Ladson-Billings Discussion

Ch. 1- With teacher shortage, is the high turnover rate to blame?

In chapter 1, Ladson-Billings describes the shortage of teachers who are capable of teaching successfully in diverse classrooms. I believe this is so because of the high turn over rate that happens within the first few years of teaching. A teacher lands a job in a diverse community that may not have all the resources he or she was hoping for. Along with lack of resources, the students could care less about learning. As the school year progresses, this new teacher becomes more and more frustrated because he or she is not making an impact on these students as hoped. After giving the school a try for one or two, unfortunately, the new teacher gives up hope and decides another profession might be better. This is a prime example of why the turnover rate is so high and why it is to blame for teacher shortages.



Ch. 2- In the beginning of Chapter 2, the teacher decides to teach Spanish, which made the Spanish speaking students in her class the experts. Do you think this was a wise decision and would you do something like this in your own classroom?

I think that this is a great idea. In a classroom, the teacher is always the expert and sometimes, that scares students into not speaking their own thoughts on a subject. Since the teacher was not an expert with speaking Spanish, her Spanish students were able to take the reigns (somewhat) of the classroom and use their expertise to help the class. This act, I’m sure, made the Spanish speaking students feel powerful and important because they were helping their fellow classmates understand part of their culture.
I would definitely do something like this in my classroom. If my history lesson dealt with how to enlist and become apart of the army, I only know how to teach that from what I’ve read about enlisting. Now, if I have a student in my class who has enlisted in the army and will be joining after high school, I would have him explain his personal experience and the decisions he had to make when enlisting. This gives my class a real perspective of what enlisting is like and it makes the student teaching feel empowered to share his story.

African Americans & Education

Question: Do you think that if White Americans allowed slaves to read and have an education from the beginning, would history be different and how so?

If African American slaves were given the right to an education when they came to the United States their lives could have been much different. “Plantation owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and, consequently, denied their workers any form of education. There was a general fear that literacy would expose the slaves to abolition literature” (p.42). Yes, there probably would have been revolts once slaves began reading abolition articles. There probably would have been even more slaves trying to escape to the North.

However, I believe that if African Americans were given the right to an education and literacy, they would have felt somewhat more civilized. Now, I’m not trying to say that getting an education would make slaves feel equal to whites. I’m just trying to say that having an education would decrease the equality gap of slaves and whites.

African American slaves thought horribly about their white owners. They lived in horrible conditions and were denied everything. By receiving an education, I think the hatred African Americans had for their owners would not be as great. I really believe that African American education could have been the key for some peace between the two cultures.

Zinn vs. We Have A Story to Tell

I thought that the curriculum guide would be a helpful tool when teaching students about Native Americans. The lesson introduced students to the Chesapeake region Indians and what their life was like before 1600 as well as during the colonial period and after the United States was founded. I do believe that it is important to teach students about Native Americans from the English perspective and the Indian perspective.
The English perspective is that of a happier one. Columbus landed and colonized while remaining friendly with the Indians. However, as we all know now, he captured and took Indians back to England to show off what he had done. It is a teacher’s job to explain both sides to students, not just the “nicer” version.
In relation to Howard Zinn’s article, he focused more on the bad of what happened with the Native Americans. Zinn was more concerned about the historiography of how the story is told. From the beginning, Zinn did not want to tell the “nicer” story of what happened to the Indians when the English began to colonize in the new world. I think that Zinn sympathizes with the Native Americans not only because of what the English had put them through, but also because their story is usually told only from an English perspective.
Both articles gave different perspectives of the Native Americans during colonial times, but I think that Zinn’s article tells it more like it was.