2nd Tutoring Session

This was my second tutoring session with E. I decided to go with her to a room close to the classroom. I brought paper and crayons. I asked her to draw me a picture of something that she likes to do. She drew a picture of the outdoors and said she likes to play. After that, I couldn't get her to draw anymore. She said a few times that she thought her teacher was coming. It was difficult to communicate with her. Sometimes, when I would say things she would respond back in a few English words and then mumble a few words in Chinese. She began to point to another place in the room where there were other art supplies and a few games. I asked her if she wanted to play a game, and she said yes. So she picked out a game with lots of little animal cards. We took turns flipping over the animal cards. As she flipped them over, I would say each one. After a while she would attempt to copy me and also say the words. I pointed the penguin out to her and told her that this was my favorite animal. She giggled and smiled and then told me the monkey was her favorite.
Although I felt like I didn't accomplish very much in this tutoring time, I know that it is important that I build a relationship with E first. My only fear is that with the short amount of time I have with her this semester, it may take most of the semester to build that trust. I think it will have to be a continuing process of learning to communicate and understand each other while gaining her trust. I think that although she does need help learning to read, it may serve her well to practice communicating orally first. I would like to spend time talking about things with her and hopefully increasing her ability to speak in English. I was thinking that perhaps allowing her the opportunity to teach me some Chinese might also help her get a better understanding of English words. We could partner together in learning, because I am sure many times she feels as if people think she is stupid. This would give her a sense of being the expert that Lisa Delpit talks about. I can tell that she knows just as much as any other child, just not in English. It is important in the future that I continue to remember that not being able to speak English is definitely not a sign that the child is not intelligence.

A White Man's World (Well, country)

I cringe at the very title that I have chosen for this post. There are so many questions that I have, so many things that bother me, but so few answers. How is it fair that in order to be successful children of other cultures most learn to speak our dialect of "Standard English"? Even speaking of this I am irritated in the fact that I consider it our dialect. There is no denying I am a part of that culture where somehow, despite people's intentions, it seems to be set up for people of other cultures to fail. We say we want the same education for everyone's children, but in doing that we are setting the trap for the very thing we are trying to avoid. There is no perfect method. There is no practice that is going to meet the need of every child. It can't be done. A child will be left behind. Yet, somehow the immensity of this problem stands before me and I chose to face it.

I have come to the conclusion that in order to help my students and truly understand them, I must first admit that I don't. I must admit that I am a part of "the culture of power". Do I sometimes despise myself for that very thing? Yes. All the same, I simply must accept it and move on. I may not understand my students, because I have not grown up like them. I may try to be culturally sensitive and in the process demonstrate that my knowledge of the culture is nearly inconsequential. In my life, I have had the privilege of being understood by my teachers and understanding them, yet my students may not have the same experience. As I read through this book, I desperately sought answers to my questions on how to overcome my problem, or in a sense my culture. Then I had to stop, realizing that I am exhibiting the very thing in my life that I am trying to avoid. Whether I like it or not, I am a part of this culture and I've got to stop treating my culture as if it is a problem. Does my culture have problems? Oh yes. But the culture itself is not the problem, in fact, it is a part of who I am. So I simply must begin my discovering my own biases, do my best to understand others, and realize that I will never know or learn it all. I cannot change who I am and neither can my students.

The first thing that I found myself doing as I read this book, is trying to figure out what perfect method this author could give me. I struggled, toggling and attempting to balance what I thought about learning skills and learning processes. Then the author's conclusion begin to surface. This is a false dichotomy. I don't have to choose one of these as a best method. I have to find a way to synthesize these to best fulfill the needs of many students. I must accept these students backgrounds, but also accept the responsibility to teach in a way they understand. I can't give up because it's hard. Everything must be taught in a meaningful way, whether it is a skill or a process. Children must become experts, but they need our help to do it.

Communication can be the most difficult part of communicating across cultures. Each culture constructs meaning in a different way. As I reflect on this, I was attempting to decide how I construct meaning in my own communication efforts. I am a story teller. I love to tell people stories. I love to explain things through examples. Although, I do believe that we as humans are frequently story oriented, some people don't understand my approach of communication . I may describe a scene, an object, or an event in order to explain to someone what God has been teaching me in my life. To other people, I am simply abstractly talking about stair cases or cups. How we tell our stories can differ. I believe as a future teacher, I must learn to listen to story the way the storyteller him or herself would listen to it. In successfully communicating with me, their teacher, I hope that my students would begin to gain confidence in knowing that they have meaning, they have an expertise, and they have been understood. I don't believe that every student will always be understood. Some children come with an unfair advantage of already understanding the code that I speak, but by taking the time to communicate in a way that is relevant to the culture, it is one small part of a bridge being built between the chasm of our two cultures.

