WORKING-CLASS IS MY EDUCATION BACKGROUND

"Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use. For example, they wrote their "autobiography" by answering such questions as "Where were you born?" "What is your favorite animal?" on a sheet entitled "All about me."

These parts of the article stood out to me because I went through a similar situation and consider myself one of those students who attended a working-class school. The word working-class is pretty funny. They cannot make it seem more educated like the others, even middle-class school sounds a little better. It’s like the working class will never reach the expectations as an executive elite school because the opportunities are very different. The value of education takes a whole new meaning. The value of education in my eyes is best described with saying that it’s not the quantity of the things you may know but the quality and knowledge of things that will make you a highly educated person. I grew up in public schools; my mother started her own housekeeping business which was really hard to get going since she knew absolutely no English. That blue collar job was what provided for us and lead to us not seeing my mother until the late hours of the night. My two oldest sisters would make us food until my mother would get home, it would be us alone and we managed to survive. I was taught proper punctuation growing up but I never really understood it and probably still don’t. If it was not for Microsoft Word then I would not correct my errors because I probably would not be able to tell. Is that really my fault though?? I don’t think it was my mother’s idea to put me in English classroom when it is my second language. Don’t you think that if I would have been taught the key essentials of my first language I would be able to understand the English better? English is now my first language but because Spanish was basically forced out of me. It is now that I see that my education has not been the best and maybe that was the reason of my lack of interest in school growing up. I was never a good student because I was never given the chance to express myself. I feel as if, teachers lied to my mother and me, about how good I was doing in school. I feel as if the only reason they decided to put me in resource in elementary school was because they realized that they had made a mistake and if they did not do the necessary to correct their mistake that I would be an illiterate. At least I can read!

“The children had no access to materials. These were handed out by teachers and closely guarded. Things in the room "belonged" to the teacher: "Bob, bring me my garbage can." The teachers continually gave the children orders. Only three times did the investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic "please," or "let's" or "would you." Instead, the teachers said, "Shut up," "Shut your mouth," "Open your books," "Throw your gum away-if you want to rot your teeth, do it on your own time." Teachers made every effort to control the movement of the children, and often shouted, "'Why are you out of your seat??!!"

I picked this out of the article because I feel as if teacher in the working-class schools instead of having a close relationship and focusing on key teaching components instead worry about all the unnecessary factors. I remember teacher talking to me like this and it got really annoying after a while and really made the class uncomfortable. It was if we couldn’t do anything, like incarcerated juveniles. We knew that nothing in this school belonged to us but the teacher always felt like if she needed to remind us every day. We never really had belonged to us because there just simply was not enough. I believe that students go to school to learn and receive help from professionals whose main purpose is to teach, educate and make students succeed in life. If that was the case, why do we have teachers yelling at students? I believe that discipline is something parents have fully responsibility of and students do not go to school to get yelled at and made look like bad students. Teachers do not have respect for students in a working-class school, therefore students don’t respect them which inhibits every bodies learning experience. Instead of teachers having patience with students and helping them they just push them off to the side and let them figure things out. Where not all geniuses some instructions in certain things are needed. I always felt as if I was under surveillance. A classroom flows so much better when you have input from the students and the students feel as important as the other. The singling out of students is really embarrassing and certain students just shut down because the teacher wanted to send a point to the class. It does not help learning. I had several classes that ran so smoothly because the teachers trusted us and really depended on us to make the best of the class. We did not need textbooks to learn, an overall good communication between classmates and the teacher empowered us all to learn things that I still remember. There are certain teachers that believe strongly in having full control of the class and being the one that students hate because fully expressing who you are is against the law.

“The school district requires the fifth grade to study ancient civilization (in particular, Egypt, Athens, and Sumer). In this classroom, the emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the culture of the people of ancient times. The following are typical activities: the children made an 8mm film on Egypt, which one of the parents edited. A girl in the class wrote the script, and the class acted it out. They put the sound on themselves. They read stories of those days. They wrote essays and stories depicting the lives of the people and the societal and occupational divisions. They chose from a list of projects, all of which involved graphical presentations of ideas: for example. "Make a mural depicting the division of labor in Egyptian society."

Affluent Professional School; in my words Comfortable Qualified school. Hmmm… Sounds pretty interesting must be nice to have a school that provides you with all the proper tools n order to succeed in this society. I wish I had the full support of my teachers. I remember when we turned Hamlet into our own play. We read the play first and we made a remix, it was not anything big but it was really good. We used songs from the present to get the point across and performed it for the whole school. We all learned hamlet and we made it something of our own. I will never forget that. Many teachers in our school were surprised because they did not know how the teacher made it happen but she let our creativity show and with that we went to extreme measures. It was something fun and we all could relate to it. There are so many doors that teachers can close by not giving the students the opportunity and always wanting to teach them. There are certain things that teacher do not know and the only way education will become a good experience for students is if there given the chance. This school is in Providence and there was no rich kids in our school, but since we had the support of the teacher who made the learning environment fun and interesting for all of us we over excelled and we learned Hamlet in a very unique interesting way. WHICH STUDENT OR PERSON YOU KNOW DOES NOT LEARN IN A COMFORTABLE AND FUN ENVIRONMENT??

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