Prompt #3: Shor

In the school I have been teaching in, it is very clear that there are many cultural differences and many bilingual students. As a teacher, one needs to be aware of the differences among students and accommodate to the many diverse learners they will encounter throughout their years as an educator. Educators need to understand that different students will all learn differently and we can’t ignore that.

My service learning classroom doesn’t have too much of a linguistic variety; all the students speak English from what I’ve heard. My teacher doesn’t seem to really need to adapt assessments or assignments for any certain student based on their linguistic, sociocultural or ethnic characteristics. If I was a teacher, however, and I had a large classroom with many linguistic, sociocultural or ethnic characteristics that required individual attention for certain students, I would follow the ideas of Ira Shor.

Shor talks about how education is very political based on three aspects. The first is that the interaction between students and teachers, and students and students is political in itself. There are always classroom rules that require raising your hand to speak, not talking during class work, not talking to your peers, ect. Shor says interaction between each other is critical in order to truly learn. I would personally allow class discussions for the students to talk about the material being learned, so they are able to mentally test each other on what they understand and don’t understand, as well as for themselves. Then I would allow more time to have a class discussion so we could clear up any questions they need. This would allow them to be more prepared for any assessment coming up. Oh, and of course I would make all of the discussions interesting in some way! =]

Shor’s second aspect is funding in schooling is very political. As a classroom teacher I would not have much, if any, authority to determine where the funding goes in the school, therefore this subject is irrelevant. But, his third aspect of political schooling is testing. He says that because some teachers still follow the “traditional” style of teaching like using a straight forward script or syllabus or giving standardized tests, it’s giving unequal opportunities for students to learn. Shor says studies actually show that women and minorities are proven to do worse on standardized tests. He says the answer to this problem is teachers giving student-centered tests because they are more likely to increase the knowledge of the students; what you learn depends on the teacher.

As future educators we need to remember that not every student is going to learn the same way other students may. We can handwrite our own assessments, allow students to engage in activities and interact with each other, and most importantly listen to what they have to say about the content matter. From there we can determine where they are knowledgably in terms of the current topic they’re being tested on, and clear up any problems or misunderstandings they might have, and make tests depending on that.


note on the video: This gives a lot of good advice on how to differentiate your teaching for students who learn in different ways. Many of the quotes, if you pay close attention, are almost exactly what Shor and Dewey are saying in their articles! This is great advice and a really great video to watch! Enjoy!