Cultural Experience in the Community

Fortunately, I have been able to see other communities and cultures, outside of my own and have witnessed the true beauty of humans as well as the ignorant and careless side in the same hour. In one of these communities, I was working at a school as a substitute teacher. This community is made up of a variety of races, however at this particular school, the Latino culture is prominent.
One day, I was assigned to a 1st grade classroom. I enjoy the eagerness of these small humans when it comes to learning and engaging in the classroom. Once the children began to come into the classroom and noticed who there sub was for the day, the smiles got a bit bigger. Most of the kids knew me as the fun sub that meant business. We started the day with the normal routines, breakfast, morning convo, the pledge of allegiance, and reading. After this, I passed a worksheet and began to explain the assignment. While doing this, I kept noticing that one student seemed to be very chatty with his desk neighbors, however he was very limited with expression and verbal communication when I called on him or while everybody was listening. I asked him another question and he looked at his friend. She began to speak for him, so I asked her to let him speak for his self. So she said something to him in Spanish and he responded, then she responded to me in English. This is when it hit me obviously, this child had little to no English skills. He relied on other first graders to interpret when able to, for him in order to communicate. Now let me point out, I subbed for this class during the last semester of the school year. This child is unable to communicate with his teacher in the first grade, nor can he fully socialize with other children that do not speak his language. Instantly I empathized for the student in more ways than one. I apologized for not knowing more Spanish and asked how his regular teacher communicates with him best. The little girl and boy sitting next to him stated that they interpret for him. I was shocked, that nothing was in place to assist this child in his learning experience besides is peers. As the day went on I noticed he stuck with those two children when able to. However, the times he was unable to, he would search for them frantically with his eyes when approached by a English speaking student or me. I was even more saddened to find out that through this day, not one time did he get pulled out for any one on one assistance. The lack of support has created a variety of barriers for this child, which will effect his grades, social life, relationship with the educators in his daily school life and is the beginning of a label and a contribution to the wrong statistics. As educators, I feel as if there should have been something in place to assist this child in knocking down these barriers.