Primary Language Instruction and the Education of Language Minority Students an article by Jim Cummins

This was a refreshing article. In fact, it enabled me to go back to my own beliefs and feelings about why I became a teacher in the first place. It is helping me to reprioritize my classroom and instruction, to what I have always known as “best practices”.
To start at the beginning, you need to know a bit about my current academic year and state of mind. I have been struggling all year with the “toughest” group of students I have ever taught. I teach fourth grade (a tested grade) and my current class was “the class” that caused the entire district to lose “AYP”. Yes, that is right. In our district there are only four elementary schools. Two elementary schools have been keeping the district afloat with test scores that have enabled “adequate yearly progress” towards Missouri’s standards. Last year, our elementary third grade class “missed the boat”, by a long shot. At the beginning of the year the district was outraged with the third grade teachers in my school. The third grade teachers felt like children being admonished for trying their best and not succeeding. Of course no one mentioned the students’ part in failing the test.
Next, administration turned their heads to the fourth grade teachers for rectification of the situation. Trying to be positive and optimistic, I stood up for the challenge. In a class where 8 out of 22 students were reading on grade level, I was bound and determined to prepare them for the MAP test, by April. Instead, I have come up against the toughest year of my career. I have questioned my own ability as a teacher, and my own philosophy and perspective of reality has been challenged to the limits.
It wasn’t until I read this article that I realized the extent of the problem. I went into this year trying to teach the students the prescriptive knowledge needed to pass the state test. I have shown the students the binder of grade level expectations. In my class we call it the “fourth grade bible”. When I teach a grade level expectation, I let the students know, “This is in the fourth grade bible”. When I teach something above and beyond the grade level expectations, I let the students know, “This isn’t in the fourth grade bible, but it will get you a head start on fifth grade, middle school or high school.” This is the extent to which I have familiarized myself with the grade level expectations in Missouri.
Recently, I have been involved in vertical and technology based meetings with collaborative teachers. In these meetings I have realized that all the wonderful tools I have hidden away in my room; such as inquiry based, cooperative learning, technology rich unit projects and WebQuests, have been left untouched all year. They are unused and untouched because this class has so much catching up to do. We don’t have time for time consuming, motivating and enriching activities. Just listening to myself makes me want to cry, but it is true. This is how the year has gone for me.
Cummin’s article has helped me refocus and I am ready to share in my classroom’s resistance. The more I have tried to control and impart knowledge, the more they have resisted. Look out DESE, I’m through with the MAP test! My students are resisting this “education” because it has no relevance to their lives, it is not motivating, and it is subtractive to their cultural background. Who writes the MAP test anyway? I imagine the writers are the people in our society who feel that we should all assimilate to their prescriptive educational needs. They are the politicians who bank on platforms claiming “No Child Should Be Left Behind.” The underlying truth to this platform is, “no child, different from ourselves, should get in the way of our children getting ahead.” Okay, now I’m on a soap box.
The two major ideas or realizations I am taking from Cummins’ article are the use of community (parent) involvement in education, and the return to Kagan cooperative learning and inquiry based learning techniques. So what if these strategies take so much time that I don’t impart everything in the “fourth grade bible” to my students. So what if my students do poorly on the April test. At this point, I’m fine if the district wants to fire me. (well almost) My students deserve the type of empowerment that Cummins has given me. They also deserve to enjoy learning for the sake of learning and not because it is in the “fourth grade bible”. How could I, a firm atheist of the pontifications from the pulpit, have forgotten my roots and turned the curriculum into biblical truth? Thank you Cummins. I am now released from my own cultural limitations, (or at least some of them.)