Misinterpreted

During our last class, Dr. Pope established the point that when looking at interpretivist theory from a school perspective, we should not limit the theory to just the ability of teachers to interpret students. It seemed from mine and other's comments in class, that we agreed in the fact that teachers are constantly faced with moments where interpretation is key to make a certain decision in the classroom. When we began discussing interpretivist theory in relation to school, my mind went immediately to the teacher's perspective and ignored the fact that the theory includes everything else in the classroom. Once this point was established in my mind, I couldn't help but to think back to when I first moved to the States and my 7th grade English as a Second Language class.

I thought of how much fun a interpretivist researcher would have observing this type of class. I remember that in our particular class, there were students from mainly Central and South American countries and I was the only European. Luckily for all of us and the teacher's sake, all of our native languages were Spanish. However, this is not to say that we all did not have different cultural backgrounds. The first couple of weeks, the class seemed like a constant trial-and-error game for students and teacher. Us students had to get acquainted with each other as we were spending all day, every day of the week together. I can recall being misinterpreted as my choice of words meant something totally different to my Latin counterparts. It was something to the equivalence of the meanings of the word "shagging" in South Carolina vs. its meaning in England. This can get you in a lot of trouble! Fortunately, our teacher understood the good intentions of my message and was able to clarify to the rest of the class. Although we all became acostumed to the new ways of doing things very quickly, this simple instance of misinterpretation set the tone for the rest of the school year and made me overly cautious in class and hesitate to speak out loud. Even though the teacher made a point to make sure that I was properly understood by everyone in the class, she did not catch on to the fact that I was not a comfortable student when it came to interacting with other students or the class as a whole.

I guess my point in class last Tuesday and the one I am trying to make now is that I sympathize with teachers in the sense that they hold an essential responsibility in providing a classroom environment that allows for the students to be comfortable and express themselves without fear. This has become an even greater challenge with the diversity of children who attend American Schools. I know now that this is only one element to take into consideration in interpretivist theory and its view of schools, but I believe is an important one.