CARSA

In Improbable Scholars, the author describes how Alina Bossbally pushes her immigrant students to become fluent in Spanish, their native language, and acheive literacy in that language before she lets them begin writing entirely in English:

"These kids are here to stay; and, one way or another, they will help to define our future." (Kirp 16)

After the class meeting, the kids take a science test (Ms. Nielsen gives worksheet with questions and reads the questions aloud) and a math test from their workbooks. A few kids look at the paper next to them, ask their neighbors for answers. Some tell Ms. Nielsen that someone else was cheating. Ms. Nielsen says aloud to me, “We have a big cheating problem in this class”. She moves one student over a desk, but otherwise does not punish kids who cheat or try to stop them from doing it.

"These students describe the majority of their relationships with teachers as devoid of trust, devoid of caring, and devoid of viable information and therefore deficient in social capital resources that enable positive educational outcomes."

In the Bondy-et-al article, CRCM (culturally responsive classroom management) is described as a way that teachers can use their understanding of their students’ cultural backgrounds to connect with their students and manage the classroom in a way that is effective and sensitive to the students’ varying backgrounds. It reminds me a lot of differentiated instruction, in which a teacher takes into account students’ varying academic backgrounds while creating lessons and leading the classroom. Many parallels can be made between examples of CRCM in the article and typical examples of differentiated instruction.

Jamie Lew's article comparing Korean Americans in two different classes and her push at the end that "researchers may benefit by examining race relations beyond a black and white discourse, and how students' racial and ethnic identities intersect with culture, class, race, and school context" (Lew) talks about how different socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic identities shouldn’t be seen in binary. I think that it could benefit everyone, not just "researchers," to consider different outlooks. For example, in another class, we were discussion studies in which women in STEM fields felt that the identity of being a woman and being in the STEM field conflicted which could lead to poorer performance and social interaction.

"It is not only schools that are failing these students, but also families and communities." (Casella 75)

In the Blanchett article, the intersection of race and disability (among other factors) is examined. I already knew that people of color with disabilities were less likely to be diagnosed and to receive proper support and accommodations for their disabilities, because people of color are more likely to be in a lower economic class. However, I hadn't thought about how similarly society treats race and disability, and how that adds to the struggle of being someone who is both a person of color and a person with a disability. On page 392, Blanchett mentions the "segregated classrooms" and "poor post-school outcomes" that students with disabilities experience, and these things are also often experienced by students of color.

• During the last class, my group discussed racial and financial segregation in cities, and wondered why those there was such an overlap between the lower class and minorities. “Racial Bias in Pennsylvania’s Funding of Public Schools” gives evidence that funding of public schools could contribute to class inequalities between white people and racial minorities. “How to destroy a public school system” mentions this inequality and refers to the “white flight” concept, calling it a “white noose”: “Former Philadelphia Mayor Richardson Dilworth... bluntly described Philadelphia as choked by the “white noose” of the suburbs.

“education did not create the problem of widespread poverty wages, and education will not solve the problem. No Child Left Behind will not raise wages for the millions who work at poverty jobs. Only employers and governments can raise wages”