Blog Post #8 Reflection and Connections

 When reading Aria and after, I could only think of one thing. The students I see every Thursday at Webster Elementary. Almost all the students in the class speak Spanish and English and the transition between the two is often hard for them. When it comes to speaking English, they're near fluent but it is the reading and writing they struggle with more often. Rodriguez speaks about how slowly English became his primary language. I wonder how these kids feel about learning a new language and being bilingual. Will some of them transition out of Spanish and primarily use English. Will their families transition with them too? I'm trying to see this from the kids point of views and keep in mind they are only six and seven years old. I also think back to my high school days up until last semester taking Spanish and struggling to understand how to read, write, and speak the language, I tried thinking in both of those lenses to try to understand what Rodriguez went through as a kid. Language classes for me have always come as a struggle, having to read over and repeat the same few sentences and trying to figure out what words mean what. At first, it was fairly easy to understand and form basic sentences but after that, I began to struggle. I can't even imagine what it is like to have my primary language basically thrown in the trash and having to learn a completely foreign language would be awful and so to speak, English is not an easy language to learn, the grammar and pronunciations can be very difficult for one where it is not their primary language. I had friends from Germany that I went to middle school with and as well as they can speak English, some words were tricky for them and I don't blame them, some words look very different than they sound. I am very fortunate enough to not be in Rodriguez, or the kids in my class, or my friends from Germany, having their language stripped and replaced with something they didn't know. 

Attached is a pdf on what challenges to expect and tips to helping bilingual students as a teacher

Challenges for English Language Learners

Blog Post #7 Reflection & Connections

After reading Finn, especially chapter two, we can see the vast differences within our schools depending on the general social class of the community. At first glance, you can assume that executive elite school students will perform better because of resources, but it goes beyond that. There are other factors that go into how these kids succeed in different schools. For a working-class school, you are at the bottom of the educational food chain you could say. These schools have very limited resources and educators. These teachers also do not get paid enough and not speaking for all, but some do it majorly for the money and in conclusion, think they can treat students rather harshly speaking to them in a more aggressive demeanor. This is also because the working-class schools are designed so you can get working-class jobs and the same goes for the middle class and the executive elites. These schools and their wealth project you the student into getting similar jobs in that pay range. The schools with fewer resources like the working class and in some case, the middle class are limited in the resources and education they can teach. And as for the affluent and elite schools, they can teach this same knowledge but more complex and expand it because they have the proper books and sources to do so. They also have educators who do not speak to them and demand them to do anything but are polite and if the students do not wish to learn it is "Up to them" because no matter what, those kids aren't going to financially struggle most likely. Usually these elite schools are either in very wealthy neighborhoods or private/boarding schools while public schools rely on the community and their incomes. On average, a kid in the state of Rhode Island costs $16,587 in public schools and with these more elite private schools with tuition as much as $60,000 like St. Georges School in Middletown, RI, those students are going to have an easier way to obtain knowledge and better yet, more of it and with the right resources and educators, tutors, etc. From my own experiences in school, My schools have been generally working-class/middle class as our city (Newport) has a financially diverse community. Typically we have had to return resources to teachers so they can use them in other classes as well as limited to access to computers for a while until chromebooks were then dispersed. I wouldn't say I was limited in my knowledge but there is so much more that I have learned since then and have expanded off topics I knew so little about.

Below is a link that further explains the inequity in education and the decreasing budgets for schools.

American University School of Education

Video Analysis Papers