Being a teacher assistant in Kindergarten, I deal with name calling often. However, my students are at the age where the insults are not really nasty words yet. If I were to hear a student call another student a racist name I would quickly respond. These words are offensive because no person can choose the color of their skin and they should not be judged by that. Racial names could insult whites, blacks, etc. As the teacher, I should let the student know that we are all created equal, that one person or one race is no better than the other. I would tell the student that calling someone a name is very hurtful to that person. I would also add that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. I think I would respond the same way for any situation of name calling, whether the student was apart of the group or not. Name calling is always hurtful.
As an educator, I would feel uncomfortable with a Spanish speaking family. In my classroom, we are dealing with this situation. This child is a ESL student, this was discussed in Chapter 2, page 70. The mother speaks only Spanish. The only communication we have with her is through the children and our ESL person. It would be my concern that if a student was doing poorly in class, that the student would not translate that to their parents. I do not speak Spanish, so this would be an issue for me. It would be my responsibility, through my school, to get a translator who spoke Spanish to relay messages from school to the home.
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Most of my class this year does not speak English as a first language and while the kids are learning a lot the parents still don't know any English. I speak Spanish, so if I HAVE to tell them something it's ok, but it's still hard. The kids will try to get away with not telling their parents things, but generally I catch them. There are many websites where you can get a decent translation of key words/phrases if you need to.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I was uncomfortable with when I did Play Therapy. Most of kids I worked with spoke Spanish. However, the more you communicate, the easier it is. Does the school system offer English classes for parents who speak Spanish?
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