Learning From Parents' Stores of Knowledge (Online Reflection #1)

Goodness, how glad I am to be full time student teaching at my school this semester! I’ve met so many more crazy, intelligent, and creative kids, and I feel more a part of the community of educators than ever. Of course, student teaching comes with tired feet and an even more tired brain, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the change of schedule. I’ve even made it to the gym a few times already!

My accomplishments in juggling many areas of life pale in comparison to some of my students and their parents, however. In an urban, largely working class area, parents often must go to work early or come home late with their students walking a mile or two each morning in all kinds of weather. Once they arrive, we fill their heads with information they’ve never heard before and their hands with papers they may not keep track of all the way home and send them on their way. So often, I and other teachers have a tendency to judge parents who don’t communicate often, don’t make it to conferences or other activities, or seem to not be as “interested” in education as our middle class, mostly white families “were.” Between reading some of Samway and McKeon’s thoughts and getting to know several of my English Language Learner’s stories and families, I realize just how wrong I was.

One concept that really struck me was the idea that we naturally assume we, teachers, are the sole distributors of knowledge and forget that parents have a unique opportunity to educate and influence their kids. So often, parents of my students have life experience in areas I have no idea about and will never be able to learn in the same meaningful way. Though they may not be able to write a paper on Chaucer, they provide equally valid points of view I should not take for granted, whether they are an ELL or not.

At my first experience of parent teacher conferences, I really got down to the heart of the matter. I met moms, dads, brothers, and sisters who all had different perspectives and yet were all there to see their student’s educational and social goals met. We spoke with a dad worried about his daughter and some girl drama through an interpreter, we met with a mom and grandmother who were in tears advocating for their struggling student, and a dad who was profoundly proud of his son’s progress, despite his mother’s battle with cancer. Each of these students had felt like underprepared, struggling isolated incidents until I took the time to learn and value where they were coming from and what their parents had to offer. This is one benefit to the idea of home visits, especially for parents who may be intimidated by a school setting.

As the Samway and McKeon reading encouraged home visits, so did an article by TESOL about tapping into funds of knowledge. Here they give some really helpful ideas on how to encourage students’ past experiences to our advantage, with various activities for students to showcase their cultures to their peers. Another good resource from AdLit.org backed up many of the strategies with research that students are most successful in English and their native language when they have strong skills in that native language. This can help in the ever-raging debate about acculturation versus preservation of a student’s language and culture.   AdLit advocated for encouraging students to keep up their native language at home and to be open to allowing other languages to be casually spoken in class. That is a tricky area, because it can make teachers very uncomfortable to have students speaking right in front of them and yet not know what they are saying, and the article really only told us to have some professional development on it, so I don’t really know the answers to that yet. I do think there is real value in figuring out the best strategies for handling it though, because I want to be culturally inclusive of ELLs and their reality while still maintaining order in the classroom.

This year, and this reading, has once again humbled me and taught me a great deal about not only my students, but myself and my inner biases. I look forward to researching more about ESOL programs and activities, as well as engaging parents who may be struggling to connect with schools on a more regular basis. What do you think about families’ stores of knowledge? What are some strategies or pros and cons to allowing students to speak in their native languages in your classroom?