All posts by Sarah K Hall

Polite but firm

Creating Classroom Community

“Don’t overuse ‘please.’ 

If you say ‘please’ too much, they think it’s an option. DARYL”

 

I chose this very short bit because it struck me on two different levels. First, with my own practice. I think it’s important to be polite. I was raised in an environment where ‘no’ or ‘yes’ was never an appropriate answer if it was not immediately followed by either ‘m’am’ or ‘sir’. My desire to always be polite was further fueled by my experience as an English teacher in Japan. Politeness is built into the way that verbs and other words are conjugated in Japanese. Because of this it is easy for many Japanese people to assume that Americans and English are not polite. Based on my background, I found this a little insulting and attempted to put the record straight. As a result, I am very conscious of always using ‘please’ and thank you’ in the classroom. It’s what I expect from students, so it’s only logical that I model my expectations. However, Daryl makes a very good point. There’s a fine line between being polite and sounding like I’m begging. I hope to continue to model politeness while exhibiting leadership and firmness by being more aware of this line.

The second reason I chose this quote is because in the process of writing up my focal learner study, I’ve been thinking a lot about my experience at Essex Street. In one of the classes, one teacher in particular was very politely asking my learner to follow instructions. She used phrases like “could you do this for me”. At the time, it struck me as a potentially interesting strategy. However, in reflection, this teacher wasn’t getting the reaction she wanted. The teachers who were more successful in getting my learner to comply were much firmer.

It’s not the drugs that are the problem

Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond

Philip, R. (2006), Drugs that enhance student achievement: Good kids making bad decisions. In Engaging ‘tweens and teens: A brain-compatible approach to reaching middle and high school students (pp. 175-194). California: Corwin Press.

“This quickly leads to the discussion of cognitive enhancement for students who are competing for limited space in colleges and universities. Eventually, ambitious parents will start giving mind-enhancing pills to their children, said James McGaugh, the University of California at Irvine neurobiologist. ‘If there is a drug which is safe and effective and not too expensive for enhancing memory in normal adults, why not normal children?’ he said. ‘After all, they’re going to school, and what’s more important than education of the young? Some parents will consider it more important to give their children a little chemical edge than think of the long-term consequences.'”

I chose this passage because it reminded me a lot of the pressure that I felt about taking college entrance exams and their results. I had the opportunity to take both the ACT and SAT more than once. I ended up with high enough scores to receive two scholarships that covered all my expenses. In my group of friends, there was one girl whose mom couldn’t afford to pay for multiple exams. She went to a smaller, lesser known university and had a smaller scholarship. Other classmates got higher scores and received more prestigious scholarships. In high school, we were all equal students, we all had about the same grades.

In university, we had very different paths. My classmates with the highest scores and the best scholarships failed. They had never been unsuccessful before. They didn’t know how to deal with the pressure. Those of us that had not done as well, or already met some kind of major obstacle did much better.

Concerns over smart drugs making testing unfair seem rather trivial to me. The testing system and importance of scores is already unfair. In my experience it does a poor job of predicting students success in college. I think that any concern over smart drugs should be used to point out how unfair and manipulated the system already is and allow space for reform and alternatives to be discussed.

Aggressive Girls and Confident Boys

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality, Urban Adolescents

Schellenbach, C. J., Leadbeater, B. J., & Moore, K. A. (2004). Enhancing the development outcomes of adolescent parents and their children.

“…evidence of individual differences among subgroups of adolescent mothers is accumulating. Within a high-risk sample of African American mothers, Miller-Johnson et al. (1999) found that girls who demonstrated stable patterns of aggression in childhood were more likely to become pregnant in early adolescence and more likely to have multiple births before 19 years of age. A second group of girls became pregnant in late adolescence but functioned competently in other domains of behavior. A third group of girls were characterized by parent reports of depressive symptoms, although the adolescents themselves did not corroborate this. Confirming the relationship between aggression and early pregnancies, Underwood and colleagues (1996) also found that half of the aggressive girls in a sample of lower income, African American girls became pregnant compared to 25% of girls rated as nonaggressive. Moreover, these highly aggressive girls were more likely to belong to social groups that accepted and encouraged early risk-taking behaviors.”

 

I chose this passage because it put up some red flags for me. I read the words ‘aggressive’ and ‘girl’ in the context of early sexual activity and had to pause.

First, I am reminded of the idea that boys with leadership skills are called ‘leaders’ and girls with leadership girls are called ‘bossy’. Likewise, I would be very curious to know what were the criteria for identifying a girl as aggressive. Were they fair? I have a female African American student that I initially identified as loud, bossy, and aggressive. Then I reminded myself to listen to what she was saying so loudly. It was mostly ‘please’, ‘excuse me’, ‘may I’, and ‘thank you’. I realized that I would probably describe a boy with the same traits as outgoing and considerate.

