Teachers as Door-Knockers

Molls and Gonzales’s essay “Lessons from Research with Language-Minority Children” brings up the term “funds of knowledge” and how these are obtained and then used in the academia. As the essay begins to unravel, it is stated from the very beginning that household research will be done with the aid of teachers. This then leads the researchers as well as the teacher to obtain that glimpse into the students’ lives which then, include questions of what and how are the students learning outside: this is the teachers “rite of passage”.

After intruding upon the students’ lives, they then realize their lives are not exactly what they may have had in mind. Upon realization that the home life of the students are knowledgeable in other aspects, which then makes them not incapable of being a well-rounded student, but the opposite. From the observations done, it seems as if the conclusion comes to a more communal environment in which the parents then began to involve themselves, “By the end of the school year, Mr. Johnson had been elected PTA president” (163). In an upsetting point of view, it seems as if by prying into the lives of their students, and the parents seeing this, did then the parents seem to be more involved in the education of their child. Though these parents had given permission for the “teacher-researcher” to observe the household, it is still a bit creepy to know that teachers extend themselves from outside the classroom setting and into the privacy of the students homes. The goal of this is to better the students, however the idea of this seems a bit unsettling.

As the essay comes to its conclusion, the goal in which is trying to be obtained is ideal, and can be accomplished: “the relationships between teacher and students always mediate the students’ engagements with texts, as well as what literacy comes to mean for them within the classroom” (169). This being the goal, it seems that the project in which the teacher involved the students into coming up with their own questions, seems to be the most ethical, in that the teacher keeps herself outside of the privacy of students’ homes. In Freedom Writers, when the teacher had attempted to get a glimpse into the students’ lives through the barrier-breaking-line she had even pushed it too far, and this was being done in a classroom setting. If Hollywood can understand that the lives of students are kept private and separate from the school in that there aren’t teachers knocking on doors, then how does Moll and Gonzalez except aspiring teachers to consider door-knocking as an option?

In a brief response to Johnny Magic’s blog pertaining to the ‘language minority’ as having “expanded possibilities”, it is easy to agree that this encouragement of the “other” language is not something that is accepted with politicians, and citizens. With that being clear as a possibility, on behalf of the teacher, to encourage a student to make use of their language in the school, perhaps storing in the classroom/library a variety of books of different languages, perspectives, writers, etc.