Prompt 3: Shor

I think that in my case, I would have to say I don’t know how a culturally competent teacher would respond in assessments. My classroom stands divided with twelve different reading levels in the one room. I understand the need for each child to be able to develop at their own pace, but all the games and activities that the students partake in revolve around these levels whether it is a game of Go Fish or a game of Candyland. Thus, the groups in which they interact are essentially predetermined.
When I learned all this on my first day in I was astonished, but that feeling was quickly replaced by dismay when I realized what it meant for the entirety of the students. There were groups formed and bound by these reading levels. Certain kids could not play with other kids since the games are reading and vocabulary based. Those students who are on the lower reading levels are in effect made to feel inferior by the kids in the higher reading levels. I have heard kids tell other kids that they can’t play since “you won’t get it cause it’s level eight and you are level two”. Shor would have a heart attack! He would be beside himself to have to see a child’s worth be dependent upon their reading level.
Now, I am not trying to bash this classroom, but in this case I could find no justifications for my observations. Most of the assessments as far as testing go are done on an individual basis in which the teacher pulls a student aside to have them demonstrate their knowledge, but in the case of the reading levels there needs to be a change. There are moments of empowerment in the classroom where everyone’s ideas are heard and everyone is made a participant, but I think that these moments become overshadowed by the child’s reading placement since it’s a part of almost everything they do. Even center time keeps the same children with each other.
Shor desperately needs to be integrated into this environment. Shor believes that all students need to be educated as critical citizens, but these children aren’t being taught to ask questions; instead they are falling into complacency. They are at the beginning of their lives and are already acting the part prescribed to them by others. They do not take on the role of motivated learners, but rather the passive beings of which Shor teaches against. The students need to feel empowered in order to be the best that they can be and segregation by reading level in not one of his forms of empowerment. Shor stated that “self and society create eachother”, so what kind of a society are we creating by allowing these kids to feel less valued than others? This clip by Kenneth Clark speaks of a need to give kids a positive sense of their own being in order to create respect others...