would naturally lower their timing.

Towards the end of my visits I saw a significant improvement and focus in both my students. Although the teacher hardly spoke to me during my time in this classroom, one day he pulled me aside and commented on the students’ production and improvement on their weekly reading tests. The first visit with them was a struggle because they had such a miserable experience with reading. But after our last visit I realized these students have improved tremendously also. Overall I tried to take seriously the ideological values between charity and change and put any selfish devotions aside. I hope I made a difference in these children’s reading experience.

Prompt #2:

The class room that I am involved in has a broad range of diversity. Throughout the classroom there are many different races. They range from African American, Latinos, Hispanics, Portuguese, Caucasians, and there is one Chinese student. Overall the students present a huge cultural capital in this classroom. The different values that they believe in create a diverse range in social standing. For example, one boy that I worked with described to me how he was going to celebrate his Thanksgiving. Immediately after the boy was finished speaking another little girl from a different race and ethnicity explained the way she was going to celebrate hers; which was completely different right down to the food that her family makes.

Overall the linguistic styles that are spoken throughout the classroom are all pretty similar. However, the reading skills in the classroom are very different. Some students that speak with “slang” have outstanding scores in their reading. On the other hand, some students who speak very well are extremely low in their reading scores. I had the opportunity to work with two students who spoke very well, one of color and one who was white. However, when it came down to their reading they struggled tremendously.

We did a number of activities to improve their reading scores. At first we practiced using the Dolch flash cards. The students flew through these words. The teacher had no idea how well they knew the basic words. He was actually very surprised. Then we moved up a level and used the Dolch words but also created sentences with them. They flew through this as well. After the teacher realized these students were smarter than he thought we began to do book reading. The students would listen to me read first, and then it would be their turn. After doing this a few visits the students began to develop much better reading skills when it came down to voice expression and actually understanding what the content in the story was.

Prompt #4:

It’s understandable that no one enters a classroom without a personal history and no one enters a classroom completely free of bias. However, as a teacher I believe that you have to hold back judgments because of the diverse world that we are living in. I grew up in a predominantly white school system. It was not until my high school years that I interacted with other students of color. However, my school system always incorporated other cultures in our lesson plans. We did many projects on other cultures. So for me, going into a classroom with such a diverse ethnicity never really bothered me. Especially after meeting the children and seeing past the exterior you learn this should not even count as a factor in a person’s judgment.

An advantage that I had in this classroom was that I have had previous experience working in other classrooms. Overall I thought the teacher I was working with was very unprofessional. It was obvious as well that the tactics this teacher was using was not beneficial to the class. The things that the teacher would say to the students were not appropriate and it ultimately made the students disrespect the teacher. Students would actually tell the teacher off and they were only in second grade. By watching many of these incidents in the class room and the terrible outbreaks that would occur between both the students and the teachers immediately reminded me of the article “Our House is On Fire” by Allan Johnson. Johnson believes that race and social habits are an invention, which clearly in this classroom the teacher is inventing a bad environment for all students. This teacher does not do what Allan Johnson strongly suggests such as champion diversity, promote tolerance and celebrate difference. Instead this teacher brings a negative environment to the classroom.

The teacher seemed very surprised when I told him how many books the two children and I read together. He did not understand how the two kids that I worked with could read so many books when their reading score was so low. The children and I did an activity that involved timed reading. It became a game for them. We would read a 7 page book; which was normally between 200 to 250 words. The students would read it three different times, the first time they would read normal, the second time they would pay attention to punctuation and voice expression, and the third time they would try to read as fast as they could. By doing this it naturally would lessen their time within each try. One boy actually beat his first attempt by over two minutes. Allan Johnson states that “we are, all of us, responsible for the future and that what happens now, it is because of human beings whose choices shape how that system happens from one moment to the next.” This teacher has not dared to do anything different to help the way these students learn.

Promt #3:

In the second grade classroom that I have been working in the teacher has not portrayed a culturally competent teaching style. He absolutely did not accommodate sociocultural differences. During the class there were many students with ADHD, which is a hyper active disorder that some children have that enables them to focus. However, when these students would try to express their opinions in the class room the teacher would immediately turn them down. The teacher seemed to always pick on the same students who clearly were troubled. When dealing with a student with ADHD symptoms you have to handle them in a different way than you normally would a student without this disorder. You have to give them boundaries, and at the same time you have to let them stretch their imagination and capabilities. For example, the way a child would act ranged in many different ways. One little boy would cry silently because he didn’t understand the work, whereas another little boy would start to scream. Instead of the teacher responding in an adult way, he would instead stoop down to the child’s level and fight with the child without asking why the child was acting this way. The teacher would immediately assume he was being bad.

Since the teacher grew accustomed to this student’s outbreaks, whenever one of the hyperactive children would have a good day the teacher would not praise the behavior and would instead continue to yell at the child for anything they did that was somewhat wrong. For example, one particular boy was very quiet one day. He did all of his work up until the math lesson. The teacher was explaining how to do addition and subtraction with the number ten. The boy did not understand so he stopped working. The teacher then yelled at him and the boy cried out that he did not understand what was going on during the lesson. Instead of the teacher explaining, he thought the boy was misbehaving and made the boy stand for the remainder of that lesson.

This reminds me of the situation in the article “All Speech Is Not Free” by Megan Boler when she states that “hostility that targets marginalized people on the basis of their assumed inferiority carries more weight than hostility expressed by a marginalized person toward a member of the dominant class.” Megan Boler believes that ignorance arises directly from our youth when we are in the classroom’s environment. When I read this article, the beginning immediately reminded me of this teacher. He always picks on the same students and does not allow them to voice their opinions. All voices in his classroom are not equal. This teacher portrays every negative aspect that Megan Boler explains about the white dominant and white supremacy ideologies.