Blog Post # 4
September 20, 2018
Memo Blog Post # 4
Allowing Our Wounds to Breathe
Emotions and Critical Pedagogy (Chapter 3)
This week’s reading chapters focuses on making sense of the role emotions play in critical pedagogy and also on the transformation that teachers and students experience relationship that goes above and beyond the classroom setting.
Stephanie Jone’s chapter 3 explains how a 3rd grade student name Brooke was able to share a moment of mutual respect and understanding with her teacher. Brooke was able to articulate the truth about life and what living as a child felt like outside of school. As I read page 37, I immediately noticed that the student was deeply searching for a healthy, open teacher and student relationship. According to Jones, the teacher felt that “at this pedagogical moment I found myself vulnerable, open minded, standing at the age of new possibilities with this child” (Jones page 37).
The teacher was so focused on her teaching business and because for that reason, she overlooked the student’s “distance and detachment” (Jones p37). After Brooke and her teacher had a teacher-student sharing moment, both teacher and student were able to welcome a two way communication channel; which resulted in a healthy respectful relationship.
Jones writes about brooke’s teacher “In Previous years with Brooke, I had operated on the assumption that I wasn't going to reach all my students and that there would always be a couple of children who would slip away like notes across the threshold of a doorway ”Sadly, Brooke’s quiet nature and her ability to catch up in class allowed Brooke to become almost invisible versus her classmates who were very vocal, demanding students. Brooke’s teacher’s assumptions, sadly turned into a barrier that made it difficult for the teacher to see beyond her role as an educator. Because there was no emotional connection between the teacher and student, learning was falling into the cracks.
Establishing a connection with our students is sometimes a difficult task for teachers, especially those like me who teach in a Middle School. I currently have 119 students on my roster. Sometimes I feel bad when a student tries to speak to me because they want to tell me something that happened to them at home. Sadly, I had to turn them away because there is no time to sit and listen to students during the school day.
I am convinced that listening to our students and being able to understand what their feeling are, is the first step to a healthy teacher-student connection. We have to make time to connect to our students no matter how busy our day can be.
Yes, it is hard to step aside from the role of a teacher to become someone who cares for his/her student's emotional well-being, but we can certainly do this one student at a time. I believe that when students feel connected to their teacher they will respond to meaningful learning positively.
Jones wants us to remember that as caring educators, we must teachers allow our students to share their experiences with us just like we should share our experiences. Sometimes students see us as being from out of space. They think that we work, eat, and sleep in school. We have to show them that we have a live just like they have. I love to observe an English Language Teacher class at my school. One of the first things she does is to establish an emotional connection with her students the first weeks of school. She listens to her students stories and includes as she teaches her ELL’s. Her student's behavior is excellent. Students have the opportunity to tell their story and to hear others. In her classroom, students feel welcome, accepted as a result they open up to her. She believes that connecting to her students early allows her students to respond positively. Her students appreciate the fact that she cares about their social, emotional and academic well-being. Meaningful learning and success is always evident in her classroom.
My colleague listens to her student’s stories and is not afraid to share her story. She understands that this can be a risky, but as Jones would say “ to be effective witnesses for the testimonies of our students, we need, in turn, to allow them to be our witnesses even if it is hard, even when it feels too risky” (Jones page 43). This is exactly what my colleague does. She believes that her students can not be the only ones to listen to her. She believes that listening to what they have to share allows for positive response and academic success.
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Las Fronteras
Crossing Borders to Transform Ourselves and Our Teaching (chapter 4)
Chapter 4 presents the story of an immigrant family; which crossed the southern border to come to live in the US. The family portrayed in this chapter came from Mexico just like many other families in search of a better life for all of them.
Luzveya and Omar were a couple who had 4 children. They decided to take the risk of crossing the Mexico/Us border so that their children would have a free and decent life in the US. Their journey was a difficult one, but they did not give hope and kept on trying to make it to the US. Once they settled here, both parents immediately enrolled their children in school. I was deeply connected to this story because in our District and in my school our immigrant population is big. We have children whose parent was arrested by ICE and deported. Their family was broken by separation. These children are in great need of teacher-student relationship. Just like Brooke, our students come to us not not trusting the police, the government so, as caring educators we have to make sure they know they are safe with us.
The teacher in this story is a hero. The teacher went above and beyond to make sure this family’s emotional, educational, social, economical needs were met. That is a difficult task and this teacher did it! We may think that if we try to help a student and his/her family outside of school, they may reject our help and maybe we give up before even trying. WE SHOULD NOT! Successful teachers establish and promote successful relationship.
