Our Children are Learning to Survive
Yolanda U. Trapp
Your feedback is important to us!
After viewing our curriculum units, please take a few minutes to help us understand how the units, which were created by public school teachers, may be useful to others.
Survivors
We learned that we had to discard deficit notions and genuinely value and utilize student’s existing knowledge. Furthermore, we must remain open to the fact that we will learn from our students. They are the “Survivors”, and if they are not, we can help them to “Survive”, creating an environment where any student regardless of gender, color, language disability, can be involved in the regular learning activity that goes on in the classroom and receives the special assistance needed to gain the basic skills she/he is lacking. I put myself in the shoes of the student coming to a new place with new rules, procedures, language, culture. The stress and frustration I felt, when it also happened to me. The way I tried to adjust myself to the other kids. I always spoke with “an accent”. I personally coupled that with a sense of being an “outsider”. After all these years I am able to identify the mechanisms and to clarify the implications in an immigrant student.
