As a teacher, I believe that it is extremely important to be aware, and acknowledge the individual and different specific needs of all of your students. Teachers should be open to the idea of being able to use a variety of different assessment techniques while making sure that their students are active and participating in them. Teachers should come up with as many different appropriate activities and assignments that they can to help their students succeed in any way they possibly can. Teachers should understand that their students are diverse learners and students may need to learn in different ways than others. Especially because they all come from different linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural backgrounds.
Teachers need to accommodate the needs of their students. For example a student with different linguistics than most of the other children needs extra, and or special attention. The teacher could come up with ways to make the student understand better, or even take more time with this student before or after school. The teacher could send home specific homework assignments that would allow the student to practice on his/her free time. Moreover, at my elementary school where I tutor kindergarten students there are MANY students that speak another language other than English. The school does consist of mostly minority students. I also believe that for many of the students at this school that English was NOT there first spoken language. When I am tutoring my three students I pay special attention to one little girl. Over a few sessions with working with her I realized that she did not speak English, and that english was not her primary language at home. And that she was also in one of the bilingual classes at the school. She is my one student that has the most difficult with her studies as well. With her I will exaggerate things more and reinforce a lot of different concepts to her.
Also i believe that as teachers we should all consider the students ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds when we teach. We should consider all ethnicities and allow our students to ask questions and to actively participate in their learning. A theorist that comes to mind when I think of participating being an important aspect in a classroom in Ira Shor in his article, “Problem Posing: Situated and Multicultural Learning”, He believes that teachers should teach in such a way that the actual teaching process encourages students to question what they have been taught. For example when teaching a Spanish speaking bi- lingual student a social studies lesson in English where they might not completely understand, then repeat the lesson in their native language. Then have the student ask questions comparing and contrasting what they just learned in both languages.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Prompt # 3 Shor
Posted by taylorb6 at 4:08 PM
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2 comments:
Tay,
To begin this response, it is important to mention that we each believe very strongly that it is important for current teachers and for ourselves as future teachers, to be aware and acknowledge the individual and different specific needs of all of students. It is possible that because of a student’s ethnic or sociocultural characteristics, their linguistic uniqueness has been affected or is different from those of the teacher, thus we must be that much more aware of the needs of students. If teachers are attentive to these individual needs, they will as a result, be willing to use a variety of different assessment techniques to make sure that their students are active and efficiently participating. Teachers should come up with many different activities and assignments that they can use to help their students succeed in any way without the obstacles of language barriers.
Furthermore, it is the responsibility of teachers to understand that their students are diverse learners and students may need to learn in different, thus test in different ways than others, because now two students are the same. All students come from different linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural backgrounds especially in our urban schools.
Lastly, it is key to say that we each related this important issue to theorist Ira Shor. This is important as Shor believes that “student speech, community life and perceptions are foundations of the curriculum”, and although his articles focuses mainly on the participation and involvement of students, he does seem to weigh heavily the background of the students and how that effects each classroom, the teacher, and the activities, lessons, etc. that occur in that classroom.
Talk to you soon!
Taylor,
I found myself agreeing with you strongly on many of the points you made in this blog. I agree that it is extremely important for teachers to go above and beyond to create lessons that all of the children in the classroom will be able to understand and learn from. Each student has his or her own way that they learn best. The issue of children speaking different languages, coming from different backrounds, and living in different atmospheres are all issues that I feel teachers need to be prepared to work with. In order for these students to succeed, teachers need to be prepared to break all barriers. In my eyes if a teacher is unwilling to change their lessons, spend extra time, and in general work above and beyond for their students sucess... then honestly they shouldn't be a teacher!
I have noticed in the classroom that I tutor in that the teacher has different tones with certain students. I also noticed that she explains assignments and expectations slower and multiple times to certain students. It seems like she does put in more effort for some students, but my personal opinion is that she could work harder.
I also related this prompt to Shor. I found his articles to be close fitting for these situations. He values that these students individual backrounds, languages, and much play a very important role in the classroom and overall education!
See you soon!
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