Sameness as fairness and finding the perfect anything

I am not sure what happened that my orginal post didn't go up but I am retrying. Cross your fingers.

I found as I read the chapters on Sameness and Fairness, Permission to Fail, Issues of Literacy and Power and Building Success with Underachieving Adolescents, I found myself drawn to parts of the readings and just irritated by others. Though when I really thought about my irritation it wasn't what they were saying it was the fact that I have been witness to some of it and here is some pointing it out in a much grander scale.

What really stuck out to me was the video by Gladwell. I LOVED IT! I loved it because it said exactly what we as educators already know, but maybe we need to keep hearing it. There is no perfect.....(lesson/student/teacher/etc.) What Howard Moskowitz released and then passed on to the food industry is that different kinds people like different kinds of food. The data that was collected from the Pepsi research showed no bell curve but was scattered, extremely scattered. The data didn't make sense, until Moskowitz looked at it a different way. They were asking different people what they prefered, and by doing that they got different responses.

So take that into the education field. Why do we have such extreme scores on standardized testing? Because, there is no standardized student. Different backgrounds, different cultures, different family structures, different everything and anything and you get scattered results. Our students don't learn the same way, some need more time, some need less, some need to figure it out on their own and still others need it broken down to the bare bones to understand what it is that we are teaching. As each teacher has a different style so do our students. When do we stop doing the "universal search" and start on the "understanding of variables"?

Code Switching

I'm still getting used to blogging on here.

After this week's readings I find myself drawn back again and again to Lisa Delpit's chapter about her daughter Maya. I agree with her view on why it is so easy for kids to pick up additional dialects. When you can identify with a group because you are comfortable with them you relax and are open. You find them to be inviting and fun (Delpit, pg.39).
She also points out why this isn't the atmosphere in the classroom for so many. "Students rarely get to talk in classrooms. The percentage of talk by the teacher far outweighs that by all the students put together."(Delpit, pg. 40) Sadly it is the truth. Add that to teachers knowing little about their students and their background and you have a sorry combination. A mentor of mine used to have a sign in her classroom that said "No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."
Teachers need to help students find motivation in the classroom and students aren't motivated if they don't feel that teachers care or understand them.
Delipt writes that once teachers internalize an understanding of certain facts about students particularly students of cultural backgrounds different from theirs "then it is much more difficult for them to judge their students' abilities solely on the basis of their language form." (Delpit, pg. 42)
And this isn't an easy task to undertake, but teachers need to do it and they need to believe in why they are doing it. Delpit points out that only once we are connected to our students and they are willing to connect with us do we hold a chance at getting them "to adopt our language form as one to be added to their own."(Delpit, pg. 48)

Language Diversity

In a nation where literacy seems to be a dominant focus in our schools it seems that we easily forget where we came from. "Multilingualism was always highly valued in Indigenous societies and, indeed, was essential for trade and survival in one of the most culturally, linguistically, and ecologically diverse regions of the world."(Lomawaima, McCarty 2006) But as our nation developed indigenous societies were not looked at in this sense.  I find it surprising that, "In fact, first-language literacy among the Cherokees in the early 1800s was higher than that of the local White population"(Lomawaima, McCarty 2006).  It was easy for white missionaries to decide they were going to make it better for Navajo, Cherokee and other indigenous groups, they didn't understand and there for didn't trust these groups.
Lomawaima and McCarty write that "Native societies were assumed to entirely lack or possess only rudimentary forms of the building blocks of a civilized society, such as governing bodies, codes of law, or organized religion. US educators assumed that Native societies also lacked educational systems." (2006) But that was far from the truth. Native societies had all of these in place, it just didn't fit the mold of the standard educators felt worked best.
Currently there aren't many educators out there who would say that every student learns at the same rate, or in the same way. But what has changed over the years to make us see that? And why are we still holding on to the need for language learning the same way we always have?
After reading about triligualism and the use of multi-languages it makes sense that students who have the literacy skills for a native language and English would do well. I think it should be embraced and expected more, that students who are English first learners about have their second language courses at younger ages instead of waiting to a point where it is harder to grasp.