As is the case with any student, a large variety of support systems are needed in order for diverse learners to participate fully in the learning community. The article Building on the Strengths of Families: The Promising Readers Program focuses on one, very important, support system: the family. In this article, the Promising Readers Program was set in a poor, rural community in the deep South where around 65% of the school’s third graders scored in the lowest quartile on the language arts and reading portions of the state wide standardized test (Brenner, page 2). Its purpose was to bring family members, students, and teachers together in order to help improve the students’ reading ability by providing the students’ with opportunities to engage in a wide variety of literacy practices such as reading a book out-loud with a family member. By encouraging family members to participate in this program, the hope was that each family member present would bring with them “household funds of knowledge” that act as “potential bridges to children’s learning proficiency” (Brenner, pages 1 and 2). Some of the benefits that came with family involvement included an increase in the personal confidence of the students in their reading ability and an increase in personal confidence in the parents and family members towards their ability to help their student improve. I believe that these benefits are very important for supporting diverse learners because without the confidence to try, the students’ wont experiencing reading on their own and the parents won’t feel comfortable enough to try to help them do so.
Based my personal experiences and what I am seeing being done in schools, programs like this are relatively rare. Out of the six schools that I have volunteered at, only one of them had a program like this instated at their school. It is my experience, though, that when these programs are established, they can be extremely beneficial to students. I believe that one of the most important support systems for diverse learners is their family members. Students need to gain as many experiences with reading and literacy as possible, and without family members’ assistance, many students don’t get the experiences they need to improve and grow outside of the school environment. Programs like this bring awareness to family members about the importance of family involvement in their student’s learning and encourage them to help their student by: modeling good reading habits, reading with their student, providing various types of texts and genres for the student to explore, etc. I also believe that they encourage family members to become more aware of and more involved in their student’s school. This provides students with an additional support system in the school that otherwise wouldn’t be there and makes it easier for parents to be better informed about the improvements and needs of their students. As was the case in this article, the school I volunteered at experienced these benefits after establishing this kind of program. It is because of these experiences with schools (those who had programs like the Promising Readers Program and those who didn’t) that I believe that family members are an important source of support for diverse learners which help them to participate fully in the learning community.
I think that this reading program sounds really cool. It has also been my experience both as a student and as a pre-service teacher that students have higher performance levels and confidence levels if their family is actively involved in their education.
ReplyDeleteThe article I read was "Putting Literacy Learning in Context" by Fleming. It focused on the realities of teaching in urban schools. Like the article Emily read, this article also encouraged strong communication between the student, the teacher and the home. The article emphasized the importance of beginning teachers getting to know their students and their families. If the teacher understands where the students are coming from, then they will be better able to meet the needs of the students.
I think that a reading program like the one described in this post sounds like a postive addition to any school. Especially in urban schools, it is very important to involve the students' family in their education so both the student and their family see value in what is going on in school.
I definitely have to agree with the both of you. Encouragement and support by involvement from family members are key to students' success. I mean it all depends on the individual student. Sometimes a person can have enough will to want to work hard and succeed all on their own; personally, I think that at a certain point though, everyone needs help.
ReplyDeleteI read the article by Lenski, "Assessing English-language learners in mainstream classrooms". This article was about how a teacher should go about assessing ELL's. Native English speaking students have their troubles with literacy, but as a teacher one cannot overlook ELL's. In my placement right now, I've talked to my CT about how she teaches and assesses her ELL's and the answer was disappointing. From what I understood, she does not take the extra step to do alternative assessments or anything of the sort. Like many people, she believes that because they are immersed in the English language, they will pick it up because they are young; people believe that children can pick up language easily, but that is not always the case.
On the topic of family involvement, most of these students' parents don't even speak English, so it would be difficult to communicate if the teacher cannot speak their language. I'm not saying these parents cannot help, though. Communication of ideas is not impossible between possible that don't speak the same language, especially in today's world. It could even be possible that with these parents' help, they can start learning the language along with their children.
These are all very realistic posts, and it is certainly wise to be aware of all the problems in spite of the idealistic stance of all the articles. The questions about getting to know families who don't speak English is huge, and yes, there are a few programs that feature ELL kids and caregivers learning together! I think the ELL article was suggesting that you can find out a lot about the families by doing alternative assessments of the children. The Blanca story was an example of that.
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note I'd have to say that one of my all-time best 401/2 students told me that after she graduated she felt unprepared for the extreme poverty of her students in Arizona, even though she interned in a bi-racial Lansing-area high-poverty school. I had TALKED about poverty, but it was not the same thing as experiencing it and being the teacher in charge of such students.
I will add that that was the same student I shared about last week, the one who had been fully "prepared" to teach a lesson on racism and oppression until she faced a Black substitute teacher and then she suddenly felt "invalid," because she knew she had never faced racism and oppression while the Black teacher probably had. It is just another case of how intellectual preparation and real-time, real-life encounters with difference (socio-=economic, race, religion, gender and so on,) are not the same thing. However, intellectual preparation is part of the process.
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