Sorry About the Blog Gap

First I would like to apologize for the gap in my blogs. I have been going regularly to my school and have actually done 27 hours already. I forgot about my blog and have been extremely busy. My other classes have been piling on the work. I am really sorry again. I will continue to do my blogs.

Today I am going to respond to prompt 3. My teacher has many students of different backgrounds. These students are all very competent in English despite their colorful backgrounds. My teacher is a bit confusing when it comes to assessments. He seems to treat the children all the same when it comes to grading and the amount of work he gives them. He does NOT give anybody special treatment or even assesses them differently based on their linguistic, ethnic, or sociocultural characteristics. He will though, help a student more if they are willing to work hard. He seems to have almost "given up" on the children who refuse to any kind of work. There is a girl in third period who looks like she should be in the 8th grade not the 6th grade. I'm not sure if she stayed back but I wouldn't be surprised. According to my teacher she is very bright but she absolutely refuses to do any kind of classwork or even pay attention. When we were doing book work I had asked her if she had done anything, if I could read it. She was reading a fiction book, looked up at me and gave me a dirty look and went back to reading. I was a little shocked. I really hope the best for that girl. I really wish she will change. My teacher has tried everything to get her to do something but she won't. He told me he doesn't even have anything to grade for her.

If I had students that needed to be assessed different because of linguistic problems I would grade them differently. I would try to explain things to him or her a lot more and correct them when they mispronounce words or use them incorrectly. As for ethnicity as a factor for assessments, I would not do anything. Whatever your ethnicity may be, you will be treated the same as any other child. Linguistics might be a problem but if a child speaks and understands English, there is no reason to treat them any differently. However, if a child has cultural obligations such as they need to take a school day off because of religious holidays, they should NOT be penalized for it. That is a reason to treat a child differently. As a teacher we might even become familiar will some of our students' home situation. If they have problems at home we might be more willing to reach out to them. I would ask that child if he/she needed help with any school work. I would not become too involved because it is none of my business unless that child is being harmed or abused. My teacher does not need to be sensitive to linguistic, ethnic, or sociocultural characteristics of his students but I will most likely need to when I become a teacher.

The last thing I would like to mention is a little problem I am having with one of the students in my teacher's class. She is a very nice girl but I think she feels like she has to act tough to get by. She is very loud and always needs to draw attention to herself. She sometimes looks kind of dirty but has her hair done all the time which kind of confuses me. I wonder how her home life is. Anyway, she was suspended from school because she went up to some 8th grade boys and said some very disturbing, sexual things to them. The boys felt extremely uncomfortable and told the teachers what she had said. I do not know what she said to them but I can only imagine it must have been bad to have a 6th grade girl make three 8th grade boys very uncomfortable. When she returned to school I talked to her a bit about how school was going. She does do most of her work and I even read some of it and it wasn't bad. She started to get off her work though and passed notes between her and the girl that sits next to her. I asked them what they were writing about and they said that they wanted to go to the library after school. Seemed harmless enough but when I asked them why they really couldn't give me a straight answer. She finally told me she was going to confront a boy that was giving her a hard time. I knew the boy from the previous period. He always made fun of her a pushed her around. She said that the boy also told her he had a crush on her too. I could tell the boy picked on her because he liked her but it made her very upset. I told her she should talk to a teacher about it but she absolutely refused saying that she would be a "snitch." She wanted to take care of it herself even if it meant getting into a fight with the boy. She didn't end up doing anything because nobody got in trouble. I kind of scared me thought because I was worried she was going to beat this kid up. She was willing to risk getting beat up herself and getting suspended again just because she didn't want to "snitch." Being a rat or a snitch in these schools must be worse then what she was against. To me this is crazy. She had so much at stake!! I wonder why being labeled a "snitch" is so bad? I can understand if you tattle on someone when you weren't involved, that would get people mad at you but when someone makes you miserable and you tell on them, I don't think that makes you a snitch, i think its just protecting yourself. Can anybody explain this to me? Why do these kids consider being a "snitch" so bad? Anybody else have a similar problem? I would really appreciate some feedback. =)