connecting the authors

One day I happened to be placed in another Kindergarten classroom because my teacher was absent. Upon entering this classroom I noticed many children were speaking to eachother in spanish and then there were some still speaking in english. When the teacher rang the bell to clean up and come to the rug. One little boy got frustrated and began to yell angrily in spanish. The teacher looked at me and said he doesn't speak english at all and he does not really understand english really well. Another child in my class noticed how frustrated he was and went over to him and spoke to him calmly in Spanish and I automatically noticed how much he calmed down. After this happened I was talking to my teacher & she said many of these children don’t really understand English and it isn’t spoken at home much because there parents don’t really understand it either. I can relate this article to the reading by Rodriguez because in that reading he talks about how frustrating it was for him to learn English even at a young age.

Another author I can connect to is Kliewer. I have multiple students in my class that have disabilities some physical others not. In particular there is one little boy that has a learning disability and also struggles to understand English so he becomes lost and very frustrated very fast. One day I happened to notice him acting out & getting angry fast while doing circle time on the rug so I asked the teacher if I could take him one on one to another table and try and work with him. She loved that idea & she said she wishes she could do more to help this child but she is only one person in a room with 26 children. Since the second week of our service learning placements I have been working with him & I and the teacher have noticed drastic improvements he has a little more patience also. Just because this child has a learning disability nobody in the classroom judges him. Instead, his  classmates try and help him with his class work or when they are doing centers and playing a game he doesn’t understand. Instead of labeling him as a child with a disability everyone treats him as if he is just another student in the classroom.

The third author I can relate to is Kozol. At Alan Shawn Feinstein I have had the privilege to work with many different children. One thing I have noticed is that during recess when the children are told to grab their jackets there are a few children that don’t have jackets while others have jackets, hats, and gloves. Then there are other children that come to school in brand new shoes every day while some students are conning to school in ripped up dirty clothes and sneakers that have holes in them. After Thanksgiving our teacher asked each of the children how they spent the holiday and unfortunately some said their mommy and daddy could not afford a thanksgiving meal and this absolutely broke my heart. In Kozol’s article he mentioned how if the children grew up in poverty it is likely they will never grow out of it and this breaks my heart that this could be how the children grow up and how eventually their children will grow up.