Reflection on Delpit/Lake

 Hello! I'm doing a reflection this week...

A) The reflection this week is on "An Indian Father's Plea" by Robert Lake and Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue"

B) Both of these readings really made me think about the current education system in my hometown. Throughout school I was always considered one of the "smart kids" (how completely stupid by the way, I basically would never get extra help in class because "oh his grades are good he's fine" but like I hate math and not getting some extra support made me almost fail my sophomore year but I digress...) so I never really truly saw the backhandedness of the education system from my own eyes. Rather, I saw it through my peers and family, most specifically my cousin. This mostly relates to "An Indian Father's Plea". In that article, Wind-Wolf was being subject to unfair treatment and sent into a special education class. His parents obviously knew he didn't belong there and didn't need it so they fought for him so he wouldn't be separated/"over helped". My cousin was subject to the issue of being "under helped". He is on the autism spectrum, and struggled to focus in class and get work done. He wasn't a great test taker either (but neither was I to be fair). He is able to read/write/and speak, and thus was put into general educated classes aside a majority of the student population. A lot of the classes he had to take were pushing on his range of comprehension/outside of his specific interests. My uncle/his father fought every year for the 12+ years he was in the school system to get extra help, and outside support, but he never really got as much help as he needed. He greatly would have benefitted from having an extra support system in his classes; an assistant teacher who would work 1 on 1 with him for instance. He needed that 1 on 1 support but basically never got it because, at least in my opinion, the school thought he was "good enough" to focus their resources elsewhere. I don't know how the school gets to determine when a kid is "good enough" when he clearly is struggling; his father was advocating for him for a reason, but that's beyond me. When he would advocate to his teachers on his own, they weren't very helpful either (which is a whole other issue on silenced dialogue, but I'm already writing too much). During covid, he worked side by side with my grandmother in order to actually get the work done while virtual and start to improve his grades. She was such a blessing because he got that one on one support from her, and the turn around was crazy. He even gained some more skills in his work ethic for when we eventually went back in person because someone sat down with him to learn those skills. Only when he had one of those assistants/ 1 on 1 workers in his actual classrooms was he actually heard/helped enough to better his grades while in-person and in the end, managed to graduate on time with me. But, this story really just goes to show how upside down and backwards some systems are in terms of distribution of resources and help to students who actually need it. 

C) In terms of my question to pose to the class: I wonder what can be done to fix this hierarchical nonsense to actually fix schools systems to make the students the priority not just in word/mantra but in active change?

Here is an article regarding 1:1 aides and their work with autistic students. 

How 1:1 Aides Can Support/Hinder Autistic Students