A Different Voice, A Daily Struggle: Made in America Chapter 9

Chapter 9, like so many of the chapters in Made in America was a truly sad awakening to the problems that districts, schools, and teachers struggle with every day. Olsen introduces this chapter with yet another situation kept in mind when working at a public school--honors classes.--and relates it back to ESL students and how they are affected by it. This scenario was something I had never thought about in relation to ESL students before. The situation presented in the book was that a teacher wanted one of her ESL students to be moved up an accelerated class. It's crazy to think not only about the politics and educational struggles that general education students go through with honors classes, but ESL students? Wow. The student in question ended up moving to accelerated, but he was in an honors class that was two grade levels below his. Olsen agrees that this was not at all up to par, but at least it was more on his level. One of the involved teachers attempted to detrack the tenth grade social studies program, which Olsen states was met with "lukewarm reception". Surely there is the need for students of different abilities to be in differently taught classrooms, but as is brought, it can be a more serious social problem.

Olsen makes a good point in recognizing that the what the school district, and most likely many other district as well are doing is "perpetuating a class system: the children of people who have had access to higher education also get prepared for higher education, and the children of people who have not had higher education don't get prepared for higher education" (Olsen 193).

I guess what I took away from this chapter, along with the sense of confusion at the varying opinions and double standards that were present, was that we just have to give the students, all students the best we can. Olsen makes good mention of the ideological difference between old and new teachers, particularly in terms of methods. The new teachers fresh out of their programs have so much inspiration for advocacy whereas the old teachers feel as though they've been at the school long enough and had enough experiences to figure out what is and what isn't practical. However, the veteran teachers are also presented in more of a negative view, similar to how they were in previous chapters, where they seemed totally unwilling to work with the needs of the ESL/bilingual students. I could just not believe how stubborn they were.