Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Understanding A New Culture
In the first chapter of the packet it explains how teachers need to gain background information of their students in order to help them progress and succeed. This not only refers to their culture but their family life as well. Not only for ELL,but for all students. I would be hesitant to ask questions and pry into their lives, which may be a sensitive subject for some. I would be afraid that many parents would become angered or frightened of me trying to take a motherly role for their child. Although I know is some cases, prying and becoming personal with the students and their families may have a huge impact on their lives. However I still fear being rejected from families and in turn becoming further away from the students.
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6 comments:
I totally understand where you are coming from Maria. My hesitation stems from knowing that I am a new teacher and constantly questioning if it is my place to delve into student lives. I think feeling rejection is always on the mind of new teachers at one time or another. We are constantly going into the unknown and I know thats where my fear creeps out!
I also can relate to your feelings. When I first started teaching preschool 2 years ago the parents would come in and tell me things about their home life or incidents that had happened the night before. At first I would think "Ok why are you telling me this?" I would never ask that out loud just think to myself "How is this important to me as your child's teacher?" As soon as I asked myself that question the answer hit me. If I can understand what is going on in the child's home life then I can better understand the child,find a more appropriate way to teach them, and be empathetic to their needs.
To give you a better example, today in the class where I'm doing my junior field a girl's glasses broke. When we couldnt fix them I handed them back to her and said don't forget to take them home so your mom can fix them. Normally I would have said parents, but I was told in the beginning of my field experiance that this girl's father had passed away and that it was still a very emotional topic for her.
There is also a boy in the class who's parents have recently divorced. The teacher was unaware of that so when the boy stopped handing in homework she thought he was just being lazy. She started reprimanding him for it and then he started crying. It finally came out that his parents were getting divorced and his house was in an upheaval, he had neither the time nor the ability to focus on homework right then and there. Had the teacher known about the home situation she would have been more empathetic to his situation.
Although i often feel like i'm prying into private lives and there are also some parents who are stand offish about telling the teacher something they may think is personal, I now know that any bit of information can be incredibly useful to you when trying to "reach" that child.
I agree about not prying or being too inquisitive. I was thinking that projects could be a good way to find some of this information out though. For example, you could have students to a project on a country that their family is from, or do a family tree listing names and where the family member is from. Any personal projects like that could supply information, but that could also be a tough project for a child who does not know their father or somethign like that.
I also agree and have the same thoughts about this topic. I absolutely believe it is important to understand your students' background information so that you may help your students out when they are slacking academically. It may be easier for a teacher to cater to a student's needs more successfully if the teacher is educated on his/her students' background. I also have this fear that parents will think that I'm "digging too deep" or that I'm "nosey" instead of realizing that I'm concerned and that I'm trying to help out. I think that Heather's idea of having your students do some type of family project would be a great supplier of personal info. and family background.
I love meeting people from different cultures but I agree that sometimes it can be scary to pry in someone's life. However, I think that if a teacher for example, approaches a parent in a friendly manner it would ease any stressful feeling. Most people like to keep to themselves and may indeed feel uncomfortable if they feel as though they are being instigated in any way. If I wanted to find out about another student's culture I would probably open up and share my cultural beliefs first. Then I would ask them and or their parents to share theirs. I think that if you approach people in a friendly and warm manner, they would openly share certain aspects of their cultural beliefs with you. Also, if you know a student is Chinese, maybe it would be ideal to go online and research a little on his or her culture so you don't appear rude in any way. I believe that if you educate yourself first, it might make it a lot easier.
I feel that I am a new teacher every year. So I have to learn the background from all of my students. It's hard to understand all new cultures but thrue the school year you learn a little bit of everything.
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