Prompt 3 - The Assessment *

Theorist Connection: Jonathan Kozol

The students in my class consist of mostly spanish speaking children. There is one white child who speaks english and only knows spanish because of what people teach the child. The teacher I work with is a white male who is very strict with his students. We start math as soon as I get there and the teacher checks over there behavioral report for the day and then gives the kids "Browne Bucks" so they can buy cookies and/or fruits from him for being good. He gets angry when the kids talk out of turn or get out of their desks without permission. When the students begin to talk in spanish, he quickly corrects them and tells them that this is an English math class and they must speak english. He does try to understand them and he doesn't mind if the kids talk to eachother in Spanish, but when it comes to learning everything must be English. He has come to me a few times to translate what one of the children was saying because they just moved to this country. I feel like he tries to talk to the kids and make them understand what he is teaching. He does take more time with certain children and if they struggle during practice problems he will send them to me. I feel like the white child in the classroom does feel a little left out of the conversations of the kids who are speaking in Spanish though. When the teacher puts the kids into pairs, he has to pick them because a lot of the kids don't really want to work with the other child who doesn't speak Spanish fluently. Browne Elementary school is deeply segregated and a lot of the kids seem like they don't come from good homes.

I related this prompt with Jonathan Kozol because he talks about how our schools are so deeply segregated and we need to do something to help them become integrated. As well as getting the students integrated they should find teachers like I said before who can speak their primary languages so they don't struggle too much. If we integrate our schools then more students would also maybe have a chance of doing better and they would be around other children of different races so that when there is that one white child they don't feel like they are left out because there would be a lot more white students.