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My favorite activity throughout the book club was the one where we had to make connections to the self, other texts, and the world. In this activity we had to read a section of the book Subtractive Schooling for the week and then connect what we read to other sources (text, self, and world). I basically just read through the section with this in mind and as I came across something that set off a light bulb in my brain I wrote it down. I liked this activity the most because I felt like it really forced me to read more critically than I would have if I wasn't actively thinking of ways I could connect the book to other experiences I have had or books I have read. I think that activities like this are what really allow me to read a book with a certain lens where I get more out of the book than if i just read it blindly. I also think that this activity is one that I had to think the most about compared to other activities and that was important to me because in a way it felt way more worthwhile when I had to actually use my brain for critical thought than just kind of blindly commenting on ideas from the story. This activity helped me deepen my understanding of the book because the connections I was able to make in these different contexts that I was already familiar with through background knowledge. One of the components of the SIOP model is building background and I feel like this activity used my background knowledge I already had to scaffold the new information I was being given from the text into something I could understand more personally. For example, when I made a connection from the book to myself when i talked about how in chapter 5 of Subtractive schooling it was mentioned that teachers would often butcher the names of the Mexican American students. I connected this part of the book to when I was in elementary school and even all the way up through high school when my own teachers would butcher the names of students and laugh it off as if a name isn't an extremely important part of a persons identity that can often be linked to their culture and heritage. It made me think about how when I have my own class in the future the care I will take to pronounce students names correctly, especially those names of people of color that are often butchered in classrooms. This activity inspired that line of thought within me in a way that any of the other book club activities didn't seem to accomplish for me. I liked that it made me dig a little deeper and how for me it wasn't as surface level.

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I included this video because it talks about the benefits of bilingualism. In the book Subtractive Schooling, an important part of the book was the erasure of the students Mexican-American identities. A way the school in Seguin did this was by forcing all students to learn and speak English at school. I learned in my ESL class this semester that incorporating a students home language into the classroom is a powerful scaffolding tool when exposing students to new concepts. A second language is meant to be viewed as something helpful to a student but is also a huge part of their identity and culture. That is something that must be embraced, not erased from a classroom. The video discusses the different types of bilingualism and the ways these types of bilingualism are acquired and used in day to day life, as well as the benefits of multilingualism and how it can positively impact students and even make their brains more actively engaged in class than a monolingual student.

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The benefits of a bilingual brain - Mia Nacamulli

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There are three major themes throughout the reading: subtractive schooling, social capital and authentic caring. Throughout the book, the concept of teacher/student relationships, attitude, goals, expectations, and priority were discussed. The irony of that is that both parties felt that the other did not care. While there were a handful of teachers Valenzuela mentioned that authentically cared for the students, the majority of the examples she provided shed a negative light on educators at Seguin high school. The theme of caring throughout the book constantly brought me back to an age-old saying that kids do not care about how much you know until they know how much you care. The second theme throughout the book was subtractive schooling. Instead of providing resources for students, schools, and in this case Seguin, subtract resources from Mexican-American youth. When teachers blatantly refuse to establish and maintain authentic, reciprocal relationships with students, they are essentially rejecting Mexican culture. Additionally, Seguin was assimilative in nature in its attempts to remove or erase any trace of Mexican culture and language. Some examples that were provided throughout the book include the culture divisions created through scheduling, the erosion of the students’ social capital, requiring students to learn English rather than embracing their native tongue of Spanish, and Americanizing students through acts such as mispronunciation of names. The third theme in Subtractive Schooling is social capital. Social capital is based on the
social exchange theory and is defined by its function in group structures.
Valenzuela examines academic achievement as a collective process specifically
focusing on gender, U.S. born groups, mixed-generation groups, and Mexican
immigrants. The U.S. Mexican youth value their social networks and take great
pride in their culture. They stick together and are quick to help each other
when needed. An example of this would be females completing their male friend’s homework.

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Angela Valenzuela attended and graduated at Stanford University and currently is a professor at University of Texas in Austin. She is  professor in both in Educational Policy and the Planning Program within the department of Education Administration, she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.  Most of her research studies focus on sociology of education, minority youth in schools, educational policy and urban education reform.

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The best activity to me was activity #2, Wonderings. For this activity I had to find some things from the book that I wondered about while reading. This activity helped me delve into questions I had and then made me go learn more from articles, web pages, and videos. One of the wonderings I had while reading Subtractive Learning was, “Why did some of the teachers and counselors at Seguin High School not care for their Mexican/ Mexican American students?” “When they seek to explain the persistence of underachievement and high dropout at the high school, students, parents, and community members inevitably return to the language of “caring”. For them “caring” concerns over inequitable schooling resources, overcrowded and decaying school buildings, and a lack of sensitivity toward Spanish-speakers, Mexican culture, and things Mexican” (p.58). This wondering led me to do more research and I found a TedTalk by a teacher named Kandice Sumner and watching her video helped me realize that even in today’s school system we are failing our students and keeping students of color in poverty because we are denying access to valuable teaching opportunities because of where they live. Communities of color still lack resources that are standard in wealthier schools such as musical instruments, new books, healthy school lunches and this has a real impact on the potential of students.

