After a delicious Italian dinner, a small group of us girls went to the Missouri Theatre to enjoy an evening of "La Cenerentola" known in America as "Cinderella." As the show started, I was thinking of the Disney version of Cinderella that I grew up with. The one where Cinderella has an evil Stepmother and two evil Stepsisters. Where Cinderella's fairy godmother turns her into a beautiful princess and she goes to the ball and falls in love with the prince. This is very different from the Italian version of Cinderella. In this version, Cinderella still has two evil, conniving step sisters but this time, she has an evil stepfather who belittles her. The Prince, in order to find a bride, pretends to be a servant to the "Prince" (who is a friend of the prince pretending to be him) so that he can see the true personalities of the women. Naturally, he falls in love with Cinderella while her step sisters are trying to pursue the fake prince. This time, the fairy godmother belongs to the prince. When she sees he is in love with Cinderella, she goes to her and makes her beautiful for the ball. Although the little details of the story are different, the underlying story of Cinderella is the same: Cinderella is poor and verbally abused by her step family and the prince falls in love with her.
The singing in this Opera was beautiful. I now understand why operas are sung in Italian. The words flow together easily and add to the performance. I really enjoyed seeing "La Cenerentola."
Thursday, March 29, 2012
"Best Practices in Working with Linguistically Diverse Families" by Blanca E. Araujo
This article discusses the importance of using best practices for teaching students who come from many different walks of life who speak a range of different languages. One of these practices is to incorporate "funds of knowledge." Funds of knowledge are the information that is learned from the students' by interactions at home. These can include resiliency, strong work ethic, cooking, care taking, and other valuable knowledge that is learned at home. The article talks about hoe beneficial it is for teachers to incorporate the students' home environment with their school environment. Using cultural resources leads to better partnerships between parents, students, and schools regardless of background.
The next important practice is incorporating culturally relevant teaching. The article says that successful teachers promote native language instruction. Teachers need to be conscious of culture and ethnic differences and personal biases. One suggestion they use to promote this is by bringing in families to classrooms. Teachers need to be careful to not view students and families through mainstream lenses because when this happens, teachers often see weaknesses as opposed to individual strengths of the students.
The third best practice to working with linguistically diverse families is communicating with these families. Not being able to connect with parents and let them know standards, expectations, and ways to help gives way to miscommunications and lead to stereotyping. To create a place where students and families feel comfortable and understand what their students are learning, teachers should send emails, newsletters, and invitations in the students' native language.
Teachers should also seek and extend assistance for families. Helping and getting help from linguistically diverse families builds bridges between classrooms, schools, teachers and families.
While reading this article, a few questions came to mind. One of which was where do teachers find the resources to be able to translate classroom articles into multiple different languages. How can teachers use linguistically diverse parents as volunteers and class helpers if they cannot speak the language? But overall, this article was very helpful and let me see different ways to involve the parents of linguistically diverse students.
The next important practice is incorporating culturally relevant teaching. The article says that successful teachers promote native language instruction. Teachers need to be conscious of culture and ethnic differences and personal biases. One suggestion they use to promote this is by bringing in families to classrooms. Teachers need to be careful to not view students and families through mainstream lenses because when this happens, teachers often see weaknesses as opposed to individual strengths of the students.
The third best practice to working with linguistically diverse families is communicating with these families. Not being able to connect with parents and let them know standards, expectations, and ways to help gives way to miscommunications and lead to stereotyping. To create a place where students and families feel comfortable and understand what their students are learning, teachers should send emails, newsletters, and invitations in the students' native language.
Teachers should also seek and extend assistance for families. Helping and getting help from linguistically diverse families builds bridges between classrooms, schools, teachers and families.
While reading this article, a few questions came to mind. One of which was where do teachers find the resources to be able to translate classroom articles into multiple different languages. How can teachers use linguistically diverse parents as volunteers and class helpers if they cannot speak the language? But overall, this article was very helpful and let me see different ways to involve the parents of linguistically diverse students.
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