Prompt number three

Connection: Jonathan Kozol
Prompt number three

“Where is JoKwan?” asked Mrs. LaKing. “He went to Puerto Rico,” said Carlos. “Yes, now I remember. You’re going this summer aren’t you?” Carlos agreed. Mrs. LaKing was doing a formative assessment with Carlos just now. From this simple conversation, we can already tell a lot about Carlos. One, he knows English, two, he is going out of the country this summer and three he is observant and knows that JoKwan is out of the country now.

While looking through the piles and piles of books in the library at The Garden Academy, I saw many different books about unique living conditions, including living in a two family home and life with a single parent. Some of the books talked of holidays different cultures celebrate. By looking at all of the books in Mrs. LaKing’s library, I could see that she was responsive to the linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics of some of the students in the class. The teacher could use the books for an formative assessment of how well the children could read. The children could relate to these books because they take part in some of the culture shown in the books.

Last month one of the students brought their own culture into the classroom. Liu arrived speaking boisterously, “I got you one last night!” I watched as she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a fortune cookie. She gave it to Mrs. LaKing and Mrs. LaKing thanked Liu very much. Liu talked about how they went out for Chinese last night and she got a fortune cookie for the teacher. Liu is of Chinese descent. She is one of two Chinese students in Mrs. LaKing’s class. Being Chinese contributes to who Liu is and on that one particular day, she decided to share her culture with Mrs. LaKing. The teacher could administer a formative assessment to Liu by asking questions about Liu’s experience to see if Liu can recall facts, tell feelings, and mention problems and solutions.

Although the teacher has students that are aware of their linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics and she has books that respond to the characteristics, the ‘assessments’ given do not portray the same spirit. When looking at the assessments that the kids are given they are orientated toward schools for children who live in middle class and upper middle class families. They include names like “John” and “Sally”. This is ironic because when you walk in the school, the signs are in English and Spanish and the place seemed responsive to the student’s different backgrounds, yet in the assessments, things are different.

Every week the Palm Pilot comes out for summative testing. Each student is asked to read a passage and a list of words to track fluency and progress. Mrs. LaKing must “type-in” the response from each of the students onto the Palm Pilot then the Palm Pilot is connected to her computer and the scores are tracked. The passages and words that they read are far from diverse and do not incorporate the linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics of the student. The only positive to using the Palm Pilot is ease of data entry and production of reports.

This can be related to Jonathan Kozol’s article: Still Separate, Still Unequal. If the principal of the Garden Academy read this he may say, “My school is open to the linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural backgrounds.” From a distance, they are but when you look closely, they are not responsive to the backgrounds of the children as far as assessments are concerned. Kozol says in his article that most schools still take part in “segregation” even though that supposedly ended decades ago.

If Mrs. LaKing decided to incorporate linguistic, ethnic, and sociocultural characteristics of the students into the classroom assessments, she could compose her own formative assessments. She may use names like JoKawn, Liu or Carlos. She could also write about things they are familiar with. Assessments now incorporate stories with words that rhyme or words that describe experiences like flying a kite on a lush green hill. Instead, she could assess with stories about crossing the busy street to play in the city park. These small changes may make the stories relate better to the kid’s lives and they’d possibly have an easier time reading it. If things were changed, Kozol’s theory of segregation being present would be negated to an extent, which is good for everyone.