Finding Connections in Everyday Life

In “Lessons from Research with Language Minority Children” written by Moll and Gonzalez, they bring forth new ways of teaching by promoting the usage of two languages in a classroom. They call for teachers to step inside their student’s households and pull ideas that their students are familiar with into their lesson plans. For example, one student went to Mexico a lot and would buy candy from there and come back home and sell it. The teacher then incorporated the idea of marketing and had students research the differences between candy from Mexico and the U.S. Another teacher visited a students’ home and found out that they were surrounded by many plants and herbs then incorporated this into their lesson plan. These are examples of Moll’s and Gonzalez’ term they use quite often in their essay—“the funds of knowledge.” This term refers to the “social networks family members obtain or share” and that are easily accessible to the students (160). The authors of this essay claim that is impossible for teachers to be able to connect their lesson plans to students directly unless they have information about their life at home and what they have been through.

The main reoccurring point throughout the entire essay is that lesson plans and activities that take place in the classroom need to be relatable to the students’ life at home in order for the students to comprehend and take interest. The students need to be able to see how the knowledge they learn will have an impact on their life. An example of this can be seen in the movie Freedom Writers when the teacher is placing all of the student’s letters in an envelope to send to the woman who hid Anne Frank in her attic. The teacher did not just give them an assignment that she would read, mark a grade on, and give back. She instead had them write letters to this woman and even though these letters were most likely graded for content and grammatical errors, the students were able to visually see how their writing made an impact. Their own writing was read by this woman and because of their writing and fundraising she was able to come and speak to them. This type of assignment strays from the traditional writing assignment that students do in classrooms. Many students do not understand the importance of why certain novels are assigned for reading and why they have to learn about certain topics. This different style of teaching by using the tools and knowledge that are accessible to students will of course be interesting for the students and accommodating for them, but I believe it misses out on necessary instruction.

Students will be able to learn grammar and events that are relatable to them and their community, but what about past history and novels that none of the students can relate to but will appear repeatedly throughout their education, such as The Odyssey? Since this way of teaching is not universally used throughout the education system and students may struggle adapting from one way to the other. Even if students do thrive in this type of classroom setting, it will be hard to place students in classrooms of this technique starting from kindergarten all the way to grade twelve. In the movie Freedom Writers, a close relationship formed between the students and teacher that was quite heartwarming, but also a type of bond that will be hard to form year after year with new students. In the movie, the teacher devoted so much of her personal time to her students that her own personal life fell apart. In the movie, this “fund of knowledge” technique proved to be extremely successful, but in order for this technique to have a chance of succeeding there needs to be a group effort by all teachers and school administration.

I remember when I was a sophomore in high school and I had an assignment where we worked in groups and researched an injustice in the world. The assignment was open to anything we chose. My group and I chose animal abuse and we wrote letters to local animal shelters and went in and volunteered at a shelter. We helped raise money for the animal shelter through fundraising and informing the community about the abuse that was taking place daily. This was a long and detailed assignment that required a lot of work. Now thinking back to this assignment, I do not remember how much work I had to do, but I remember how interesting and different this assignment was. Every group in my class was dedicated to their assignment because we saw that what we were doing through our writing and research really was making a difference in our community. Having assignments that allow students to see how they are incorporated into everyday life livens up the assignment and makes it important, rather than simply being another essay that will receive a letter grade. Yes the grade is important, but it is how that essay will function among society that has more meaning. Why do we learn to write in the first place? It is to be able to use it in our everyday lives and in our future careers. So why not incorporate our knowledge of writing into our everyday lives while still furthering our education? It will enhance the learning experience by demonstrating to students the reasons why they are given certain assignments.