Question: How can teaching be changed in my classroom to match the needs of students?

The United States utilizes English as its primary language. Because English is an auditory
language, auditory values are instilled within society, and thus the United States school system. As a
result of auditory based values, the United States values time, multi-tasking, thinking in the future, and
organizing in certain ways. These values are inextricable from the way out society functions, yet the
majority of children in the school system and the country are visual learners.
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As a product of society,
the school system rarely teaches to visual learners in a visual way. Unfortunately teaching to children in
a way they do not think is only a layer of the deficit model of the current system of education. While the
failure to teach children based on the way they think and the effort to find methods to teach them
properly is the focus of this essay, it is also important to point out other deficits in the system to
understand this concept more holistically.
Before this class, Human Development I had obtained a lot of layering to understand why the
United States school system is not working for the students and communities it serves. I knew factors
included disparities in funding, failure to meet needs of socioeconomic backgrounds, lack of quality
assessment working for the student, and middle class ideologies that infiltrate and create the school
system. Out of all readings, Jeanne Anyons Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work and
Annette Lareaus Unequal Childhoods stood out the most. Their writings were eye-opening and gave me
tools to conceptualize and think about the way the school system functions. Anyon concludes in her
article that the hidden curriculum of school work is tacit preparation for relating to the process of
production in a certain way.
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She and other writers such as Jonathan Kozol point out a hidden social-
hierarchy that teaches each social class with the aim to perpetuate the system of social order. I was
able to conclude that the current system of education is maintaining this primitive utilitarianism for

1
Arwood, E. (2011). Language Function: An Introduction to Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention for Higher
Order Thinking and Better Literacy, 107.
2
Anyon, J. (1980). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, from Journal of
Education, Vol. 162, no. 1, 90-91.
the lower class which is suppressing Americas children, particularly those of the minority population.
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I
was also able to understand that children of the working class in particular are being taught to the tests
and to be low-wage workers in society while watching their peers succeed. Lareau added where the
school system was coming from the middle class, white majority. Lareau, like Anyon also argues that
the middle and upper-middle class receive one form of education that emphasizes creativity and
abstract thought and that education granted to the working-class, is more structured and based off
listening to directions and knowing the correct answer, rather than coming to conclusions on ones own.
What Lareau added to my conception was that child-rearing models for these backgrounds are reversed.
The middle-class practices the child-rearing approach of concerted cultivation whereas the working-class
takes a natural growth approach. These lead to the conclusion that because the school system is based
on the dominant, middle-class mindset and child-rearing model, success cannot happen unless children
adapt to the schools ideology. Children from the working class are put into schools that negate rather
than build off the benefits of their upbringings. The structure of the middle-class allows for
accomplishment in the school system, thus allowing creativity and abstract thinking as a reward for
completing the skills their upbringing taught them. The working-class enters school with creativity and
then is burdened with the structure of the basics of math and reading. When these students do not
adapt to the structure, they are punished for it. Often a working-class students entire school experience
is based on structure (patterns), and the child is never given the opportunity to explore abstract thought
or creativity (what comes naturally) because they cannot break through the structural components of
the system. Unfortunately all of this theory has been reinforced and proved to me over the past eight
months in my own classroom teaching Headstart. Already, these stereotypes and mindsets are well in
play by the time the child turns three.

