Literature journal 2

Double Entry Journal- Chapter 2:  Children and Teachers in the Classroom

Kimberly Artman- August 25, 2012

     Teachers have a challenge to meet the needs of many diverse learners.  The way students learn is to feel that the knowledge being taught is applicable to their lives and it is presented in an exciting manner in which to engage their natural curiosity.  To know the background of the students is to know the students.  How do teachers know their students?  Various forms of information can be obtained through the school system, class work, parent meetings, anecdotal records, and simple observation techniques as Farris suggests in the second chapter.   “Children’s differences make the classroom interesting and teaching challenging” (pg. 44) and learning these differences can effectively guide the curriculum for similar students.  Children that come from a middle white class family may have a different background than that of a lower class African American family. Moreover their dialects may differ even within the same social group.  For instance Spanish speakers have the challenge of learning English but have an additional hurdle with someone trying to translate the information in a different dialect or geographical location.  As teachers we must realize the needs of each child and try to help them grow to the best of their abilities.  We can do that by being flexible, creating a safe and inviting environment, welcoming diversity, and creating lessons that hit different learning styles in the class.

     I have a funny story relating to the flexibility of lesson plans one day as I was teaching at a school close to the Mexican border.  I was fortunate enough to have an assistant that spoke fluid Spanish and I thought that was all I needed.  Other teachers had also informed me that most of the kids spoke English and that I wouldn’t really need to taper my lessons ( I go to this small town each Friday and have since learned my own abilities to teach a lesson to ELL students).  The day I am talking about was at the beginning of my teaching career and I was overly excited to present the visual arts lessons I had prepared.  My assistant was prepared to interpret the lesson but was new to the visual arts field.  The upper grades went relatively well.  I started out slow (I thought) and introduced the basic elements of art… line, shape, color, texture, value, and form.  The day switched tones when the kindergarten class came in.  They all stared at me with these big eyes.  I introduced the lesson and started talking about the 3 primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.  I asked my assistant to translate and she could translate the colors in Spanish but didn’t know the typical art vocabulary like primary, secondary, tint, hue, etc.  so we called the front desk to see if the secretary knew.  She didn’t.  She called the other teachers around that were fluid in Spanish and they drew a blank as well.  In the mean time I am standing in front of the class with a bunch of bewildered students.  I started to doodle on the board and the students responded in Spanish what I was drawing.  I drew a horse (caballo), a cat (gato), and a house (casa) and would try to say the names after the kids would shout the answer out.  I wasn’t very good and the children giggled and tried to help me sound out the words.  They would say “nooooo” and laugh hard.  I never got the answer to my question on art terms but spent the rest of the day learning my primary and secondary colors in Spanish (I still trip up on “anaranjardo” which means orange).  At the end of the day I was laughing as well.  I asked my assistant why the children kept yelling “maestra” and raising their hands.  She giggled and said “maestra means teacher in Spanish”.  Teachers learn something new every day.… at least I hope they do.