Why can't she remember that?

"Why can't she remember that?" The importance of storybook reading in a multilingual, multicultural classrooms by Terry Meier is a reading that focuses on the encounters teachers face every year with having young students who have little book reading expierences, and do not have gardens who read to them either.  The reading gave me many situations and solutions for normal classroom experiences. For instance when the bilingual prekindergarten Gabriela spoke her mind about how did not remember the answers to the questions she has previously asked in the past to the students, while reading i finally realized why the article was called " Why can't she remember that". Gabriela didn't answer the teacher's question when she asked how many mittens there were, therefore the teacher assumed that she did not know the answer and that she may need more help in the english language vocabulary department. Little did the teacher know that Gabriela did know the answer she just didnt understand why the teacher was asking it again, in Gabriela's house the teacher looked like she was the one who needed extra help.  My connection to this story would be when Cherrie Moraga (1983) described her earliest experience of the power of language when she remembered her mother and her paints gossiping and laughing iin spanish and in english n the kitchen drinking "cerveza". I also had the exact experience as a child, the stories i would hear and sometimes be present for while sitting on one of my aunts laps, would be about our family members , friends, boyfriends of theirs or ex's. Although the conversations were educational they the importance of those oral stories will forever be in my memory. Growing up , my mom decided to go back to school when her and my father divorced when i was about 3 years old. She went to CCRI and graduated with her associates degree. My mom got really involved with certain departments on campus like the testing and advising center, she even worked there as student help. She now has been working for the testing center and is the yea dog the testing department for CLEP test and ACT exams and ect. My mom may not have had time to read me story books when I was in kindergarten or pre k but Just like Gabriela, I still understood when teachers would repeat themselves and reread certain books and ask questions that they already had asked the first and second time. Thankfully my teacher didn't do that often, only when a book was chosen yb popular demand by the class for story time. After reading this story i think about how maybe if my mom did enforce books and set time aside to read to me or to make me read a certain amount of time a day i would maybe enjoy reading a little more but now I am in college and reading is a huge part of most class assignments. I hope that when i become a spanish teacher i will be helpful to students who may not have the support at home to enforce reading as much as they should. Reading only makes you a better person, it shows different verities of vocabulary that aren't used in the daily conversation, i even read certain words here that i had never seen before, for example ;Ubiquitous?

The Silenced Dialogue

In "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children", By Lisa Delpit, the issues of certain teacher's styles on educating their students, don't have the same affect on every child like black children. Different style of teaching don't work the same on everyone because of their backgrounds and life style at home. When one of the parent's voiced their opinion as to why their child was getting in trouble in class because they "weren't obeying the teacher", the parent simply told the teacher to order the student on what to do because that is how the parents runs their house hold. I thought this was eye opening because to be completely honest this reading was not that interesting to me personally until i started to read real life examples like this ones. The black student that was getting in trouble because they weren't listing to the teacher because their way of teaching was not harsh enough seems familiar to me. I have been in classrooms in elementary school where there would be a nice  friendly teacher who had no control over the classroom because they were too nice. Ofcourse students took advantege of this teacher because they knew the teacher would never yell or order them around. Until one day this teacher all of sudden started sending kids to the principals office because they didn't want to deal with the children's behaviors. And guess what, all of these students were either hispanic or black. And it came time for the parent teach meeting and the principal meetings the parents would just tell the etcher, "just be more strict with them, thats how i am at home and thats how you have to get things done". At the time the students in trouble would always talk about what happened during lunch or after school thats how i know what was said in these conversations. Some of my friends in elementary school wouldn't obey the teachers but once i went over their houses, their parents were like drill sergeants. Now that i think about it, maybe the teaching methods of white teacher aren't as affective to black students because they are taught to respect their parents no mater what that they feel like their obedience is to their parents not the easy going push over white teacher. Maybe they are taught or maybe trained to obey orders so that when they are faced with a strict teacher in the future, they are ready and not taken back because they have had such an easy life at home where no one has told them what to do and only asked them if they want to do something. I can not stand when some teachers ask the class " should we begin  ?" or " how do you guys feel about a quiz this friday" and expect the respect from their classroom because they're trying to be nice and get the class to like them. NO. You are the deachr who holds the degree in education and has worked hard to get a teaching job, you should NOT be asking the class if they want to do something , you are the teacher ! the teacher has the power to control the classroom in whatever way they want to, whether they want to be push overs and have their students in things in late and come to class late or even skip class without being penalized then thats their choice. But if a teacher who takes pride into wanting to educated their students make them learn then they don't ask their students what they want, they don't give them suggestions, they tell them what they expect and hopefully each student can fufil the teachers expectations. I love having honorable,  strict, old school teachers who teach by the book. The orderly directions and deadline due assignments make me want that power of having the power to teach for instance in my case spanish, to kids and have them learn it the right way and not let them slack off , my teaching methods will be suitable for all types of cultures. When the two black students described the "boring" teacher I got bored just reading the paragraph. I had an art teacher once in high school who just let the class " free our minds and communicate through drawings". she didn't really teach us how to draw things properly or what drawing utensils were essential for certain types of paper and what not. Then my senior year i had a very strict art teacher who took attendee every day on time,  gave homework every night, and gave each student one on one attention and even when she didn't the directions she would give the class on what to do for our assignments were so detailed, almost no one had questions because we were directed so well by this teacher and her teaching style. And when i read the paragraph about the black student who had the strict teacher, it made me excited to be that type of teacher one day. One that makes her studies get into the lessons and participate because participation is what gets the students really involved in the teachings  and it also gives the students that little "push" to speak their mind after lets say, reading a paragraphs in a book that the whole class is reading together, just different kids are being called on to read certain parts, a teacher can approach the student by asking them if they want to read the 2nd paragraph. By asking that student , the student now has the choice to say yes or no and if they say no, the teacher has to ask another student and the process could go on for a while and get now where . Now if the teacher's style wasn't as laid-back and easy going, the teacher could call on a student and say " alexi continue on to read the second paragraph where Rachel left off". That is not being order, it is being structurally to the students and not asking them if they want to participate.

I hope that when we are all in the teaching field and have steady jobs at institutions we don't have to deal with silenced dialog. By reading this story, I personally think all the bright students in this class will take into consideration on how to handle their future classrooms. After reading this story i surly know that when i teach a certain way and someone has something to say or contribute, i will not silence them or not acknowledge their opinion.