Amanda's Classroom Observation

As I learn about the student I am going to be working with, I learn that he is absent a lot, he has no kindergarten background and he missed the first few months of first grade.  After learning this, a few questions popped into my head.  One of them was, is there anything being done at home that is helping him to catch up with the other students?  This question made me think of Richard 'Ricardo' Rodriguez's article. In his article he talks about how in his school years his family spoke only spanish at home.  This didn't help much when he went to school and didn't respond to his teachers in english they got very upset.  I see this happen with the student that I work.  Not so much with english and spanish but in reading in general. 


There are some days that he knows all the words that the entire class is learning and does very well with the work that the teacher has given him.  There are other days that he did horrible with the work and he wasn't motivated to do anything.  I would like to know if his parents, or whoever he lives with, are helping him with his homework and helping him learn to read. My service learning teacher also told me that when they sent report cards home, she wrote that she may want to keep him back a year so that he can catch up with the grade level of math reading and writing.  The next day when they were supposed to bring them back he wasn't there. This could just be a coincidence and he was just absent from school but they way the teachers saw it was that his parents weren't happy with either him or the school or the teacher herself.  I really hope that the parents have a meeting with the teacher and if necessary the principle to talk about what is best for the student.

Marisa's Classroom Observations

Richard….no answer….Richard….no answer….RICARDO! Yes?

Does this sound familiar?  It does to most students who are not white.  In Rodriguez’s article, we learn that the school system loses a lot of kids just because they don’t take the time to learn and appreciate their student’s backgrounds. Many times, the students are forced into a new culture that takes time to adjust.  Once they adjust, they tend to forget some of their past.  This is what happened to Rodriguez, and he said that it actually helped him in the long run. 

In my student learning classroom there are many students with names that I have never seen before.  Names that I couldn’t even begin to pronounce, mostly because they are spanish names and I don't know how to speak spanish.  I asked my teacher before I went to work with my small group how to say their names.  She told me that she says them this way.  I repeated them back to her and she said that I got it.  I then went to the table with the students I was going to work with and called them by name.  I was trying to be personal so they would feel as if I cared and wasn't forcing them to be someone else, but one student looked at me and asked if I could say her name a different way.  Of course I was embarrassed because I wanted to say them correctly and apologized to the student and agreed to say it another way.  

Later, I thought about this situation again.  The teacher has called this child the wrong name for almost 6 months.  She has converted it to an English name when it is Spanish.  Rodriguez talks about how being forced to grow up with an English name helped him, yet he lost part of his background.  This is what was happening to this student.  She was losing part of her background because the teacher and school system was forcing her to convert to the English ways.  I don't know if I agree completely, but Rodriguez would say that this child was on the path to a better life style, one that would be easier in the long run. 


The video below shows the frustration that students go through when teachers attempt to pronounce their names when they have names slightly different from the "norm."

Rachel's Classroom Observations

     In a third grade classroom in Providence, RI there are cases of people sacrificing private identity for public identity. The teacher in the room I tutor in, is a good example of this. Her appearance is that of a Latino, or of European decent, her skin is darker and she has dark hair. Her last name ends in a vowel, which is common with Italian and Spanish names. Only in some of her words can you hear a very slight accent. It is very well hidden so I could not decide what her background is. Many of the office workers speak Spanish. There are also several students in my class who roll their r’s when reading to me in English. They sound like they are bilingual however the only language spoken in this classroom is English. With an exception of one particular time which caught me off guard.

     While discussing, with the teacher, the lesson plan she realized she left something on her desk for a student who was about to leave for the day. Before she walked away from me she said, “I’ll be right back, uno minuto.” I responded with “okay” but I am glad she did not get to see my shocked face. After this I re-evaluated the situation and realized she said those simple words so fluently and such commonly used phrase without hesitation. I came to the conclusion that this whole time she has been hiding her true identity. This teacher hides her private identity everyday at work and trades it in for a public identity.

There are signs around the school, one will be in English, then one right next to it saying the same thing will be in Spanish. Even though this is the situation, in the actual classrooms it is not acceptable to speak a language other than English. This is where the idea of public identity continues to arise.