Blog #7 Literacy with an Attitude

    For this week’s blog I read Literacy with an Attitude by Patrick J. Finn.  A little background about Finn is that he is from the south side of Chicago and part of a blue collar, Irish catholic big family.  Finn was the eighth out of nine children.  Unlike the other men in his family, Finn was the odd man out and went to school to be a teacher and not a plumber like his brothers.  After reading this article from Finn there are many quotes that I find important.  However these are the three quotes that I connected with and wanted to share about. 

1.) “The reality was that as the year wore on there were spaces available in the “lower” classes to dump troublesome students from “higher” classes.

I chose this quote from the article because not only do I find lowering kids into different classes because they are troublesome is wrong for the student but it is also wrong for those teachers.  Just because a student may be “troublesome” does not mean that they should be lowered from the class that they deserve to be in due to their intelligence.  This is not only unfair for the student because now they are not getting the education that they should be getting.

“Schooled to take orders, to replace their parents at the bottom of the economic heap” 

This quote I found to be important in showing that as teachers it is important to encourage our students to dream big and reach for their big dreams no matter their background.  It's important that students are aware of their career choices and realize they do not have to do what their family is known to do.  I believe that as a teacher it is important that we encourage students that they can do and be successful in a career path that they want to be in if they work really hard.

“They’re lazy. I hate to categorize them, but they’re lazy” “Because children in this school don’t know anything about the U.S, so you can’t teach them much”. “You can’t teach these kids anything. Their parents don’t care about them, and they’re not interested”

These were all a bunch of quotes that I found in the same paragraph describing what teachers have said about their students.  I think that these quotes are important to look at to see how as a teacher you should not be talking about your students in this way.  I feel that what is being said within these quotes is assumptions being made about students and their families.  As a teacher, you shouldn’t be making assumptions that all your students feel a certain way about their education.  Although some students may fit in this category of not being interested in learning or even lazy it does not mean that all students are.  I also think that it is unfair for a teacher to assume how much a student’s family cares about them.  It is important to keep in mind that students are all going through different life situations and that you never truly know what your students are going through outside of the classroom.  Just because a student may act a specific way does not mean that they actually don’t care or have a family that doesn’t care about them.  They may just be going through a hard time that makes it difficult to be in a good head space for learning and hard for families to support their children’s education at all times when there could be bigger issues going on.