Monthly Archives: September 2018

MVP#2 Help me to learn English but…don’t laugh at me please

Observing to Learn and Learning to Observe

Khurami, a 7th grader from Yemen, explains how he experiences discrimination through his experiences of being an Arabic speaker. He states, “I want them [his peers in school] to know about us when they talk about us in English, because we are not talking English, and they laugh about us. I want them to not laugh because we are new here, because we just came into the country. Because if they go to my country, they’re gonna be the same.” Khurami here shares how he feels excluded from conversations at school because of his beginning level of English and how other students talk about and laugh about him and some of his peers in the ESL classes because their use of English is not as strong as that of the native English speakers. He feels quite deeply the laughter and scorn of other students in school and wishes that it would stop. Khurami thoughtfully points out if these same native English language speakers came to his country of Yemen to learn Arabic, they would be in the exact same situation he is currently in of learning a new language and they would face similar difficulties in learning a new language (Becker, Gabriel, and Roxas, 2017).

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PAR & Descriptive Review

Observing to Learn and Learning to Observe

“Photovoice is a participatory action-based research process that allows its
participants to tell their own stories through photo exhibitions, public presentations, and
school displays […] Photovoice allows members of marginalized communities to
share their experiences with others and empowers them to become positive change
agents within their communities.” (Roxas et al. 2017 p5)

The first time I heard about Participatory Action Research was around this time last year. I was working on a project with a friend of mine, also in education, which we would present later on in the semester. Reading this article made me realize that I didn’t really understand what PAR was when he was explaining it to me then (or after, either).

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MVP #2: Don’t simply judge if you don’t know what is behind.

Urban Adolescents

“‘Mexicans are like thieves and bad people, and we’re not really like that.’ Student demographics in the U.S. continue to show an increase in the enrollment of immigrant children in public school systems. “About 10.2 million of all students enrolled in public schools, or slightly more than 20%, speak a language other than English at home” (Fry & Gonzales, 2008, p. 11). While immigrant students provide new energy and ideas to a new school community, they also might face potential obstacles in their transition to their new schools and home communities that school counselors need to be mindful of and attentive to in their outreach and advocacy. Some obstacles students might face include adjustment issues such as transgenerational trauma (Phipps & Degges-White, 2014), conflict during racial and ethnic identity formation (Iwamoto, Negi, Partiali, & Creswell, 2013), racial microaggressions (Gabriel, 2015a, 2015b; Nadal, Escobar, Prado, David, & Haynes, 2012), and depression” (Yeh, Borrero, & Tito, 2013).

This passage highlights the increasing immigrant children in the public school system and links to the Racism and Discrimination problems. This statement is not true because it judges people by merely skin and race, which is not fair for Mexicans.
In New York City public school systems, there is a dramatically increasing enrollment of immigrant children. The Public School 94, is the school I am doing student teaching now, has 80% Chinese immigrant children and 20% Spanish & Mexican immigrant children. I do not see any white kid in our school. There are more and more public schools are operating like the PS.94, which has a majority of immigrant children from Asia and other places. The class I assistant with is a Kindergarten level class, which is an ENL class, surprisingly, over 95% of kids do not understand English, even the alphabet ABC. I believe that my students are facing many challenges such as language challenge and cultural challenge. For example, they are too young to get used to living here; they just immigrant here so everything seems different from what they were used to have; language is also a big challenge too. We have six Mexican children in our class. I treat all students as the same, providing aids when they need. Those Mexican children in our class are a little bit behind, from my observation, it could be caused by some reasons like their parents may have less care to their study or they are too young to understand knowledge in class, even they need times to get used to new language and environment. We cannot ignore the existed truth that is not every single person is super smart and learning fast.
Also, as teachers, I think we should not judge people by skins or race or nations either. If a teacher has some negative judgment on children, then the teacher might pay less attention to them even give up them, which is very unfair for children and it will impact children for their future study and life too.

MVP #2: Listen to the Students, Not the World

Culturally, Linguistically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Adolescents in Urban Contexts: Framing the Conversation, Observing to Learn and Learning to Observe, Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond, Urban Adolescents

“Children and adults are never solitary individuals, immune to the social and cultural forces around them. Gaining understanding of the cultural norms and assumptions we bring as teachers, as well as those brought by each of the students in our classes, is an often difficult task but is essential to providing a learning space that is welcoming and caring and sets up all students for academic and social success.”(Knoester, 2008, p.154)

This statement really highlights the importance of being self-aware and reflective of the biases and assumptions we bring with us into the classroom. We have all been influenced throughout our lives by our experiences, the ways in which we grew up and were raised, the environments we lived in, our cultural backgrounds, the traditions we practiced, etc. Continue reading MVP #2: Listen to the Students, Not the World →

“Now,… imagine she’s white”

Culturally, Linguistically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Adolescents in Urban Contexts: Framing the Conversation

The title of this post, is the last sentence taken from a famous trial closing statement in the movie “A Time to Kill”(1996) directed by Joel Schumacher. The lawyer is defending Carl Lee Hailey, a Black man who avenges the brutal rape of her ten year old daughter, by shooting the men who committed the crime. The movie came back to me repeatedly during the reading “Beginning and ending with Black suffering” (Dumas, 2018), mainly because of this idea of going beyond empathy caused by the misfortunes of a community that, though it’s right here, is foreign to the observers. Continue reading “Now,… imagine she’s white” →