Online Lesson 1: Part V - Summary

There are so many cultural communicative patterns that we as teachers should study. I only want to introduce to you a few areas through these stories just so that you can begin to understand the importance of communication in the multicultural classroom.

Knowing the established rules and conventions for interacting and behaving in the classroom is very important. Dr. Jerry Lesser, a noted Child Psychologist at Harvard University, claims that if children in the first three years of schooling do not acquire the rules for "doing school," then more than likely they will not do well in academic content, and they begin to drop out and disengage from school activities early. Parenthetically, Dr. Lesser was the founder of Sesame Street. Sesame Street was initially produced for American minority children to introduce them to American schools, to help these children to learn the rules and expected behaviors in classrooms. Many minority children's parents are not familiar with American schooling. They do not know what to expect in schools. Therefore, they cannot prepare their children for school as do American parents! American parents who have experienced K-12 grades, know what to expect and they prepare their children prior to entering kindergarten. For example, children are encouraged to play school with their parents and the rules, appropriate behaviors, and other expectations are mimicked through play. The parents teach their children how to raise their hands to get the teacher's attention; how to sit ; to respect the teacher; to obey the teacher; when to speak and not speak; etc. So when they come to school for the first time they are already prepared. They know the rules and expected behaviors while some minority children do not. This is why we have "Head Start" programs. Many children and their parents do not know what to expect in American classrooms. So how do they learn and acquire the rules? In typical classrooms, since many children already know the rules, teachers do not make all the rules explicit. The teacher may have some explicit rules posted or verbalized such as "how to line up when we enter and leave the classroom." The great majority of the rules are obtained through participation…and some children learn the rules quickly while others may not. Many of the expected rules and behaviors are made explicit in the classroom only when someone breaks them. For example, Johnny gets up in the middle of a lesson and goes to the back of the room to sharpen his pencil. The teacher informs him across the room in a public-audienced context (i.e., The teacher wants all students to hear), "Johnny, you are not to sharpen your pencil unless you ask me first!" Or, "Johnny, you're not supposed to get up in the middle of a lesson." These are two rules made explicit and directed at Johnny, but also to the entire class "indirectly" through Johnny's example. The students other than Johnny must acquire the rules in this manner. But what if you are an LEP and you only have a literal sense of English, meaning that you may not yet know all the linguistic nuances of English, including idiomatic expressions? Do you think that you could pick up the rules that are doled out in this example?

Many teachers make inferences about students often using logical fallacies. If a child is consistently breaking the rules of the classroom, teachers may infer that the child is not very smart socially, and this knowledge by extension is used to make a further inference, "not to expect much from this child academically." Quite often we equate improper social behavior with low academic achievement. This leads to low expectations in academic achievement due to lack of social skills, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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