As I continue to read about Luzveya, I become more connected to the story. Last year I had the opportunity to interview a family for a course I was taking. Listening to what this family had to endure as they crossed Arizona and California with their baby girl was shocking to me. As I listen to the father sharing his story, I thought, how can someone risk their lives and the live of a baby just to live in another place.
At first I tried to understand why they would risk their baby’s life and their own life. I was fortunate enough to come here legally and flew from my country here, but as the story progressed everything started to make sense. They lived was in danger and they had no choice, but to cross. Sadly , in our present era, Many Latino Families are scared due to the negative assumptions many people have about them. Many children are being affected when families are afraid to seek for help, since they do not want to be arrested and separated from their children.
Many people think that these families do not care about their children’s education because they do not attend their children’s school parent-teacher meeting(s). Luzveya is pretty much involve in her children’s education. Luzveya probably did not finish school, but just like many other parents, she want the best for her children. I applaud the parents who make sacrifices to make sure their children have the best education possible. Many of the parents we have in our school always attend to most of our after school meetings. They know that we listen to what they have to say. Their voice matters to our school’s teachers and administration. We have and administrator, teachers and staff who speak mostly English and Spanish, our immigrant families feel comfortable communicating with us regarding their concerns.
At our school all teachers make an effort to reach out to parents. Parents are aware of this and they respond just like Luzveya. Luzvaeya appreciates her children’s teachers effort and willingness to help her her children succeed. Luzveya “ This is for all of the teachers, well I want to give thanks to all of the teachers that are so good and so nice to the immigrant children” ( Jones page 61).
As a Latina and also as an educator who sees how many of our families are afraid of connecting with the school because they think that no one will pay attention to their concerns. Sadly in some schools educators and administrators do not welcome any other languages that is not English. I always believed and still believe that teacher-family connections will become a powerful tool for everyone involved. I teach Spanish at my School, but when we have parent-teacher conferences I am always offering my help to serve as a bridge between the teachers and our Spanish Speaking families. Parents feel welcome and accepted and fell they can participate fully in their child’s education. As we say in my school, our families know “we have their backs”.
The conclusion talks about sharing Luzveya story. This fact made me happy since I am convinced that sharing stories, languages of the families, giving them the opportunity to voice their concerns and hopes for the future, will promote more family participation; which will yield student success. This will be a win win situation for everyone involved in the child’s education process.
I can't believe you have a 119 students, Alex! My respect for your abilities, which was high to begin with, has edged into the stratosphere. I, like you, was really affected by the story in Chapter 3 and the ideas therein. I want to become more emotionally involved with my students -- all 5 of them -- but I'm not sure how to go about it. I don't want to appear foolish, neither do I want to make them feel uncomfortable. But with my classes and with my class load, I at least have the chance to take a chance to make those connections. I wonder what advice or insight Janet could give to you or someone in your situation with so many students to and so many emotions. The scale and the difficulty of it seems overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting about writing and reading these blogs is that we all have the same readings to reflect on and sometimes we hit on the same quotes or situations and sometimes we don't. Reading each other's blogs makes us take a second look sometime at something that wasn't salient or attention getting, until we encounter it again in a classmate's blog. This happened to me with your blog. You brought up that Jaye Thiel wrote that she "had operated on the assumption that I wasn't going to reach all my students and that there would always be a couple of children who would slip away like notes across the threshold of a doorway." Pointless metaphor aside, this is rather sad that it is so easy to write students off. But when I read your blog, one or two students came to mind today after subbing in an intermediate beginner adult ESL class. One student is really quiet and although I called on her to respond and participate several times, there were also times that I didn't take the time to engage her. Other students were participating and responding and it was easier to go with calling on them and drawing them further in and allow the quiet student to reside at the fringes and periphery of my consciousness. Was she paying attention? Was she sleepy? Was she following along or were we moving along without her. I honestly don't know. And even with a mostly manageable class of only 15 students, I felt unable to pay her more attention. It is my responsibility to engage her in the work of the class and to know how she is processing what we are doing and I did a poor job of doing this. There may be no underlying emotional issues underlying this student's shy demeanor, but when and how does a teacher take the time to explore this? These adult students either move on to a third class or go home. Some will thank me for the class and say that they learned a lot, but this quiet one just comes and goes silently. She arrived late and I didn't even notice exactly when. How much responsibility is there for the teacher to initiate greater connection? Is it different for child students and adult students?
ReplyDeleteAnd to think, I wouldn't have even been reflecting on this student and my responsibilities if your blog hadn't drawn my attention to something in Thiel's writing that I read, but in a way didn't really notice, and certainly didn't internalize. So thanks for the prodding.