4 The culturally component teacher

I have been tutoring for about eight weeks now. Im a reading buddy and Im working with kindergarden studets. Last week I had the most amazing experience. I got to work with my usualy group of students, but this week one of the students that usually gives me a hard time was excellent. I have a group of five children so the reading coach sugjested doing whole group activites with them rather than some of the more complicated activites. The first few weeks that I was tutoring, I felt that the kids were bored with the whole group activies. I decided to try some of the more complicated activities. I also did a few different things with how i presented the poem and the sight words. The kids were much more interested and I felt they actually learned more. I was able to get the students more involved. The little boy that I had mentiond usually refuses to participate and he puts his shirt over his head the entire time I'm tutoring. The past two weeks he has been participating and he has made such a great improvement. Next week we will be testing the kids again. I think four out of the five children that im tutoring will move on to the next level. I love the group I have, but im so happy that their improving. They have all come such a long way.
As I walked into the school for the first time, I was defenitly surprised that there wasnt many white students in the school. I think the reason that I was so surprised by this was bcause when I attended elementary school, the school consisted of mostly white students. Once I got into middle school, the school was much more diverse than my elementary school. My middle and high school had a variety of different races.There wasnt a specific race that was the majority. I think that Kozol would have been please with the diversity in my middle and high school. I think the main reason i was so shocked that the majority of the students at the school im tutoring at are black or hispanic. I was so shocked becuase I was never exposed to that. Some of the things that also surprised me was how the parents interacted with their children. Not all of the parents are like this, but some of them seem to just be in a rush to drop off their kids. This morning I saw a little boy who just wanted to give his dad a kiss goodbye and the father seemed annoyed by that. I heard him swear under his breath, and instead of kissing his son goodbye, he told him hurry up go to school. I feel that some of the parents dont show an interest in their children school work, which is very different from how I grew up. The teacher in my classroom had told me to keep an eye on one of my students because he had walked out of school five mineuts before it was time to go home. He is only five years old and he walked home from school in Providence. When the school realized that he had left, they called his mother and she didnt seem upset at all. I cant imagine the mother being calm about her five year old walking home. Knowing that i feel really bad for him. I feel that that is why he usually acts out in class because he probably doesnt get enough attention at home. Some of the challenges that i think I might have as a teacher in this classroom would be that Im not fluent in spanish. Iv taken a couple classes in high school, but defenitly not enough to communicate with a spanish speaking student. I would defenitly like to imporve on that sooner or later. As much as I feel that I believe that all students are equal, I made a judgement that I shouldn't have on one of the little boys that I tutor. I thought that the little boy who came off as being a trouble maker wasnt going to know as much as the other students. To my surprise he was ahead of all of the other students. Parts of me wondered why he was even in this group. I think the reason he ended up being in this group was because he probably refused to participate during testing time. After seeing how smart this little boy was, It made me realize that I was being biased. Everyone is going to have a personal biased, but hopefully I will learn from that mistake, and it wont happen as often. This experience has shown me that it doesnt matter what race or culture you come from, as a teacher you need to learned how to put personal bias aside and give each student an equal chance to learn.