Question 1:
A teacher whom you know and respect (you pick the subject and grade level) comes to you with a concern:
I have been doing my best to carry out the spirit and the letter of the reform recommendations that you talk about in my classroom, and I can see that they are making a difference. I can see that my students are more engaged cooperatively with each other than they used to be. I can see that they are actively constructing knowledge, both individually and collectively. I can see, too, that their activities in my classroom are more 'authentic,' more like activities associated with work and citizenship outside of school, and less like traditional school tasks.
I am still worried about one thing, though. When I look at the students in my class, the most successful are still those that come from European or Oriental middle-class backgrounds, and the students who get 'left out' are still mostly poor children or children of color. What am I doing wrong?
How would you respond to this teacher? If s/he were really implementing the reform recommendations in your field, would s/he be having this problem? Suppose you visited this teacher's classroom for the purpose of understanding his problem and helping him. Use what you know about the difficulties that poor children and children of color experience in schools to suggest questions that you might ask or patterns that you might look for during your visit. You might also wish to comment on the limitations of the reform recommendations (and perhaps of our knowledge in general) as guides for helping the students that this teacher is concerned about.
Lauren Resnick – University of Pittsburg
Ladson Billings