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Kozol, J. (2005). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in
America, (New York: Three Rivers Press), 19.
This class has added more layers to my understanding of the school system. The reason I bring
up Anyon and Lareau, and leave out unequal funding, the re-segregation of the American school system,
etc. is because I find them particularly relevant to the topic at hand, learning language. Moreover, after
taking this class and researching the way language works, I have begun to realize that todays system is
unable to even mimic the structure Anyon or Lareau speaks about. Our current system is failing to even
allow schools serving working class populations to learn to follow the directions that could make them
successful in a working class job. The social hierarchy is losing traction in the wrong direction by failing
students and sending them to prison or to a life subjected by welfare.
I make this grim conclusion to try to understand where the solution to this large, complicated
problem begins. I argue that the aforementioned Anyon, Lareau and other educators are not yet able to
offer real solutions because they do not yet understand all of the problems, or the system as a whole. In
contrast, there are many programs, often initiated by the government itself which offer solutions such
as the Bush Administrations NCLB Act and the Obama administrations Race to the Top initiative. These
programs also fail to offer comparable solutions perhaps because they are blinded as a product of
society; failing to make the correct diagnosis and then offering the wrong prescriptions.
The missing layer is language. This paper should not be read as an attempt to discuss all of the
problems or all of the solutions. What it does attempt to procure is the addition of another layer to my
understanding of the school system, a foundational layer that could make the problem and solution to
the current state of the United States school systempossible. This paper also attempts to establish my
responsibilities as an educator with this added knowledge, and the amalgamation of this knowledge into
practice.
The lens of language helps us to understand a lot more about the deficits in the current system
of education. Most educators see language acquisition as an additive set of observable parts. When this
type of theory is employed into practice, auditory based parts to whole programs are created. Also
known as bottoms-up, these programs which find bias in societies construct, drill the practice of
decoding graphic symbols into sounds. The assumption that most learners think in an auditory meta-
cognition, promotes these programs. The cultural biases veil the reality of the way most people learn,
thus programs supported by the culture perpetuate thinking in an auditory means. If a learner has
difficulty producing the observable parts that are the sum of an additive set (phonics), then the learner
is thought to have not learned the basic structures well enough yet. The structures are then broken
down further in hopes that the learner will then be able to produce the expected outcome, literacy.
These measures test for only one thing, patterns. Anyon and Lareau recognize the social hierarchy and
teaching to the test as causations of these curriculums; however, they fail to include the auditory
bottoms-up assumption that in this layer is recognized as a lack of language on behalf of the students
that are supposed to be raised through a parts to whole approach. Including this foundational piece in
the ideology, assists the larger construct. Teaching language patterns will only develop language
patterns, not the concepts with which they are meant to represent. This output is then monitored by
primarily auditory tests such as standardized tests. Even studies deeming to be objective have the
cultural predisposition to substantiate what society has already claimed true. Therefore, we are left in a
society who has difficulty seeing what is concrete. Most learners do not follow the paradigm society has
arranged.
Contrary to the construct of the English language, most learners think in a visual meta-cognition.
Research supporting this finding is easy to find, and would be obvious if not for societies
misconceptions. In terms of the brains ability to think, the mind is but an outcome of neurological
learning in the brain mediated by the function of language.
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Literacy should be researched and thought
about in a way that supports the brains means of thinking. When considered a developmental set of
outcomes stemming from the attainment of learning language and later from language that gives

4
Arwood, E. (2011). Language Function: An Introduction to Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention for Higher
Order Thinking and Better Literacy, 99.
meaning to further develop concepts a more multifaceted, cooperative approach to literacy is
required.
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This begins by taking into account the capability of language function as a means to allow for
maximized problem solving. The development of concepts is the means in which we all think. Language
is what represents the development of those concepts and in turn, thinking.
When thinking about literacy this way, we can begin to see a more holistic approach which in
literacy has been manifested as tops-down models. The top-downs models practice a conceptually
driven approach to the processes of the printing, speaking, and writing. While on track, there is more to
the way learners acquire language than is evident in this approach. Literacy in this system is four tiered
versus the more traditional, two. Instead of teaching structures with the goal that the structures will
culminate to form concepts, the four tiered system focuses on the way the brain works. As the body
intakes through sensory inputs these inputs create perceptual patterns.
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The patterns overlap to form
concepts and these concepts then create language. Language represents conceptual thinking, therefore,
language is a tool for the brain to raise understanding and strengthen and build more concepts. The
building of more concepts through language results in more language being acquired. Unfortunately the
opposite is not true. The acquisitions of language structures do not yield the formation of concepts.
Because most learners are visual thinkers, the way in which they view the world is visual. When
taught literacy through an auditory bottoms-up approach, there is little match-up for these learners. If
learners are taught literacy in a way that parallels their thinking, through their own eyes, acquiring
literacy would make a lot more sense.
In recognizing that as a part of a classroom that has been predestined to fall short of Anyons
most dismal analysis I have a lot of work to do. Within this layer I am responsible for increasing
language in the classroom. Doing this already goes directly against the federal governments ordained

