Friday, May 7, 2010

Prompt #5 John Dewey










A culturally competent teacher works with the family and community, it is extremely crucial that there is family participation. An example of family participation in my Kindergarten class, is that there was a school bake sale and the parent just had to purchase something from their local grocery store, or bake something themselves. They did not have to spend a tone of money, just a couple dollars. My Kindergarten teacher was very turned off by the fact that a good majority of the parent did not want to bring any food in, or be any part involved in the mini fundraiser. One little girl’s parents did not have the time to go to the store; however they sent her to school with a $15. donation as well as a note explaining that they did not go to the grocery store.
Being a teacher we are faced with many situations. A challenge a teacher might have with a parent is if a child is not doing well in a class, the parent might blame it on the teacher’s way of teaching as a defense mechanism. Another very important common issue is that teachers become sadden by the fact that some parents do not want to be involved in a child’s life to help them excel in school. This is something that needs to change in schools, that parents need to make the time for their children if their willing to have them.
Another way to possibly fix this is maybe once a month giving homework that can be fun and interactive so that the children can do it with their parents or grandparents or any guardian. But this does not help for the children whose parents work, an overnight shift, or the ones that just don’t care enough to become involved based on a bad school experience in their school days. Having parents involved in a child’s life is extremely important in the child’s growth as an individual. When a child is very young, (the elementary level) it is the most crucial time in their growth, and having a guardian there with them, to help them with either problem solving for school, or just life scenarios is beyond influential. A parent does not have to be involved in every fundraiser or be a chaperon on every field trip, but having them as active members of the school community help them stay involved and aware of what is going on in schools.
I believe this ties in with John Dewey’s article because we have to be aware of different social groups. “Such social groups are made of people with common interests and common ideals.” But this becomes a form of socialization, which is extremely crucial especially in the early years of development.
For communities to interact they need to do just that, communicate, connect between each other. It is a teacher’s job to start this communication between his or herself and between the students. An example of this would be, every morning the class starts off with going over the days of the week, as well as the month and the year. Ever week, they went over different letters of the alphabet, the past week was “M” and everyone in the classroom had an opportunity, some children would say a word like “cat” and the other students would try to help out, and see why they thought that. With this example students can see what other students have experienced before, and from it learn and grow from the experience, what Dewey says “bring(s) peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connections with one another” this makes for a stronger school community.




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