Chpt 3 Response to: Development Stages, Parenting and Caring

Your journal is very insightful and I appreciate what you are getting out of our reading.

My main question is about the zone of proximal development. I couldn’t agree more with you in that you must let kids struggle through tasks in order to gain a sense of competence. The only concern I have is how much do you let a student struggle? I am sure it depends on the child, but I know the last student I worked with; if I let him struggle for too long (thirty seconds at most!) he would break down and start throwing things. I hope this is something that comes naturally to teachers, and once I am in the classroom it will be second nature to know this “zone”, but I don’t know how realistic that is. I guess you just have to read the student to know if it is too much for them. As you said, there is a lot of pressure in the earlier years because it impacts the rest of the years they are in education.

With regards to waiting for a child to show you respect; I found that interesting as well. I think it is modeled within our culture that you must show respect in order to earn it or in order for someone to care for you. I too, have fallen into this same situation, I am sure more than once. I think it happens a lot in the school environment. My first day working with a behavior disorder child involved many people telling me, “don’t be nice to him, we’ve tried nice” and many things to that effect. I know there is a lot of discussion between teachers about students so it is harder to have an open mind about a new student you have heard such horrible things about. I think our job as teachers is to remember that we can make a difference and maybe we can turn the student around just by giving them a chance.

Knowing that we are in all of the same classes, I too heard about the origin of the word “handicap.” I was actually quite appalled that we continue to use a word to generalize about a group of people that has such a negative connotation. I never knew where the word came from; just that many people use it. A side note is that this relates a lot to the classroom. Students will use all sorts of words that they do not necessarily know the meaning of. How can we scold them if we too are using words that are inconsiderate to others? I just found this to be an interesting thought.