This weeks readings really got me thinking because all of the topics seem to play a part in my placement classroom. With the first reading about "Opening Quality Lines of Communication..." I love the idea of having the parents explain how they see their children. In my placement classroom something very similar to this is done, however this year my CT has found that what the parents write and what she sees as the teacher are slightly different things. An idea I had is to have the parents do something like the article explained a couple times a year, possibly before conferences so the different "letters" can be compared.
Being a special education major the topic of English Language Learners (ELL) comes up often. This article was very overwhelming just because it is still something I am not comfortable with as a future teacher. What I did find particularly helpful was how the article shared common mistakes teachers with ELL in their mainstream classrooms make. Sometimes it is better to learn what NOT to do in situations than hear only one method. Something I connected the ideas from the article with was this idea of individualized education. It seems that this is something every student could benefit from, not just ELL or students with some type of disability.
Perhaps the most interesting piece we read this week was about the use of code switching in the classroom. I see this too in my placement class as many of the students use what some call and African American dialect. It is also something that is talked about in many of my formal teacher education classes and linguistic classes I have taken. Within my placement class the teacher seems to have the rule that as long as the students are doing informal peer-to-peer interaction she lets any "incorrect" grammar go un-noted. However when she is teacher a lesson or the students are sharing ideas at circle time, once their thought is said she goes back and clarifies with and depending on the way the student spoke originally, she may have them repeat it.
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Meryl,
I love your idea about having parents re-evaluate their children through out the year. I think that teachers are always going to see a different side of students than what the parents see but it would be interesting to see if the parents thought that their students changed throughout the year- not only in academics but also in personality, like confidence levels, social skills etc.
Also, African American dialect is used all the time in my placement class because my CT is African American. She never corrects students for speaking “incorrectly” or informally and many of the times she uses the dialect in the classroom. I think this makes is kind of difficult for the Caucasian students in my classroom- they’re not used to it and are easily confused. Sometimes I wish she would correct students, like your teacher does.
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