Module 2

Before I even started reading Chapters 4,5, 6, and 8, I read the titles and was very excited for this section.  “Learner differences and Learning Needs,” “Language Development, Language Diversity, and Immigrant Education,” and “Culture and Diversity” are very bold fairly general words that encompass many things, but initially when I looked I could see all the children I have encountered at my time in the school.  Preschool is a major transition time for children and often we see many of these types of elements that we have to work with.  English is not the primary language at home, and this is their first step into the school system, and we have to deal with culture shock for many of them.  Culture can also affect how we learn or how we are scrutinized.  In Chapter 4, when I started reading I noticed how it discussed the stereotypes in teaching and intelligence testing.  The section discussing IQ testing and other intelligence testing raised a point on how most are compared to the white male standard, and how perhaps minorities should not be forced to take it, because perhaps their first language is not English, and they do not have that advantage (p.128).  I feel that if we are creating a curriculum to work with all kinds of students, we need to have them take the tests, so we can see where we can help them move forward.  If they do not standardize test well, there is the likelihood that they also have trouble in school, and that should be something we can see and work towards.  I think that it is not just ethnicity or if someone is a minority that we have to change things. We have to be cognizant of children with disabilities. The words disabilities and handicaps are somewhat scary and can be daunting, but if we have the knowledge and tools we should be able to help them.

English is a very difficult language to grasp the nuances of.  We can add adjective upon adjective in a sentence and somehow we know the correct order they go in.  For example “The girl had a small, green, Celtic cross with her”, not a “green, small Celtic cross.”  I suppose this is part of syntax and how children learn to speak from their parents, as well as Language Arts instruction in school; although I personally do not remember learning the order of adjectives.  A lot of what I see in my classroom is the transitioning between the different levels of language development, as well as emerging literacy.  My children are at the age where we are focusing in on letter sound and correspondence to sound in words; we make word lists and begin to sound out just about everything we do in the classroom (p. 177).  I know that all different preschools take different approaches to writing and education; some may think that it is a bit too strenuous for 4 and 5 year olds to do.  I have been in this preschool for 4 years, and I think having them have a base of writing and sounding out words helps us the the teachers who they go on to.  We are able to see the beginnings if the children are on the right path, if some need a little extra help, or even perhaps if they have other issues going on that may affect their learning (but that is a whole different topic).  We are with the kids transitioning from their primarily Polish speaking household or Spanish speaking household, and we are able to help them develop their language skills, without it interfering with their education too much.  At my school we generally do not get immigrant families or refugee families, so we do not have to work with strong language barriers or strong cultural differences in the classroom.

I would like to think that as teachers in the school system we are above stereotyping and prejudice with our students; we should be, we teach them to combat it.  It is difficult to fight against something that is constantly spoken about in mainstream media with facts and numbers and data (p. 227).  It would be easy if we could put blinders on that x-ed out skin color, accent, behavior, etc. but we cannot do that.  We need to address within ourselves and work it out so we treat every child the same.  Same with gender biasing; I do not see boys vs girls in my classroom.  They all play with each other and no gender does better in one thing than the other; I am hopeful that this pattern continues throughout their education (p. 234).

Memory and cognition are something we see everyday in Preschool.  To increase the memory and to help them learn certain things we focus a lot on repetition.  ABCs, certain songs or phrases, and other things to jog their memory.  I have noticed that I will even say certain things, mostly just to help me with them, and they say it with me (p. 296).  Kids are very smart and intuitive, and I think at this age, having something to jog the memory and encourage them to use their memory helps the learning process.  Occasionally I will change up things to see if they know the content versus just the rhyme, and I know every time I am pleasantly surprised.  THey are not going to remember everything though.  Breaks like Easter and Christmas are difficult for us since they are so small, we often forget things and have to reteach them behaviors and lessons in the classroom (p. 302).  Many of the other concepts discussed in the chapter are things that also evolve in time as the children grow.