Listening Skills and Relationships in the Early Grades
(A comparison between the Dominican Republic and The United States)
Dahiana Cueto
I am a young Dominican woman who has just completed a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, pre-K through grade 3, at a university in Santo Domingo. As a student, I have been in different teaching experiences in my country, in public and private schools, and in classrooms where students and teachers come from varied social status. I am currently involved in an exchange program in the United States. For 10 weeks I have been student-teaching in a public school in Maine. This school is within a wealthy community and the students and teachers are mostly Caucasian. This experience has allowed me to compare and contrast the kindergarten and first grade in the two countries with very interesting results.
In each one of the grades I have spent five weeks. It was very interesting because I began in kindergarten and then I could see the continuity of the school program in first grade. I was immersed in the culture and language and acted as a full time observer, and also I was integrated in the class routine. The areas that interested me the most: the relationship between the teachers and the students and the encouragement of listening and literacy skills.
My first observation involves the relationship between teacher and student. Dominican children are usually very active. For this reason “circle time” is always the first activity in the morning. This is a very important part of the routine, because it is the time for many enjoyable activities such as singing, moving and poetry. This is also when we discuss the calendar, the weather, and introduce the class theme. It is an opportunity to share the purpose of the day. This is also the time when the teacher can catch up with the students, asking them how they are, what their interests are for the day and any personal information that the children would want to share. Even though sometimes it is not a “formal instructional time” (with academic concepts) it is the open door for the emotional connection between the children and the teacher. Typically teachers in the Dominican Republic are loving and affectionate. One way to reinforce good behavior is by giving lots of hugs and kisses and I did this all the time while I was working in a kindergarten classroom. It is an important part of our communication.
Unlike what I am used to in my country, the class routine in Maine usually began with writing (yes, writing!!!). The teacher began with an individual writing activity, as a sort of warm up for the school day. Then, later, all the students gathered for the “meeting time,” which had the same activities of updating the calendar, completing a weather chart and the introduction of the theme of the day. Sometimes there was a song (mostly in kindergarten). The “meeting time” was not a time for sharing personal situations. The teacher always tried to maintain the topic by asking the children to reserve their comments for the end of meeting time, but we rarely had time to listen to all of the comments.
I was impressed with the U.S. students’ exceptional listening skills during circle time, but I could not help feeling like there was something missing. The students did not seem as connected to the teacher as I had seen in my previous teaching experiences in the Dominican Republic. While the U.S. teacher concentrated on the theme, he/she avoided the personal comments that the children may have wanted to express. I believe this inhibits the child from feeling close to the teacher and could create a wall for the different mental associations or personal ways of thinking.
When a child is being listened to, he/ she feels important and it is an opportunity to discover how the children are associating the ideas in their minds. This reminds me of a time when I was observed while leading a class in a kindergarten in the DR. I was talking about the dinosaurs and a special kind that had rocks in its belly. A child raised his hand and commented: “My dad has a big belly.” I answered immediately: “My darling, what does that have to do with our conversation?! He didn’t answer me back. I had not an understanding face either. After that, the teacher who observed me told me of the importance of listening to children’s comments. I had not paid attention to the way the kid maybe connected the big belly of the dinosaur with his dad’s belly. Maybe he would not ever forget this kind of dinosaur because of that!
The way I think as an adult or as a teacher isn’t the same way that kids think. In my lesson, I was too focused on my lesson plan and I forgot the child. How can I as a teacher meet my class objectives and at the same time take care of the personal comments of my students, integrate them into the class, and use them to study the child and understand his or her interests and ways of making association with ideas? Does this have to do with my own expectations of myself as a teacher?
Forgetting to listen to children is something that can happen to any teacher anywhere, but I have noticed that in the U.S., there seems to be less emphasis in giving students the opportunity to speak. I believe this is a cultural issue (with the families, in the neighborhood). I wonder if U.S. teachers have asked themselves about this.
In the U.S., children seem to be expected to listen more than speak. The integration of listening skills is clear in the way the instructions for a specific assignment are given. Instructions promote good attention, often because the children have to stop everything they’re doing and go to the meeting area to just listen. I observed that the instructions were often explained in several ways to emphasize the details of a task, so when the children were going to do an activity they would know exactly what to do and how to do it. Teachers also enhanced listening skills while reinforcing good behavior with verbal compliments for a job well done. Usually the compliments in the U.S. are just words, though sometimes there is also a pat on the back; seldom little hugs.