Today I went to school for the first time to meet with E. I'll be honest, I was a little frightened of meeting this supposed feisty five year old. After talking with Mrs. McVicker, I found out that besides being somewhat of a difficult student at times, she also has two other tutors who are fluent in Mandarin. I don't speak Chinese, and although I might be able to learn a few words, it's slightly impossible for me to learn it quickly enough to tutor in Chinese. How am I as a non-Chinese speaking tutor really going to help this little girl? The more I thought on this, the more I realized that this could be me in the future. God put me here for reason, and there is obviously something for me to do, although I may not see it right now.
The first session was mainly a time for observing and just allowing her to become comfortable with me. All predispositions aside, my first impression of her is that she is a very sweet girl. She sits quietly during most of class, but answers with short answers when she's spoken to. As I was observing, I was also helping pass out supplies for a paper the children were working on. When I passed a piece of construction paper to E for the second time, she gently tapped me and said, "Me. My name is E." She also pointed profusely at her name tag for me to look at. She smiled up at me very excited to make a new friend. I found it very interesting that although she did not speak much English, she was the first child to attempt to introduce herself to me. Perhaps she simply wanted to make herself known to me, or maybe she remembered me from when I was briefly introduced to her earlier in the week. As I watched E, I noticed that her interactions with the other children were very normal. The other children seemed to like her and would laugh with her and talk with her. I could tell immediately through the body language and interaction which girls she seemed to be friends with. Later in the day, she was working at a station where she could cut and glue paper and draw on it. I was watching her create a picture with her papers and decided to ask her about it. On her paper she had drawn a sad person and a happy person and then put a cross underneath it. When I asked her what she had made, she told me that the cross was Jesus and that the person was her. She was sad, but now she smiles. When I asked her why, she said Jesus. I then smiled and asked her, "Do you like Jesus?" She smiled a large smile and nodded her head. I smiled back at her and said, "Me too." She then smiled at me again.
This is only the beginning of my experiences with E. I am still learning how to apply what I have been learning to what I will be doing with her. However, she has already won my heart. I think that since this trust has hopefully been established, tutoring will be a bit easier. It keeps coming to my mind that E is a whole child, she has cognitive, physical, and social-emotional needs that must be met. I think that by establishing a relationship I will be able to meet as many of these needs with her as possible. Next week, I would like to hopefully spend some time finding out what her interests are and building on those if possible, as well as maybe doing some reading to start off. I believe I will gain more insight after my second session with her. I would like to find out more about her culture and how I can make what we're doing relevant to her. Here's to an adventure with a child who has already captured my heart.

I hope this book wrecks my philosophy...

What does it mean to be a good educator? As a future educator, I have consistently been asking myself this very question as I sift my way through a college education. At times I must take a step back and wonder, are all these methods and strategies that are constantly being thrown at me really going to be what I use in the long run? I see a great disconnect between what I am being taught and what I see when I enter a classroom. Teachers are being sucked away from what they know is best by the whirlwinds of standardized testing. A good educator desires to do what is best for every child. However, we often settle for what is the common good. The majority of our students are from a certain class or race or other group, so we determine that it is best to do what will suit the majority. Are the other children in our classroom really getting the opportunities they deserve? In Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children many of these questions come to the surface. As I question and reflect on the points she makes, I first begin to think about the title in itself. What does it mean to me to teach other people's children? First of all, I have to wonder at thinking about them as "other people's". Automatically, my mind turns towards people who are "other" than myself, such as those of a different ethnicity. The more I reflect on this the more I must think that I should come to view these children as if they were my children and learn to know what they need in the same way. The educational system that we have grown up in and are a part of reflects the values of our predominately white culture, or at least predominately white in the educational world. When our nation contains so many different ethnicities, cultures, and races, how can our educational culture still remain so heavily influenced by middle class white people? I believe that to an extent I have been blinded to the cultural bias I myself have. I must find a way to uncover these biases and learn from them. I have much to learn in this area and books like this tend to wreck my life, my philosophy, and my view point, in a good way. I have a feeling that reaching each child in my classroom is a much bigger task than writing a few adaptations at the bottom of my lesson plan. As I learn, I can only hope to question everything that I've been told in order to gain a better understanding of how I can care for all the children in my classroom.