Urban Education, post 3

Children in urban school settings sometimes have limited opportunities to be taught by community guest speakers and often look forward to these rare experiences. The class I was observing was scheduled to have a firefighter read a book to the class and talk about fire safety. When the firefighters showed up they brought fewer firefighters than were scheduled to come and some of the classes did not receive one. I was then asked to read the story to the class. Several of the students appeared to be disappointed by the fact that they would not receive one of the community workers. The teacher informed me that they do not normally get special people coming in to speak, so it is something the children were looking forward to experiencing.

I was also reminded of the fact that many students in a class may be bilingual and come from a variety of cultures. The book I read to the class was infused with Spanish words, some of which I was unsure of the pronunciation or definition. I learned that several of the students in the 1^st grade class spoke Spanish. I explained to the students that they could help me with the pronunciation of these words. These students seemed to enjoy sharing their knowledge about the Spanish language with everyone, and the non-Spanish speaking students seemed to enjoy learning about the language.  I thought this was a good opportunity to utilize these students’ strengths. If I were teaching this class, I would try to find multiple opportunities to integrate diversity lessons by allowing various students to share knowledge about their individual cultures with the class.