5
Arwood, E. (2011). Language Function: An Introduction to Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention for Higher
Order Thinking and Better Literacy, 101.
6
Arwood, E. (2011). Language Function: An Introduction to Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention for Higher
Order Thinking and Better Literacy, 100.
programs which are scripted, phonics centered, and not meeting the needs of the learners. I have been
learning to work around these programs and teach content in a top-down, whole language method but
the task remains difficult. Most importantly I need to make sure to cater to the thinking systems of my
students. Based off assessments I am certain the majority of my 34 students are visual learners. While I
am able to teach learners to imitate the sounds and perceptual patterns, teaching these patterns to
children with a visual access cognitive system is not developing language function for the learners.
Teaching sound-based programs to visual access children is an approach that can be deemed deficit
from the start.
Understanding my learners learning systems, helps me to understand how to best reach my
students. By knowing that most learners, including myself are visual thinkers, I can begin from a strength
based approach rather than push my students further into a deficit that works against the way they
learn. Next year I will take language samples starting the first day to tell me where each student is
starting and help me establish goals of where I need to get them, and how. This could mean establishing
how many children are coming from different backgrounds that make English their second language. I
have figured this out in my current class but I did not have the intuition to do so this past year. If
students have a strong first language, the second language can be taught through retagging. This means
simply taking a concept the student already knows and retagging it through pictures. If the students
first language is not strong, then this will speak to their English language level as well. By knowing a
childs sensory input, be itvisual-visual, visual-motor, or motor-motor, I can know how those students
are able to take in perceptual patters, create concepts and form language which they can then use to
build more concepts. By teaching in a visual way through labeling, drawing, picture dictionaries, student
centered modeling, leveled/appropriate questioning, visualization, layering, semantic corrections,
bubbling (tracing around the word), I stories, oral and drawing cartooning, flowcharts, working in sets,
and hand over hand for students who may be more motor access and need shapes to their ideas, I can
reach students at the preoperational level in which humans learn. Reaching students in the means in
which they learn, sets them up for successful use of their systems and allows them to move up through
concrete and formal level thinking through scaffolding.
These layers that build to create concepts and language for students are not limited to
academics. When a learner knows how to learn, possibilities for learning are without bounds. By making
auditory tasks visual for students, students can learn to function and even flourish in an auditory based
society. For example, if a student is able to understand time or planning for the future through their
own system they can learn to be successful at those auditory tasks.
Teaching cultural competence in schools has been especially stressed over the past few years.
This is a result of students leaving schools without the knowledge to make choices at even a concrete
level. Language is again the solution. As a practitioner I can provide students with the tools to problem
solve. The ability to problem solve allows the learner to be able to start thinking about others. If learners
can see other people in their pictures and understand the affect they have on others and the world,
social and cultural competencies grow.
Learners who are empowered to think outside themselves, monitor their own learning and
understand and succeed in an auditory world are emitting the products of a successful classroom. This
can only be accomplished by allowing visual thinkers equal access to the auditory world that surrounds
them. Recognizing that the current United States school system is two-tiered in yet another way (by
catering to auditory learning systems) allows educators an additional lens with which to create a system
that touches all learners equally. Focus on language function rather than structure, acquired through the
childs learning system enables even classrooms like mine that before fell short of Anyons most dismal
example, to emerge as leaders for transformation across layers, and create change amongst the United
States school system as a whole. I hope to use these new approaches to truly transform my classroom
by meeting the true needs of my students.