When reading Fernando Naiditch’s article “Cross the street to a new world,” one quote in particular stuck out to me. Naiditch comments that although the school, and especially the teacher he was working with, labeled one of the students, Pedro, as “Learning Disabled,” what he came to realize is that the school had just lacked to teach Pedro about certain skills/concepts that the teacher and the school overlooked. He writes, “How could something this fundamental be overlooked in the classroom. I realized there is so much taken for granted. Teachers expect students to already know so many things when they come to class, and labels can easily explain away gaps in that knowledge” (Naiditch 28).

Reading about Pedro's journey through being mislabeled "Learning Disabled" and the misunderstanding of the type of knowledge that he carried, I was tempted to see his story through the lens of a broader immigrant experience. I think the extent to which knowledge is so inherently cultural, from the way it is received to the way it is held, is a clear indicator that schools were built and maintained for a specific type of student--specifically one who has the basic language and cultural skills to navigate the learning process. The fact that Naiditch was able to create an almost instant connection to Pedro's mom and find out the importance of an oral tradition in Pedro's life speaks volumes to the simplicity of opening that door for communication.

At the beginning of the first class I visited at my placement school, Ms C (a pseudonym for my placement teacher's name) gave the students a few do now problems on the smart board, and a Keystone practice worksheet. After letting the students work on these problems individually for a while, she got all of the students’ attention and they begin going over the problems together. She asked students to volunteer and explain their answers, and told them that she will give them a point on their next exam if they answer correctly today.

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Ana María is a current 8th grader. She's been in the states for about two years and has an older brother who is also in the 8th grade. They both go to King's After School Program, sit close together, and look out for each other. They share a lot of similar qualities, but Ana María is mathematically talented and her brother is consistently encouraging her. Earlier in the year, Ana María was taking Pre-Algebra, but this semester, they moved her up to Algebra 2. She was moved to two levels of higher math. Her school recognized that Ana was doing so well in her previous math class that they gave her a math test and based on that score, she was moved to Algebra 2.

While reading Keenan I was struck by the dedication she showed to her students. Stating the importance of carving out that time every day for Morning Meeting, and putting so much time into creating a Wiki space, and trying to raise funding for computers.  I actually went and checked out her page on Donors Choose. (http://www.donorschoose.org/ms.keenan?historical=true) on which she has completed 65 projects for her classroom, which include everything from Chrome Books to a cozy reading corner to white boards for the students.  On her page she has a small blurb stating "My classroom is an exciting, warm and welcoming place to learn.

I was quite perplexed by Django Paris David E. Kirkland’s notion of AAL as a vernacular literacy and a form of resistance against DAE. I was skeptical about this approach and felt uncomfortable reading through their work mainly because I felt a sense of sensationalizing of minority culture. I constantly found myself thinking about how their description of AAL made it seem like this paper was for an upper-class White audience. Although I felt this way, I found their concluding thoughts to be quite useful in applying student life experiences into the classroom. The student vernacular literacies, being able to bring them into the classroom to help students better interact with their educative experience appears to have so much potential but also presents other interesting challenges.

Sleeter talks extensively about the vast resource that students themselves provide one another as curriculum. Keenan talks about storytelling as an effective tool to build classroom community and engage students in learning about one anothers' lives. The parallelism is, to me, quite clear: Students' stories help to foster a classroom community but also serve as a curriculum unto themselves. Including student voices in the daily classroom routine, Keenan reflects, improves writing skills and forms bonds both among students and between students and teacher. Students care more about learning when they have a personal connection the material at hand.

After reading “The Consciousness of the Verbal Artist,” there were some aspects of the chapter that left me feeling uneasy. I found myself agreeing with the final adages of the importance of learning through different vernaculars, the colloquial in conjunction with the academic. This offers students a chance to bring a personal addition into the classroom and allowing them the chance to find validation in their personal practices within classrooms, a place where deviance from status quo is often labeled wrong and less than, thus creating a contrasting image of school.

At my school, all the students are able to check out laptops for the school day, which they will use to work on schoolwork for the course of the day. In my classroom one day, students were supposed to be writing scripts for an assignment they were working on. Instead, they were goofing off on their computers, and one girl laid down on her desk, covered her head with her coat, and started talking on the phone.

 My teacher, Ms. Williams, seemed to tired to deal with it. Instead of focusing on individual students who were not working, she only focused on those that were, saying things like “thank you for getting this done, Jonathan!” in a loud voice so as to call attention to it.