Prompt 6

The culturally competent teacher communicates in ways that demonstrate sensitivity to sociocultural and linguistic differences, using a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques that encourage positive social interaction and support learning in their classroom.

Tutoring in a math class poses a different opportunity to explore the realm of linguistic differences. Here, everyone comes in fluent in either one or several languages and leaves speaking the language of math. The biggest communication problem I have faced while tutoring is that these students are not as fluent in math as I am. Occasionally when I believe that I am explaining things in a clear and direct manner the student looks at me like I have three heads. The first time this happened I was slightly taken aback and had to take a moment to think about how to rephrase my explanation in a way the student would understand. Certain mathematical processes have become so ingrained in me that I haven’t thought about the actual steps that achieve the desired goal in a very long time.

In this classroom many students are unable to do long division without the aid of a calculator. When working with Evelyn one day I assumed that she knew how to do long division, but hadn’t done it recently without a calculator. With this assumption in mind I tried to guide her through the process with directives that made sense to me but clearly seemed to come out of left field for Evelyn. While walking around the room Ms. H discovered that many students were stuck on the same part of the problem that Evelyn and I were. Responding to this she went to the board and did a sample problem, explaining the steps using a remembrance device about monkeys. After Ms. H went through this example Evelyn and I were linguistically on the same page. I could help her through the long division problem using the monkey analogy and she understood the mathematical operations she needed to perform. There have been many other instances where I have had to reconsider the mathematical language I am using to explain a concept to the students. It has honestly been one of the toughest challenges I have faced in my service learning experience. It took me a while to understand that just because I was fluent in a certain concept at that point in my mathematical career the students I am working with will not necessarily have the same grasp of the language that I did.