Empowerment

Pgs. 309-347

This is the last section in this book. I think before reading this last chapter I thought since most of the book was about empowering teachers this section would be too. I did not get that impression though. It was kind of an overview of different situations of students and what ends up happening to them. The first story I chose was about Ramiro. Ramiro had been in 8th grade for the past three years and could not move on to high school until he had passed the standardized test. The teacher in the story worked really hard with him and when the results came in for the test he had not passed. There was a make up test date and so Ramiro was assigned to a class to study for the make up test date. Again he took the test and this time he passed. Ramiro thanked the teacher. I chose this story because it wasn’t as simple as Ramiro tried a little bit and then passed the test. Ramiro also learned that lesson that sometimes your best isn’t enough unless you actually learn the material. But three weeks later he passed. He didn’t give up even when faced with adversity. I think that is why the story stood out to me. The second story I chose was about Dejuan. The teacher in the story basically Dejuan held his hand and helped in graduate. He was close to completing but his parents had kicked him out so he was couch hopping and had lost motivation. Through this teacher’s help Dejuan graduated. None of Dejuan’s family was there even though he was the first in his family to graduate high school. The teacher in the narrative continued to wonder to herself if she had done everything she could. The biggest lesson I learned from this section was that once the teacher had done everything and the students left the class there was nothing more to be done. The teacher had to let the students go, to fly on their own. I think I might struggle with this my first few years of teaching, letting my students go once they are finished in my class.