The cultural competent teacher involves and works with families and community resources, understanding the differences in families, the important influence of family participation in students’ learning, and the benefit of collaborating with the wider school community.
In the classroom I have noticed parent teacher communication. I have noticed the teacher talking with parents, about their child. When talking with the teacher one on one she seems to know a lot about their background, which I think is really important. To know what type of family your students are coming from. Last week my teacher found out that one of her students who has been suspended four times that is labeled a behavioral student comes from a single mom. She had him when she was 13 years old. This is why he is lashing out; he is not getting the attention he needs at home, so he tries to get it in school. When he is in a group he will do anything to get your attention even if it’s something he should not do. When working one on one he is fine. Now that she knows this it will be easier for her to connect with him. She knows she has to show him attention to keep him calm. He will now hopefully start to learn more.
She has talked a lot about how parents need to be involved and help their children with home work, especially those who are struggling. The school day is just not enough time to be prepared for the next grade level. It’s partly the parent’s responsibility to help their children learn. For example a little boy who is labeled as students who need extra help, who are behind the rest of the class needs more one on one help that can no be given all the time in school. The teacher was talking to the parents about different things to help him such as making him read a night time story verse them reading to him. She also gave his parents different books to work on what he struggles with. This shows how the teacher really cares about her students and is connecting with the families in every way she can.
There is a huge benefit of collaborating with the wider school community to make sure that your classroom is on the same or similar path as other classrooms. Also to make sure your class is also at the same pass of other schools at the same level. This talking amongst teacher helps a lot for the transition in between grade levels. To make sure all the levels are learning at the same pass and all get to a certain point, so that the following year the teacher can just pick up where the previous teacher left off. Verse having to re-teach a subject to get your whole class on the same page and taking time away from your plan.
This connects with Dewey because Dewey talked about how there needs to be interactions with teacher to family and teacher to society. That there are societies of people but that we need to interact with the different societies to go anywhere in life. If they do not talk and interact Dewey says “otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters, educate others into slaves.” He is saying that if we do not talk amongst one another some students are going to exceed and some will fail. Sometime it has nothing to do with social class. For example you have two classrooms and in one class they do not learn how to multiply and the other class does not. When they get to the next grade and they are learning division the class that did not learn how to multiply will be further behind because of it. Your child was selected into this class for no reason. A computer selected them into the class, and now they will be penalized. Dewey is saying how this is wrong, and that we need to talk amongst teachers and parents, to make sure this does not happen.
