Bringing a home to the classroom (prompt 5)

A lot of the time when school meets the home life parents and teachers are not on the same page. As a future teacher I want to do everything in my power to help bridge the gap between parent and teacher. It is a hard situation when you tell your student one thing and their parent tells them another. When the child is around his or her parents for most of his or her life it is obvious to see that they will side with their parents. But the point of teaching is to not express one side but to teach from all different perspectives. This is where the education one gets at home is helpful.

            Students are able to bring their home life, education, background, ethnicity, etc., and by doing this, the classroom becomes a diverse place where not only the students can learn different views but we, as teachers, learn to teach alongside all those differences. I believe that the most important job of a teacher is to express when children are behaving and exceeding in the classroom. This means to send notes home on a regular basis rather then a report card, expressing to the parents the great work their child has been doing. But when a classroom is diverse with all different ethnicities and backgrounds how is a teacher going to express these thoughts? If the parents do not speak English well how will you have them understand when their child is doing very well or when he or she needs a little more help?

            As a future teacher I plan on spending sufficient time getting to know the background of my students and how I can work simultaneously with the parents. I want to be able to do this because so many times in school the biggest difficultly is going to be the parents. I think this because parents know their children and know what they want for their children. The teacher has a responsibility to understand where the parents are coming from but at the same time try to develop his or her own way to bring the home education to school.            

            Lisa Delpit says that, “children have the right to their own language, their own culture. We must fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools. To push children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary.” What she means by this is that each student has his or her own unique way of learning and when it comes to language it is important not to try to remove it but to work with it and promote a diverse classroom.