Mrs. Moore’s Interview I began Mrs. Moore’s interview with the first background question, tell me about your educational experiences in school. Mrs. Moore’s response was: Upon first entering school as a kinder student I remember being overcome with fear of strangers that impaled my senses with new sights, smells, and sounds. It was terrifying and it took months to learn to tolerate and years to become develop some level of comfort. It took about three years to really began to understand the instructional language of my Anglo teachers, as I learned to translate what seemed to be a variation of the language spoken in my African American home. I was hyper sensitive to those in authority trying to discern if he/she was friend or foe. It mattered …show more content…
Moore, I began to reflect over the information she provided me and our conversation. What I concluded from our interview was that vocabulary a major key in the success of African American students, and not only is it the school or teachers’ responsibility, but it is also the parents. She talked about how it was an issue for her in school and because of that she makes that a focus with her own children. As a teacher, she sees it as an issue for her students as well. When we taught together I do recall her having a heavy focus on vocabulary in her science class. She developed a vocabulary game called, “Last Man Standing” to help the kids not only understand vocabulary words, but also the parts of words. I always saw the positive impact it had on students’ success, but never understood why she had such a heavy focus on it. After our interview I now understand the why and it makes perfectly good sense. I then began to wonder what strategies could we, as a school, provide for our parents to help them support their child’s vocabulary development? Also, what strategies do we need to implement in school to support the vocabulary development of our African American students? Our interview forced me to reflect on our school and how we support our students, especially our African American students, in vocabulary