Today’s Class Discussion on Chapter 5 of Nieto

Today in class we discussed chapter five of Affirming Diversity, which focused on culture, identity, and learning. Unlike the previous chapters in the books, this booked talked about the ways in which teachers should acknowledge the ethnicity of their students. We shouldn’t act as though we’re color blind, which is something I’m guilty of doing sometimes. At the beginning of class, we made it clear that this idea didn’t contradict the earlier chapters because Nieto is talking about ethnicity and not race. I had never thought of the fact that students of different ethnicities might learn differently. That is something I’ll have to try and observe the next time I visit my geography class. Once again, our discussion turned to tracking, which is an important issue to discuss in the class. Through this book and by looking back on examples of how tracking negatively affected students while I was in school, but I still don’t think that tracking is horrible. I think this is because I had a somewhat positive experience with tracking. When I was in first grade, I was put in the lower reading group. I think that this was fair because unlike some of the other kids in my class, I was still having trouble reading. By the time I got to second grade, I was in the more advanced reading group. It’s not like we were singled out in the class, we were just assigned different books to read during class. This is like what goes on in the second grade classroom that I observed last year. As I described in an earlier post, each student is given a letter, and that letter symbolizes the level of book that the student can read up to. Each of the students have different letters, but I think that this system had a positive effect on them. Many of the students were determined to move up a letter and worked hard by actually reading during their scheduled reading time, as well as at home. This is similar to my experiences in school. Although I never passed the tests to get into the advanced reading group in fourth grade, I continued to work hard in my classes, trying to improve my reading and writing skills. Finally, in eighth grade I was recommended to take the enriched language arts class as a freshman in high school. Although I was a little apprehensive about being put in that class (most likely a result of tracking) I was challenged in that class and it was one of the best experiences I had in high school. I know that it’s important to help others when they need it, and I know that I will also learn when helping others, but I still feel that in a tiny way, tracking is somewhat good for students. If all students were to stay back and help their peers, how can they ever reach their potential? How are they going to be challenged? From my experience, whenever I was in a "regular" English class, I wasn’t being challenged and didn’t meet my full potential. I could have worked harder. This is largely my fault, but I think that many students need to be pushed. I know that this is a horrible way in which to look at tracking, but it is only because it had a positive effect on me. I never felt bad about being placed in the "regular" classes throughout elementary school and junior high school; I had a very good education. But I learned so much about the world and myself as a thinker more in my enriched classes. I think I’m just a little confused about what would happen to the "gifted" students if they weren’t allowed to move on and were held back to help their peers. If anyone could help answer that for me, that would be especially helpful.