Snow White Castle

When walking into the classrooms of Snow White Castle Elementary School, you will see many different types of race and languages within the students. In my Kindergarten classroom all of the children are Hispanic besides about 1 or 2. They all can speak fluent Spanish and broken up English. When I tutor some of the children outside of the classroom they all have very strong accents. When i ask them a question, most of them answer in broken up English and then ask me if their correct. As Kindergarten students they all know that English is their second language and how i speak in English sounds different than how they pronounce their words. I love sitting in the classroom and listening to them speak. Each one of the Kindergarten children all really want to learn. They all get excited when us, tutors takes them out of the classroom because they love the one on one attention. I don't live with the children at home, so i don't know how much attention they get from their parents but by going once a week really makes a difference in the students life's. When i walk into the first grade classrooms most of the children are black and Hispanic and English is their second language. When i tutor the first graders i ask them to read a book to me. I have 1 Hispanic boy, 1 Hispanic girl and 1 white girl. When we read books the Hispanic little boy and girl pronounce their words differently than the little white girl and she always tries to correct them. I thought that was very interesting, having ESL children mixed with a child who just needs help reading because she knows that they have accents and always tries to correct their English. The ESL children get annoyed sometimes so I have to explain to her that we are working on reading and not how they talk. Sometimes its a struggle for me because having them mixed is harder than just having all children that need help reading but every time i go to Snow White Castle they are improving and the little girl doesn't correct them as much anymore. When looking at Info Works their are many different pie charts about Snow White Castle Elementary School. The first pie chart is about reduced and free lunches. There is 91% of children that get free or reduced lunch at school and 9 aren't eligible. That shows that their families aren't making enough money to give their children money to buy lunch and they qualify for free lunches at school. Also on the next pie chart there is race and ethnic backgrounds at the school. The chart reads that 62% are Hispanic and 12% are African American, Asians are 17% and whites are 8%. By looking at these results it doesn't surprise me at all. Almost every child in both of my classrooms I observe are all Hispanic or African Americans. Just by the first day I walked in the school and saw many Spanish posters, I knew right away the Hispanic percentage would be higher than whites. I was then surprised when i saw on the last pie chart, students receiving ESL/ Bilingual education services and the percentage of children that don't receive ESL at all are 74%. The students that receive ESL is 26%. That surprised me a lot because most of my children are ESL. I thought the percentages would be opposite but by looking at that chart maybe the children haven't been put into ESL classrooms yet. The students at Snow White Castle Elementary School bring cultural capital into the classroom. Most of the students in my classrooms receive free or reduced lunch. The children's families can not afford money to give to their children to buy lunch everyday. The children tell me what their parents do for a living. They tell me that some of their parents are stay at home moms or are teachers or some just don't even know. But even if there parents make little to no money they are still highly educated. Even if their families don't have much money the children in my classroom are still getting educated they are receiving social skills and intellectual knowledge. Just by being in school you learn all of those skills that would help you in the real world someday. My theorist i related this prompt to was Kahnn and Westheimer. By reading In the Service Of What? reminded me about our service learning we are doing in the providence schools. By going to Snow White Castle i am making a huge difference on the children's lives even if they don't realize it right now. Just by sitting with them one on one and helping them read i am making a difference on their lives that they never would have had. Kahnn and Westheimer talk about all the different service learning projects they did and this really reminds me of our experiences. By going to these school every week has really made a difference in my life as well. It will help me out one day when i am faced with all of these challenges in my own classroom and by doing this service learning we will be ready to face all of these challenges!