School classrooms in America are beginning to become more and more diverse, teachers are challenged to provide a beneficial education for students with ethnicities, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds that are different from their own (Cooper, 2011). “Students of color now constitute approximately 40 percent of all students enrolled in public schools, and this population is expected to grow considerably in the coming years” (Cooper, 2011, p. 189). Through this process teachers do not want to be eliminating students background from them in anyway. Instead, teachers should be working with these students to establish their identities and encourage the background that they come from. Teachers will not only help students learn in a more
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Stewart explained to me that she holds parent teacher conferences. To relate to her parents and communicate easily with them she holds her conferences with parents in Spanish. This way parents are comfortable speaking in their native language and can focus on their students’ development. “At parent conferences Latino parents, may show more interest in their children’s social and moral development than their academic achievement asking “Como se porta mi hijo/a (”how is my son or daughter behaving?”) (Cooper year, p. 236). This is exactly what parents wanted to know at Mrs. Stewarts conferences. She explained to me the background that these students have gone through in the past. With this, I asked Mrs. Stewart with teaching such a diverse group of students how she earned their respect. She told me a sad story about how no one wanted to teach this group of students because of how low they were with their academic development. She told me that before she began teaching at St. Martini that three groups of teachers had tried to teach this group of scholars and found the challenge to hard and quit and left them without a teacher. She said that she earns her students respect by showing her students love and that she is not going to leave them. She is here to stay and be their teacher. She tells her students that she loves them all the time and that they are a family and will be by their side through thick and the thin. I observed this in her classroom frequently, she would hug her students and encourage them to strive to reach their goals. Her classroom was a little family full of love and
Stewart explained to me that she holds parent teacher conferences. To relate to her parents and communicate easily with them she holds her conferences with parents in Spanish. This way parents are comfortable speaking in their native language and can focus on their students’ development. “At parent conferences Latino parents, may show more interest in their children’s social and moral development than their academic achievement asking “Como se porta mi hijo/a (”how is my son or daughter behaving?”) (Cooper year, p. 236). This is exactly what parents wanted to know at Mrs. Stewarts conferences. She explained to me the background that these students have gone through in the past. With this, I asked Mrs. Stewart with teaching such a diverse group of students how she earned their respect. She told me a sad story about how no one wanted to teach this group of students because of how low they were with their academic development. She told me that before she began teaching at St. Martini that three groups of teachers had tried to teach this group of scholars and found the challenge to hard and quit and left them without a teacher. She said that she earns her students respect by showing her students love and that she is not going to leave them. She is here to stay and be their teacher. She tells her students that she loves them all the time and that they are a family and will be by their side through thick and the thin. I observed this in her classroom frequently, she would hug her students and encourage them to strive to reach their goals. Her classroom was a little family full of love and