After reading the articles for this week, the articles that stood out to me the most were the ones about urban settings. Because my placement is in an urban school, and because it is so different from the schools I attended growing up, I try to pay close attention to any literature on urban classrooms. The Scott article, “Effective Literacy Instruction for Urban Children” in particular was interesting to me. One main section of the article discussed the needs of the children in the urban learning environment. These needs include emotional support, exposure, and changes in attitude toward education. This section visibly relates to my placement classroom and relates perfectly to this week especially. This week in my classroom we have been dealing with one student in particular that is refusing to do schoolwork and displaying very unusual behavior. My teacher has been talking with the student and the principal to try to determine what is going on, but it has been a struggle. I have talked with the student also, and this change in behavior may be because of something going on at home. This article says that certain students in these settings often “enter school with a defeated spirit” and that these students need “support by being compassionate enough to look at each child individually and realistically, to communicate genuine care and concern for the student, and to help the students move past emotional issues being dealt with at home”. This student has been told that it does not matter to whom, but they must tell someone if something is wrong. It is so important to let a child know that you are there for them if they need something and providing emotional support. While working with this student one-on-one today to try to encourage him to do some work, he told some details about him home life and I realized just how important it is to listen to your students and be there for them. The article discussed how it is easy to assume these students are lazy and do not want to do their work, when in reality there could be so much more behind their behavior in school and things going on in their home life you do not know about.
I have always said that two of the greatest struggles a teacher has is classroom management and making sure you are addressing all your students despite variation of ability. In all classrooms you will have a wide range of abilities and children on different levels. In my placement classroom the range of ability is huge. I have noticed a lot of splitting into groups, one-on-one help for struggling students, and extra extension projects assigned to advanced students as ways of addressing all students and their needs in the classroom. It can be very hard to make sure you are addressing all students and I think this is one of the major struggles a teacher has throughout his/her career.
I'm not sure if you have seen the movie "Precious" that came out in 2009 but it literally deals with these exact kinds of problems. Precious is a girl who has grown up in Harlem, has two children from her sexually abusive father and has contracted AIDS. She is struggling to read at the age of 16 and enters school. The film is overwhelmingly powerful and perhaps the emotional climax for Precious comes when she is in class and is forced to write by a teacher who painfully shares her understanding. Muddling past everything the teacher continues to prompt Precious to just keep writing even though the girl is inconsolably sobbing.
ReplyDeletePrecious is just like the students that Scott talks about in this article. They come from a variety of homes with multiple different challenges that each of them have either faced in the past or are facing in the present. I think you hit the nail right on the head when you said in your blog above: "This article says that certain students in these settings often 'enter school with a defeated spirit' and that these students need 'support by being compassionate enough to look at each child individually and realistically, to communicate genuine care and concern for the student, and to help the students move past emotional issues being dealt with at home'". In order to bring articles like this to life I think it should be mandatory for the college of ed to show the movie "Precious" even though it is upsetting, graphic and depressing.