Diversity or Lack Thereof

[Logan Robinson]

One of the first things Sophia and I noticed about Mrs. McLaughlin’s class is that it is not very diverse. The twenty students are almost all white, and a majority are females. It also seems like most of them are middle class, which, as we’ve read and discussed, tends to be who schools are geared towards. Considering Mrs. McLaughlin is also a white female, most of her students probably do feel a connection to her. However, it likely makes it that much more difficult for the other students to feel included or taught to specifically. This relates to Delpit’s discussion of the culture of power and its role. The classroom is littered with inclusive posters however, as seen in the image below.

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Looking back at our discussions on culture’s importance to learning and teaching, I was thinking about some examples from my mid-term. One of the only times I’ve seen Mrs. McLaughlin have the students as a whole really discuss diversity was one week when they were reading a book on Ellis Island and immigration. Even then, however, the conversation was very focused on Europeans, which again doesn’t relate to the whole class. Another thought that I had about diversity is that at the beginning of the term, all the boys were seated together. This has since changed, as they are now scattered across the room. But, there is a new student joining the class next week whose name has a Hispanic connotation. Mrs. McLaughlin has seated her next to one of the only other girls of color in the class. Sophia and I were discussing this after class. Is this an issue? Is it an attempt to make her (the new student) feel comfortable? Is it intentional or just where the available seat in the room was? As discussed in Slavin, diverse cooperative learning is important and beneficial. Much of the cooperative learning in Mrs. McLaughlin’s classroom takes place with their seat buddy, so I think students’ seating is very important.

As I’ve mentioned before, the place where I think Mrs. McLaughlin does a great job of individualizing and seeing each student is book selection. She always recommends a reader appropriate book that not only speaks to their interest, but often has a character that they can relate to identity wise. Maybe this is her way of acknowledging each students’ own diversity while recognizing she might not be able to relate to each of them in a way the books can. While I think this is effective to a certain extent, I definitely think she could do a better job spending time in the whole class group on some of the classroom’s other cultures or identifiers and even just diversity in general.

There are a couple of personal examples that come to mind as well. The first is with the boy that I have spent a large portion of the term with. From various stories he’s told me, it seems that there are some things going on with his family, some of which are financial. Recently, he has been not motivated and pretty down, but Mrs. McLaughlin has been hard on him about continuing to do his work. While sometimes I think this is important, I’m not sure she’s taken the time to see what’s wrong. I wonder if this is potentially because of a lack of understanding of a different socio-economic status or even gender. Another example is another student was reading a book about accents, and we began discussing accents. She wanted to tell me about her parents because they have accents, so it helped her explain the word to me. When I asked her what kind of accents they had, she got very excited to tell me about her culture, as they are from El Salvador. Just one question allowed her to express a little of her identity and diversity to me, which was a wonderful thing to see, and I hope she continues to feel so motivated to share about where she comes from.

To switch to general updates, Sophia and I went to tutoring during math time again this week. The set-up was similar to last week where the kids worked in groups, half with the teacher on a certain topic and most everyone else doing their online program, IXL. The topic at the back teacher’s table this week was again symmetry, but with the addition of angles and parallel lines. We continue to notice such a wide range of skill levels in math in particular among the kids.

One of the boys I went over to assist on IXL because he had his hand raised and a furrowed brow of frustration. When I went over he explained to me that IXL kept asking him to solve a problem he didn’t know how to do yet. I told him I’d help him figure it out so he could move on to other problems he was more familiar with. The problem was something along the lines of 97,845 divided by 710, which frankly I would just use a calculator for. He knew exactly how to attack the problem and really didn’t end up needing much help. It was super cool to see how he was able to work through a super challenging problem on his own with just some encouragement from me. I am really going to miss tutoring!

• This topic was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Logan Robinson.

[Arlo Hettle]

I really liked your observation about the student from El Salvador being excited to share about her background. At that age, students love talking about themselves and it sounds like Mrs. McLaughlin could take advantage of that more to create experiences in the class where students could learn from each other. This is especially true if she is doing lessons on immigration that leave it at Ellis Island rather than extending it to the present.

[Alec Kotler]

Logan, thank you for sharing your very insightful reflection on diversity in the classroom you are tutoring. This blog brought up a lot of important questions we have been reading about in our readings, as well as discussing in the classroom. One thing I want to touch on is your experience with asking that student with parents whom have accents a question. Breaching someone’s personal identity is a very sensitive and fragile idea especially when it involves cultural differences between you and the student. It seems very difficult to find a question that is not too intrusive but will allow the student to open up and you managed to do just that which was very impressive. I wonder if in some of the diversity trainings/counseling teachers have to do these days to prep for being a teacher if they instruct on the types of questions they should ask students about their cultural background without being too intrusive or asking in a way that breaches personal space or makes the student uncomfortable.

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