My MVP for this week comes from Dr. Doucet’s article “(Re)constructing Home and School: Immigrant Parents, Agency, and the (Un) Desirability of Bridging Multiple Worlds. “Bridging is not value neutral. Educators at every level need a model of family—school relations that acknowledges power and the potential loss of it (for both sides) through bridging. Intercultural relationships require certain risks.” Continue reading Power and the Teacher/Parent Relationship
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Learning does not only happen in school
“Delpit’s work demands recognition that simply going to school and following the explicit rules of schooling are not enough for students from marginalized communities to benefit from the rewards of educational achievement. As Carter (2008) has noted, one of the real dangers in not acknowledging how school success is culturally laden is that the entire burden for lack of achievement or school success gets placed on children’s supposed innate abilities and/or motivation” – Doucet
My reflection: Sometimes parents, especially Asian immigrant parents, mistakenly believe that getting good grades on school work is the symbol of success of a student. They care more about their children’s GPA and/or if they are following school rules than their social lives. I read a news report about Ivy League colleges admissions preferences. According to an admissions officer, most Asian students have excellent academic achievement, but they do not have outstanding extracurricular activities and achievements. An ESL teacher at elementary school suggests parents to talk more with their children and to explore the outside world with them. Increasing knowledge is helpful to children’s English development. Only when children developed their own ideas and thoughts can they increase their language proficiency. ESL teachers teach children to use English to express their thoughts, but we can not teach them to express the “idea” that they do not have in English. Most Asian parents only think that children should absorb knowledge at school. The process of learning is to draw a colorful picture from a piece of white paper. But they forget that students should firstly sketch a draft under their parents’ lead and then the teachers help them to color the picture.
Digital classroom
MVP 7
Passage: “Online is a place of words and pictures, signs and symbols that help to express the fragility of our existence and the brilliance of our human bonds. “
Kirkland, D. E. (2009). Researching and teaching in the digital dimension. Research in the Teaching of English, 44(1), 8-22.
Digital Classroom
I totally agree with this passage because now is a digital era. Online is a magic place. Sometimes, it connects people tightly, but sometimes it estranges people from each other. For example, everyone has cell phone in these days. The benefits of cell phone makes every one can be easily to find others in anytime everywhere; however, because of the popularity of cell phone, some people might only make a call instead of visiting each other, which reveals people’s “fragility of existence”.
To extend the technology in the classroom, this class, the Adolescent learners in Urban Context, gives us a wonderful example. Professor Doucet uses blog to engage everyone in class discussion, especially for those “silent students”. It aids to bridge the tight bonds between teachers and students; students and students. Also, I read an article about the idea of digital classroom. It shows that many students are not interested in English class at first. But since the teachers use blog to present the class ideas, they start to use technology (the blog) to accomplish worksheet, they take more time on practicing. Then more time they spend on the blog, more practices they do and more efficient and productive they are. Therefore, the teachers consider that bring the technology into class helps to keep kids focus on task and thus improve their understanding to the structure and function of English. Based on these examples, I believe the digital experiences help “silent students” be more actively in class participation, and leads teachers to know more about their students’ needs.
Understanding Immigrant Parents
The passage about Haitian families’ ambivalence towards American school educational system and reasons why on page 22 is very thought-provoking to me. Being an educator, I have always focused my attention on students’ performance but never really think about the importance of parents’ role in bridging between home and school and that there are parents from certain culture with different educational believes and values might have a hard time understanding the American educational system. Continue reading Understanding Immigrant Parents
Put Yourself in Their Shoes & Listen Before Forcing Bridges: Understanding Immigrant Students
“There is a popular misconception, especially among teachers, educational policy makers, and fellow (mainstream middle-class) parents that parents who are not a constant presence at the school—chaperoning field trips, attending PTA meetings, baking brownies for the bake sale, simply do not care about their children’s education” Doucet, F. (2011). (Re)constructing home and school: Immigrant parents, agency, and the (un)desirability of bridging multiple worlds. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2705-2738.
As educators, we must be wary of making any assumptions or being presumptuous regarding the education of any student, regardless of cultural or ethnic backgrounds. Just because a student is an immigrant, does not mandate treating them in a generalized manner applied for all immigrants, nor teaching them in a way that we would teach any other immigrant of that background (generally). Each student comes from a unique home life, with families who desire different levels of interaction or Americanization for their children. Continue reading Put Yourself in Their Shoes & Listen Before Forcing Bridges: Understanding Immigrant Students