This week I started a new job working with Kindergarten class at a local school here and as I observe the school and its culture and each of the students, I can't seem to organize all of my questions and thoughts, but I hope that I can sort through a few here.
I've been doing my fieldwork at an IB Junior High known for its high population of minority and at-risk students-- openly and obviously the school with the greatest diversity in the city. The elementary school I am working at is also an IB school, but certainly does not have the diversity of the Jr. High.
Each day, there are parent volunteers in the class, helping with small groups and classroom management. Earlier this week, I was grading some homework and overheard one such parent talking to the teacher about her 5 or 6 year old son, who is "getting confused because he is reading too many chapter books at a time." There are two students in the class who came in without knowing any English-- it is exciting to hear them saying two and three word sentences now. You can pick out the girl who is the socialite-- always organizing relationships, always seeming to know just the right thing to say. There are the kids who may be a bit developmentally delayed. The student who is in constant need of attention-- not getting in trouble, just being a bit disruptive. Even in Kindergarten, you have the social structure. You see immediately the kids who have everything, the students (I will repeat in kindergarten) discussing who has their own phones.
I have to confess my own bias, my own tendency to get angry or judge. I was one of those kids who had support from my parents-- I was a child who had access to books, reading, writing, learning at home. But I don't like kids like that because I wonder if they will ever learn to see the kids who don't have it. I hate to see it when students are saving seats for each other at snack time for reasons outside of true, heartfelt companionship. I hate it when children fight over who gets to sit next to one particular student. Sometimes I walk into a class of kids and one of the girls will look up at me with her big, adoring eyes and say, "I think you're pretty." (Trust me, it's happened more than once). And although I want to be open and approachable, I never want to be liked or admired just for that. We have this system in our society that seems to build in admiration for surface while the marginalized get lost.
I don't know what to do with this cumbersome thing that is division. I suppose I just need to give up on "fairness," but I hate this group of privileged elite that don't see that disadvantaged that are there, ten feet away. This sense of disconnect between the haves and have-nots.
Even in the two days that I've been spending time with this young class, it is impressed upon me the reality that this is the place where these children are being introduced to society and the way the world works on the most primary levels. These kids are learning not only how to read and write, but social realities, hierarchies and norms. Kindergarten is the place where children are beginning to see how the world works. And I just wonder, how much of that social education is colored by the academic aspect of learning. Will the students who have parents to give them extra worksheets at home ever learn that this does not have to create a distinction between them and the other human beings in the classroom who may happen to only have access to books at school.
Do the students who ride the bus home have the opportunity to be known by the students whose parents are actively involved in their schooling and are there to pick them up each day?
I was thinking today as I noticed the brand new TV and DVD player present in the kindergarten class how different this IB school is from the IB Junior High that I am at in the morning, with old technology and awkward classrooms. I found it slightly jarring to realize firsthand the inequality between schools within this small city, within schools that both proudly adhere to the standards of IB. How different things are. As I looked at these two wonderfully creative spanish-speaking girls sitting on the floor, disoriented by a room full of language they hardly know, I almost felt sick to my stomach thinking about how unfair it is. Struggling not to be angry at these precious, intelligent children, who do not even understand the gifts they've been given in parents who can afford to focus on them.
I have been struck by the reality of what it must do to a child to be thrown into a school without understanding the language. What a disadvantage they have. While the other students are struggling with cutting, gluing, handwriting, these ESL kids are dealing with language. I watch them as the class sits in a circle listening to stories and having discussions, and hope that their eyes will somehow loose their gloss, that somehow they will be able to understand and engage. What brilliantly intelligent kids these are! And how heart wrenching it is to be unable to connect to it-- how tragic it is to hardly know the sound of their voices.
Although I am not planning to teach at the elementary level (although that may change) being able to be a part of this class has been wonderful in its display of the earliest foundation laid for students in education. This is the place where we get to see exactly how much of a head-start students have or how difficult the road is going to be ahead for them. It is exhilarating and heartwrenching, all at the same time.
I still have this question though-- what do you do with the inequality? How do you, as a teacher, help students keep from walking over each other or feeling the invisibility imposed by prior knowledge or intelligence? How do you help intelligent students understand there is more to them than what they know? How do you keep advantaged students from separating themselves from those who could benefit from their experience? How do you set up a community of learning in your classroom that bridges the gaps between those with resources and those who simply have less? How do you communicate to the marginalized, the disadvantaged that they are wonderful and brilliant, just like everyone? How can you empower them, even as 5 and 6 year olds-- to be all that they can be? Is it really possible to teach a system that does not place value on what you know, but rather creates a community where everyone has beauty and value? Here-- an even bigger question-- how do you help those parents who are involved in their children's education see that they may be perpetuating system in which some students are getting marginalized? How can we get parents to be resources for other students who may not have that same parental support rather than encouraging their children only to build relationships with other students who are like them, with kids whose parents they may know because they are at school too.
So, ther are a few of the same old questions that are still there, waiting. Lurking in the shadows. What do you do when you can see it, but human beings are a bit more complex than a simple fix?
I've been thinking this week that maybe the challenge/ struggle/ intrigue of teaching is the breadth of complexity there are in human beings and teachers are the people who get to sort all that out. We are the people to try to make at least a little bit of sense out of what makes a person become who they are and then jump right in the middle of the mess. Its a paradox of love and hate-- exhilaration and difficult, difficult struggle. Am I up to the challenge? Oh, Lord, I hope so.
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