Yesterday, I went down to Fountain Hills Middle School to interview some more teachers. I went to this school mainly to get a perspective on a classroom in a higher income area. What I found out helped me solidify my hypothesis on a couple questions.
I had no idea how close Fort McDowell was to Fountain Hills Middle School and this creates some interesting and pressing questions and concerns for classrooms. One of the teachers I interviewed said that native children were very quiet and reluctant to participate in class, this is a big problem for classrooms that focus mostly on discussion.
One teacher mentioned that they are seeing an interesting reaction to poverty in the area. For example, four times a year native families get Windfall checks to help them through poverty. Teachers know when families get these checks because students will often not show up to school and come back talking about all the trips and new things they got.
It's interesting how socioeconomic differences among the students can have such a huge impact on the classroom dynamics. Did the teachers mention any disparity in academic performance between the native children and the rest of the class?
ReplyDeleteThey didn't specifically talk about grades, but if the native children are much less likely to participate in a discussion based classroom their grades will likely suffer. I'm not quite sure what drives this behavior, perhaps it poverty or some aspect of their culture. More research would need to be done on this subject before I jump to any conclusions though.
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