Second, I am reminded of popular images of ‘aggressive’ girls and women. I can’t think of one that isn’t at least a little bit sexual. The cougar, the school girl attracted to her teacher, the high powered business woman in her very fitted suit, the intern that gains sway in the office with her new look, the list goes on. I can’t help but think that these ‘aggressive’ girls are more at risk for teen pregnancy because they are perceived as more sexual and more adult than their peers.

Boys | Girls

Gender Socialization & Identities, Urban Adolescents

Galley, M. (2008). Would boys and girls tend to answer differently? In M. Sadowski (Ed.), Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education (2nd Ed., pp. 85-98). Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

“boys tend to rely on nonverbal communication, which Gurian says has enormous ramifications for them in an education system that relies so heavily on conversation and words.”

“The boys she studied who were educated in single-sex classes felt that they could take more risks in class and in making friends. They reported that it felt like a release to be in classes without girls and said that they asked questions they might not have felt comfortable asking if girls had been in the room. Thus, boys were better able to express their learner identities, including being able to speak freely and take risks, in classes that did not include girls”

 

I chose these two passages because they reminded of the student I observed last Friday for my focal learner study. I noticed a lot of nonverbal communication happening between him and a teacher. It seemed to me that this was some of the most effective communication that happened between this student and teachers. The teacher was able to understand what the student needed or wanted and respond in a way that quickly refocused him on the task at hand.

I also noticed that the student’s interactions with his female classmates seemed very different from those with his male classmates. Many of the curse words I heard were reserved for conversation with female classmates and my initial reflection is that the majority of times that he yelled out in class were related to female classmates.

These initial reflections on my observations have reevaluating the value of gender segregated education. My general opinion is that it wouldn’t be beneficial because we all need to learn to get along with each other at some point. However, these reflections seem to indicate that have separate classes or schools for boys and girls could be beneficial.

Who are you?

Newcomers & Perpetual Foreigners, Urban Adolescents

Lee, S. J. (2008). The impact of stereotyping on Asian American students. In M. Sadowski (Ed.), Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education (2nd Ed., pp. 75-84). Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

“Teachers and other education professionals commonly evaluate Asian American students according to the standards of the model minority. While there is evidence that Asian Americans do well academically as a group, this lumping together of numerous Asian ethnic groups hides the variation in academic achievement across groups and among individuals. Students able to live up to the standards are held up as examples for others to follow, and those unable to meet them are deemed failed or substandard Asians. In my research on Hmong American students at a high school in the Midwest, I found educators identified many Southeast Asian American students as failing to achieve model minority performance. ‘An East Asian student might be number three in the class, going to Yale, but the Southeast Asians aren’t very motivated,’ one counselor said. Here, the ‘success’ of East Asian American (i.e., model minority) students is used against the Southeast Asian American youth to cast the latter as underachievers.”

 

I chose this passage because it serves as a great pivot point for my experiences with different populations of asian students, asian american students, and stereotypes about them. I found the counselor’s observation about Southeast Asian students very interesting because I’ve found it to be the opposite of the truth. I worked for two summers as an Upward Bound summer mentor. I was responsible for the health and happiness of high school students as they stayed in university dorms and took prep classes for 6 weeks. There is a good sized Hmong population in Northwest Arkansas where the camp took place and several of our students were Hmong. They were all hard working. But that’s not what they noticed. I noticed that despite several administrators’ attempts to somehow put these kids in the same category, their uniqueness defied it. They supported each other as immigrants or the children of immigrants in understanding differences in culture or social norms but outside of that each had their own group of friends, interests, and very different personalities. Since I’m friends with them on Facebook, I’ve gotten to watch them mature and reach their goal of going to college. They’re still united by their shared background but each has their own interest.

Before I went to Japan, I had an image of immaculately uniformed perfect students listening and quietly doing their work. Then I started my job and met class 2-2 at Toyotsu Junior High. I was warned about them but thought, how bad can they be? Think altered uniform jackets with purple silk linings and colorful buttons, dyed hair, piercing, short skirts, crazy patterned socks, sprawling desks and foul language. I walked in and they all yelled “DARE (WHO)?!?” My preconceptions were shattered. They were my favorite class. I learned a lot over the two years I spent with class 2-2. I credit them with my NSFW Japanese and a much needed reevaluation of how to approach people I don’t know anything about.

The best way is to approach them like I don’t know anything about them. Nothing. Reading this selection reminded me of that. Everyone is an individual. Cultural information can indeed be very useful, but it cannot describe or explain every individual. So every time I make a 2 second judgement a certain student pops into my mind. Chair pushed back, legs spread wide, scowling and asking who I am.