Just by looking around the classroom I visit every week, it is very easy to see how ethinically diverse the classroom is. There is a variety of students ranging from African-American, Hispanic and Causcasian children throughout the classroom. However I had predicted, using what other people had said about the school prior to my visits, that there would not be many Caucasian students and I was very wrong. There is about an equal number of children from each of the above mentioned ethnic backgrounds.
From what I can tell in my group of students that I tutor, English is a second language for many of the students in the classroom. In my group, two out of the three students I meet with speak Spanish at home. And the other student speaks English at home, but sometimes will speak Portugese at a relative's house. Even though these students do not use English as their primary language, their speaking, reading and comprehension skills using the English language is actually quite good. Now, I do not know if this is because they have picked up the skills throughout the school year or if it is due to actually understanding the words. Either way, I am starting to see improvement from the first week in each of my students and it is really great to see this improvement. :)
As far as I can tell from the students in my group in relation to the term cultural capital, it seems that the students do not come from well-educated and financially stable families. From what I have heard from the students I tutor, it seems to me that they come from families with young parents. For example (and not to reveal too much about the family lives of my students), one of my students seemed very tired and when I asked him why he was so tired today, his response was that he was so tired because his mother went out the night before and did not come pick him up until almost three in the morning. Now, whether this student exaggerated or not is one thing, but he was extremely tired and his story (told in more detail to me) made sense. In my opinion, if this student came from a well-educated and financially stable family, he would not have been up so late at night.
Overall, I am enjoying my experience working with these children. I have a question, and hopefully one of you can help me with this, but is anyone else having issues keeping control over their students? Sometimes they get riled up and one starts walking away and the others are off in their own worlds and I feel as though I cannot do too much because I am not the authority in the classroom and I feel like I would overstep my boundaries. Can anyone relate/help?!
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Great observation. It is interesting how you will find out information about student from the student him/her self, it can be really interesting to keep trak of your interrogations on what they say and ask the teacher when the opportunity arises about these students. Your last question is capital. Please bring it up in class!
ReplyDeleteHi Katelyn,
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this problem as well, since we have three autistic kids in our class and sometimes there are not enough people to handle them all. I talk to my teacher during the kids' lunch for a half an hour every week, and we talk about this a lot. Here's my advice to you: if the kids are walking in the hall and they seem to be straying away, you can take their hand and lead them back to the line; if the kids are doing something together (washing hands, getting in line, going to sit in the reading circle, anything like that), then I would also take them by the hand and lead them to where they should be going. If they are just playing though, and they are not endangering any other child or themselves, and they seem to be off in their own world, I would let the teacher decide when to step in. Although you are a tutor, most teachers could use all the help they can get, so they would most likely be more than happy if you helped when the kids are acting wild. I hope I answered your question!
Amy
Great feed back from Amy!
ReplyDeleteHi Katelyn,
ReplyDeleteI understand what you are going through,because we are students ourselves we kind of feel funny teling children what they can and cannot do. I had this happen to me last week when the kids were acting like I was their recess break. I went to the teacher and asked what should I do when the students get like this and so told me,"from day one you have to nip it in the bud", or they will eat you up. My instructor puts it out on the table for me, she says, this is how it is so take controll right awat. I'm not seaying your instructor is going to say the same thing but ask him or her you might be surprised how much they trust the students from V.I.P. Let me know how you make out, Ed Angell
Hey Katelyn,
ReplyDeleteSorry about the spelling mistakes,trying to go to fast, but if you could read my blog and give me some advise on my Prompt3 and see if you think I should have used a different prompt. I'm kind of having problems putting my blogs with the prompts. Thanks, Ed Angell
Thanks Amy and Ed for the feedback! It really helps me out when I hear what everyone else in the class goes through :)
ReplyDeleteKatelyn :)
Hi Katelyn,
ReplyDeleteI can also relate to your issue because sometimes the students in my classroom arent always the best behaved either. Sometimes they'll just walk away when im trying to work with them or even get to loud. There's two groups in my class and the teacher takes half and ill take the other half and then we'll switch off, and if im working with a student indivdually the other students will start to get loud, then the teacher just yells at them to be quiet. Though, sometimes i try to catch it before she takes over and yells at them like ill tell them to settle down and "lets get our work done so we can play a game!" And that works ...most of the time. But i would agree with what Ed said and ask the teacher, that seems like the best thing because they may have a different method of doing things.