Promp 3: Jonathan Kozol

As I stated in my second post, my assigned school consists of 64% Spanish, 24% African American, and a combined 12% White and Asian. The classroom that I have been working in has no white children but all African American and Hispanic students. It is evident that in most cases these children come from low income homes since most receive free or reduced price lunch. The teacher of the classroom, Mrs. Rose, is an older, white woman who clearly comes from a middle class background. I'm sure that before teaching at her school, she most likely did not spend much time around people of color or other ethnicities than white. Although she does appear to really care about her students and their education, I am not fully positive that she knows how to embrace their sociocultural differences.

Every time I have arrived at my classroom, Mrs. Rose begins to do testing. She pulls individual students to a separate part of the room where she has them read a book to her. I sit at a table that is next to where Mrs. Rose tests and I listen to many of her students severely struggling with reading. Which makes me wonder, has she taken the time to consider that these students may need more one on one help? Since I began my tutoring I have never seen Mrs. Rose help a student one on one. I see her do individual testing, but whenever a student has a question about their work she quickly tells them she can not help them at that moment. This seems to show me that Mrs. Rose may not understand that some of her students come from homes where their parents will not help them with homework, or encourage them to read, or even show any signs of being interested in their children's schooling. Mrs. Rose needs to be the one who embraces and understands this in order for her students to prosper and grow in both their learning and school. Although I do believe that Mrs. Rose accepts and loves her students for who they are despite whether they are Spanish, African American, Asian, poor or rich, I do not think she fully understands or knows how to embrace and work with their differences.

Jonathon Kozol, writer of "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Education Apartheid" talks of how many schools in America are still deeply segregated. By not adapting to the needs of these students who are learning English as a second language or those who have learned English but still struggle with the difficult aspects of it they are segregating their schools. If they fully embraced their students linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics than their school would be doing much better than they are. Maybe if more one on one time was spent with Mrs. Rose's students, they would not be struggling with reading.