Prompt 2-Shor

The linguistic, ethnic and social cultural characteristics of the students which I am tutoring are mostly African American and Hispanic. Many of the students are at or below the poverty level. There are only 9 girls and 17 boys. According to my teacher, last year it was the complete opposite. She also has a student with a disability. He is really a good kid but has problems focusing. I have worked with him on reading and it was very difficult to keep his attention. I tried everything I could think of to help him stay focused. As far as ethnicity goes, the student’s names are very different. Some of the parents took a word, spelled it backwards and that was the name that went of the birth certificate. There is also a classroom dedicated to ESL, although according to info works, only 16% of the students are in an ESL class. Since I am in a classroom with 26 students, she told me that one day she will send me to another classroom and observe the ESL class. She said it is a very different way of teaching. Sounds interesting to me, so I’m kind of looking forward to that. I have also learned a lot about the students just by being there, for example, how they talk, their manners, how they dress, how they wear their hair. It was just a little insight into their lives. My teacher has told me about some of the students and where they come from. Some are obvious and some things are not obvious. Just by being in the classroom for two hours each visit they teach me more and more. Cultural capital is what my teacher tries to instill in these kids. They are very well behaved for the most part. There is always an outburst here and there but my teacher knows how to contrast it. She has complete control over class. She tries to give the students what they need. Some need more help than others. There is one student that does not come to school all the time because she lives in a shelter. So my teacher does what she can to help the student keep up in the classroom. When it’s time to teach the students there daily reading lessons, sometimes I take the students that need more help into the hallway and do a different exercise with them. Such as using the whisper phone, which is an ingenious. It really helped the students who have trouble sounding out words to do so. Assets that can develop to strengthen our society are that if children have a good education and good ways of knowing how to carry themselves they will go farther in life. Showing them that they can do anything is a way our society will grow and become better. A theorist that this prompt reminds me of is Ira Shor, because he was all about empowering education. School is about the students and helping them to learn for when they go out into society. He also speaks of socialization which the students learn from being in a classroom setting. These students are going to be the future and they need to be motivated learners. We can help them be motivated by science experiments, playing educational games and language as Shor states, "Language intrigues children."