The curriculum in both the Dominican Republic and the United States, in kindergarten through first grade, specify literacy skills as the most important objective. In my experiences in the Dominican Republic, those skills were stimulated by having the teacher read to the students, showing them pictures and asking question about the reading. But that was just one part of the whole school day. I could see how the children sometimes sighed when they had a writing assignment, or said that it was too hard and didn’t want to do it. They seemed tired or bored. It seemed to me they do not like to write because they did not enjoy it or because they were not motivated. To encourage the children in this situation I had to work with them individually. In these one-on-one moments I had to cheer up my students by touching their hair, giving hugs for compliments or huge smiles. It is common to see the teachers doing these same kinds of actions throughout the day in the DR.
While the daily routine I observed in Maine begins first with writing and then listening (circle time), it is not just one part of the routine, it is the whole routine! The reading and writing are presented as activities for fun, not merely stressful class work. There are fun activities that the children enjoy which involve reading and writing, such as reading different books to vote on a favorite, and writing to their parents, family and friends using the mailbox. These are such wonderful activities that encourage literacy.
In Maine I noticed that the children have a great deal of freedom to express their opinions and thoughts. Instead of using “You have to…” the teacher usually suggested and guided the students with expressions like “You might want to…” or “I really think that…” This strategy encourages the children to have their own opinions and choices. Children seemed to feel very secure in their thoughts, and even if the teacher had a different opinion they did not necessarily change their viewpoints. I like to see the children think for themselves and I believe this process promotes higher level thinking. In the Dominican Republic, the teacher’s opinion is usually presented as the best choice for the student. This aspect has to be improved in my country. I also believe that Dominican children are more influenced by the teacher due to their close relationship. What would happen if there were a better balance between what the teacher says and the personal thoughts of the students in the DR? What are we preparing the children for in the schools of the DR?
During my ten week experience in Maine, I noticed a very different teacher student relationship than we have in the DR. Several times in my U.S. observations, I watched as the teacher tried to talk alone with a specific child, sometimes because of an inappropriate behavior and other times because the student had been missing several days of school and needed to catch up on assignments. I was surprised to see that the children seemed intimidated by the teacher. In these short conversations the teacher usually had to ask the child several times to look at his/her eyes. Sometimes while the teacher was telling something to a child, the child kept not looking at the teacher.
I was very surprised by this behavior, because the listening skills and the attention skills are stimulated in the academic areas, but I didn’t see those skills being used in the social area, as in a conversation with someone. Why is it like this? Maybe the teachers are really interested in the academic goals but there does not seem to be a connection between the “school behavior” and the “social behavior.” Is the U.S. educational system not encouraging listening for a better social understanding? I know there are special efforts to help children in disadvantage, but how about begin with something closer like their own relationships? What is the school preparing the children for in U.S.?
What would happen in Maine if listening skills were encouraged by using them in the social area, not just the academic areas? If in each day there were moments to listen to the students’ experiences? How could this impact the ability of the teachers to have a closer conversation with their students? Would this cause any effect in the social development of the students?
During the first weeks I was in Maine I greeted the children with a warm welcome as was customary in the Dominican Republic. “Are they ignoring me?” I asked myself several times when they didn’t answer me, or didn’t even look my way. I felt that I was talking to myself, and I would say the same greeting to the same child three or four times without an answer. Sometimes the children looked at me as if to say, “Why are you telling me the same thing one million times?” But as I observed them with their own teachers I learned it was a common behavior. I think the children automatically stopped listening when they decided that the voices that they were hearing are not important. Where are their listening skills? Are these skills being promoted just for the “school behavior?”
Maybe the not-so-close relationship between the students and the teacher in the U.S. (unlike the close relationships I am used to having with my students in DR) is connected to the isolation of using listening skills only in academic areas, not in the social area. Even though I was shocked because of this behavior, I couldn’t stop my strong affective cultural habits. When children did good work I usually reacted with my Dominican impulses of touching their hair or cheeks, all this including a big smile and an extravagant gesture of satisfaction. I don’t know what happened, but the children just got used to me.
The children in the Maine district I visited know how to please someone without using body language: they write. In one of my first visits in the first grade the teacher asked a child to practice reading with me. We sat on the rug and she began to read a Dr. Seuss book. I encouraged her to read slower so as not to miss any words and all my attention was on her. At the end I used my Dominican manners to express a good job. Then, when I returned to the class, this little girl wrote me a letter: “Señorita Cueto, I really liked when I read to you.” I felt this was a compliment so I wrote back: “I also enjoyed listening to you read.” When she read the letter she gave me a quick hug telling me “Thank you.” A hug! And it was just my second day! I was very surprised. Is it true that my body language expressed my disposition to be closer? I felt she was talking Spanish!!
I definitely think both educational systems have things to learn from each other. What would happen in the Dominican Republic if the closer relationship between teacher and students were used to motivate the listening and literacy skills? And what would happen in the U.S. if listening skills were applied to develop the social area and the social understandings? Are both countries not promoting equity? Why?
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