Today, I did my final field observations for this course and I can say that once again, I'm glad I choose this particular lesson to observe. Before getting to the point in this particular post, I'd like to give you some statistics. Humor me, if you will.
According to the US Census Bureau, 46.5 million people were in poverty in 2012 alone.
Within that number alone, about 21% were people under the age of 18.
One last point,
"For the second consecutive year, neither the official poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty at the national level were statistically different from the previous year’s estimates."
Now in the class today, I happen to observe the teacher holding a discussion with the students on the topic of homelessness. This discussion was interesting in that the teacher barely let her opinions be known, she let the conversation guided by what her students were saying. In between this discussion, students were reading a fictional passage about homelessness and poverty. All of the students in this class want to voice their opinions. There wasn't one hand in that class that didn't go up, or had not had a personal connection with the issue of poverty in our country. Their voices did not waver when they spoke, and they found ways to agree and disagree with each other.
I come from a cultural background where at times, children's opinions are disregarded. As a young child, you're told to keep your mouth shut and let the adults talk. In many instances, I grew up thinking that my opinions did not matter until I was finally considered an adult. But I think this is wrong and today's observations proved it so. We had a group of 10 year old students who understood the issue of poverty and were able to make connections to their lives, their text, and pre-reading questions that their teacher had asked them. I think it's important to note that not one of these children took differences of opinions personally. They were all able to go outside and play afterwards and not let any differences of opinions prevent them interacting politely with someone else. I know many adults that aren't capable of that.
What a good point! Sometimes when we have harder realities of the world come up (homelessness, poverty, etc) a lot of adults are quick to say, "Don't worry about it," instead of answering GOOD questions the kids have. We recently took our fourth grade trip to Saint Augustine where there are a LOT of homeless people. Because that's where I'm from, I let the students know that they were most likely going to see homeless people throughout the trip. At that point, they didn't have too many questions. Our first instructional day back, out of all the things we saw in Saint Augustine, that's what the kids wanted to know the most about. We spent about 20 minutes debriefing on homelessness and why people are living like that. How can we expect students to have empathy if we are not answering questions about life experiences that they don't get? Once we had a discussion about all the ways that people can become homeless (it is not a choice) students weren't as likely to say that the homeless people were "weird" or "lazy."
ReplyDeleteKids never cease to amaze me. I think we often discredit what they do know thinking they've been sheltered from it or somehow aren't at the mental age to truly comprehend what is going on. From all of my experiences kids know so much and they absorb things like a sponge. They are also able to do things so democratically with a respect for each other that as you point out adults do not even have at times.
ReplyDeleteI too grew up where kids were to be seen and not heard. I was only allowed to answer a question when spoke to. To see our cultural changing in a good way is great. A kids voice is a powerful tool that can be used in education. I am glad to see that someone else witnessed kids given their opinions in the classroom. We can learn a lot from them. Sometimes, they make us consider things that we have not in the past or look at some things differently. I encourage my students to let their voices be heard, but to be respectful and to consider they audience.
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