Prompt 3 (Shor)

If I was to take a written test today on a concept I learned in the second grade, but it was written in Chinese, I would fail. It simply is not fair or helping students to continue to teach them while being ignorant to their backgrounds. The most important part of being able to be an effective teacher is to know your students, to know who you are teaching. In order to be a truly effective teacher, you need to have an understanding of where your students come from and how they learn. A small example of this that I witnessed during my tutoring is the way directions are given in the classroom. First the teacher writes them on the board and then gives them verbally multiple times. Although this is a small example of accommodating everyone, it can be used on a larger scale. A teacher is not doing a student any justice by assuming that they learn exactly the same as every other student. It takes effort and initiative to find out about your students culture to ensure that you are providing them with the best education possible.


During my tutoring, myself and two students were working on a sight word game. We started out by seeing the word, spelling it together and then using it in a sentence. However, when I asked Jon to spell the word we just went over without looking at it he couldn’t do it. At first, I thought he was just struggling with the words. However, when I asked him to write the word down on paper, he spelt them perfectly. Jon was just nervous to spell the words out loud because his English wasn’t perfect. Jon knew how to spell the words and therefore he should be assessed on his knowledge, not on the fact that he was nervous or that he couldn’t speak perfect English. This can be applied to all students. Every student is different and deserves the attention and responsiveness of their teacher. Students from different cultures are valuable assets to a classroom and should be seen that way by all teachers.

The theorist that came to mind when talking about Jon was Ira Shor. Shor’s article entitled “Empowering Education” talks about a critical democratic pedagogy in which education is centered around a multicultural democracy in both school and society. Appreciating and understanding a student’s background creates an effective learning environment for everyone and will help them thrive as both students and valuable members of our society. As the students grow and learn in the classroom, they can take those lessons outside of the classroom setting and into everyday life situations. It all starts with a strong teacher student relationship. Volunteering at this school has really shown me how much of an impact teachers truly have on their students lives.