Unexpected Encounters

This week I popped into another teacher's classroom after school to see how she was doing.  I was still there chatting when the custodian came in to clean the classroom, and the three of us ended up in a pretty intense conversation.  Our custodian, let's call him James, is an African-American man, possibly in his mid thirties, who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood outside of Syracuse, NY.  James takes pride in his work, always has a smile on his face, and takes the time to greet teachers and students on campus every day.  He overheard the conversation I was having with the other teacher about how difficult it is to reach certain students and how trying day after day can be disheartening, especially when there are cultural differences that I don't always know how to overcome.  Upon hearing this, James started talking - telling us about what life was like where he grew up, and how these kids we work with, even the ones who resist us, still have the means and the desire to learn.

During the course of that conversation, James shared a lot about his own upbringing.  He told us about what it was like to grow up where drive-by shootings were a fact of life, and where boys proved they were men by stacking the most cash.  He told us how in a neighborhood of several square blocks, only four kids he knew actually graduated from high school. He told us about friends of his who stayed up all night selling drugs, slept on the playground, and met their moms in the morning to give them enough cash to pay the rent and have a meal. He also told us about friends who were going hungry, because all the expired food in the cabinet was just a "set" designed to fool the social workers who would come to the house to check on the children's well-being.  James told us that today, as a college graduate with a full-time job, he doesn't let the little things stress him out.  Things like marital arguments, coworker drama, and nagging bosses don't bother him much, because he is no longer living in those streets, living that difficult life in a completely different world that so many of us can't even begin to understand.

Finally, James told us how he can look in a child's eyes on campus and, because he lived the life he lived, he can tell what kinds of experiences that child has had.  He can tell which kids know about drugs, sex, prison, prostitution, and so on.  He makes it a point to say "hey" to the kids that very few others want to talk to, and that when he does get to talk to them he cuts right through the small talk and asks the kids where they are headed in life.  If they have an answer, he says, he knows that no matter how hardened a kid may seem, there is still hope for him if he has a goal in life.  Some of them may be growing up in difficult conditions, but here in most areas of Orlando these kids have no idea how bad things can really get.  When I asked him how I can possibly "get through" he encouraged me, saying, "No matter how much they resist, if they can picture their futures you still have a chance.  All it takes is one person.  Just let them know you care.  Let them know you love them, they're safe here, and they can put all that other stuff aside and focus on success."

I can't express how encouraging it was to hear those things at a point in the year when tension is highest and student behavior is at it's worst.  He's right, all it takes is one person.  And for me, that day, the one person was him.  

Tying it all together

This semester I am taking two graduate classes, and as I move further along through the course readings I find points of contact where the information from one of them influences my thoughts about the other and vice-versa.  Of course, I am enrolled in EDF 6496 Teaching and Learning in Urban Settings - that is the class for which I keep this blog.  I am also enrolled in a course on learning theory.  This week my aha moment came from my readings about Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of psychological development.  Thrilling, right?

First, a general primer on Vygotsky for those who haven't had the pleasure.  Vygotsky believed that mastering the signs and symbols of one's culture is the key to development of complex mental functions and mastery of learning.  He considered signs and symbols, including verbal and written language, as "psychological tools" that bring about transformation of human consciousness.  The potential for development of mental capabilities is determined by the cultural-historical heritage of the child's culture and the child's social experience.  Essentially, "through others we become ourselves."  He also believed that adults represent the "ideal form" of behavior in any given culture, and are extremely important as both models and guides in a child's development.

One particular section from this week's readings stood out for me with regard to teaching diverse populations of students.  That is, "According to Vygotsky, the culture does more than simply provide the setting for the individual's cognitive development.  The culture provides cultural symbols (psychological tools) and the child learns to think with these forms of reasoning."  The author of the text goes on to describe a study from the Soviet Union in which women from different cultural groups were given skeins of yarn and asked to name and classify them by color.  Women from one of the cultural groups maintained that the task could not be done.  Women from another group arranged the skeins according to brightness, placing pale pink, yellow, and pale blue in the same group.  Still other women arranged the colors in seven or eight groups, using categorical names.  The study concluded that comparing objects and grouping them into logical categories are not universal  operations.  

How does this apply to teaching in urban settings?  If Vygotsky's theory holds any water, then the implication is that people from different cultural backgrounds literally think differently.  If something as seemingly common as organizing items by color cannot be generalized among certain cultural groups, then we really cannot make any assumptions about what is or is not "common knowledge" or "common sense" among diverse students in our classrooms.  Our expectations need to be explicitly clear, and we need to be sure to take the time to listen to our students so we can understand what cultural symbolism they bring to the table and how it can benefit the group as a whole.