Prompt # 5: Ira Shor

I think if I were the teacher of this classroom there would be a couple of things that would be obstacles and challenges for me. First of all, I am not fluent in the Spanish language to say the least. I might imagine that since my classroom is made mostly of Hispanic students I would run into the situation where I wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate with a student’s parent about their child. If I had to employ a translator, I feel as though the direct connection would be harmed in getting points across and working together towards a common interest, which would be the education of their child. Something else I think that I would consider a challenge would be the school curriculum. Would it be unfair to teach these students only about American history, if I thought it would be more engaging to incorporate culture and History from the country their roots are. To learn about the different parallels between different cultures would keep the students interested because they could compare and contrast the differences that make each culture beautiful.
I personally think that hearing all sides of a story are important. When thinking of Ira Shor and his theory of education being political it makes me sad to think that our country has agendas. It’s concerning to me that students would miss out on learning important parts of things such as history for example. Another example would be teachers not being able to spend adequate time on a subject so that a student can fully learn. All in the name of using students as a ploy to learn just enough to pass a standardized test that someone else deems important. I encountered this very act when two of the students I was tutoring with were going to be given a test to assess their reading skill. Miss Lemon was aware that these students only had a certain amount of time to learn the material, and the deadline was fast approaching. Although these students wanted to learn more about words that rhyme, Miss. Lemon enforced that we needed to “move on” because we had to cover other things. These students cold have benefited from learning more about the rhyming words. It seems that when they are taught someone quickly, they seem to forget what they have just learned only a week ago. I had noticed this and wondered if taking some more time with the rhyming words would offer the time for repetition and solidify the concept in the minds of these students. I am confident that these students were not happy with moving on, when they felt that they wanted to spend more time on something that was more interesting. Instead these students had to learn just enough on this one subject to pass a test that will asses them. This test may or may not accurately determine their knowledge of something. If a person memorizes something for tomorrow, that says nothing about their understanding and true learning of the subject matter. In a week or two it is fairly safe to say this individual may seem to not understand the concepts at hand at all. How unfortunate that these students are subjected to this kind of treatment. As a teacher I think I would struggle with pushing my students before they seem ready to move forward in the name of only passing the next standardized test.