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How America's public schools keep kids in poverty | Kandice Sumner

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The activity of “making connections” was assigned to chapter 6 of Subtractive Schooling. The purpose of making connections is so we as readers make a self-to-text, text-to-text, and text-to-world by doing so it helps us build our comprehension on what we read. The reason I chose this as my favorite activity because it helped guide my thoughts to create a deep connection and understanding. The following are my connections that I had for this chapter: Many incidents occur within chapter 6. First, one of the teachers’ kicks a student out of the class for “complaining” about the writing assignment and within the next few minutes that student gets in trouble by the assistant principal. The assistant principal automatically assumes that the student was “skipping” class, even though that wasn’t the case. At that moment the teacher’s relationship with the students hit a down fall and the students blame him for what happen to their fellow classmate. I made a text-to-text connection with the book Finding Joy in Teaching Students of Diverse Backgrounds by Sonia Nieto. In this book it describes how important building a teacher-student relationship is essential in providing a positive learning environment. Overall, about how good teachers understand that knowing their students well and tailoring their pedagogy to the students in their classroom make a difference in the quality of education students receive. The second incident accrued when students started waving small Mexican flags during the national anthem and it became such a big fiasco. With this incident it leads to my text-to-world connection, on the current issues that are going on within our society. For example, earlier this year a student was arrested for not standing during the national anthem. The personal connection that I had was encounters with students I have had in the past. I’ve had students that felt that teachers just didn’t care about them therefore they felt like they didn’t have to try.

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Teacher Education 50th Anniversary Lecture: Dr. Angela Valenzuela

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Reading Subtractive Schooling has really opened my eyes in a lot of ways and has directly impacted my mindset when it comes to how I will run my future classroom and ways I will interact with the children in my class. A large portion of the book talked about the importance of student teacher interaction and how you have to care about your students. To me this seems like common knowledge, you have to care about your students and their goals as a teacher, you have to want them to succeed. When I read this book it showed me that this isn’t the case for some teachers. The teachers in the book made comments like, “you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be here. No one is forcing you.” That quote was from the first page of the book which set the tone for me for the rest of the book. The teacher’s simply did not care for their student’s success or if they even showed up. This theme in the book made me furious and made me feel like I have to be more vigilant about letting my students know I care especially knowing that there are other teachers out there that they have had in the past or will have after being in my class that won’t care about them. I refuse to be a teacher that lets my students believe that what they do and how they feel in my class doesn’t matter. An idea I have that could help combat this is to have a circle time every week to talk about how the students feel in the class and about what they have been learning. This would be a time where students can talk about what they have been worrying about and what they may not understand from the lessons for that week. I believe that this will help my students to feel heard in my class and that how they feel in my class matters and that their struggles matter to me and that I am willing to help them with whatever it is that they are struggling with.

Another part of the book that really stuck out to me was the lack of integration of the student’s culture into the classroom. In every class I have taken I have been told time and time again that involving the student’s cultures in the classroom is critical. By erasing a student’s culture you are erasing a part of them. A lot of the time, especially in the younger grades like kindergarten or first grade a student’s background knowledge they are coming to your classroom with are only home experiences. This could mean that their home language isn’t English or that they don’t have the context of an American classroom in their funds of knowledge to be able to relate to anything Americanized. As teachers, we have to be mindful of that and as inclusive as possible of student’s cultures, especially with language. In the book, the author told us that at Seguin High School, the students weren’t allowed to speak their native languages. The students were forced to speak and interact in the classroom in English only. By denying a student the use of their home language in the classroom you are denying them a part of their culture, potential connections to their background knowledge, scaffolding opportunities through cognates for vocabulary, and so many more learning opportunities. I simply do not understand how or why a teacher would deny a student access to knowledge or learning in any regard. I am going to bring my students' cultures into my classroom as much as possible by letting them use their native languages to scaffold their learning, having multilingual word walls that include all represented languages in the class, and by including students' cultures directly in lesson plans by drawing inspiration from what they bring to the classroom, their funds of knowledge, and their families. There are so many strategies that I could use to bring language in specifically, but the most important thing I think would be to just let them exist in the context of their cultures in my classroom and accommodate whatever that means for each student specifically.

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I picked this video because it connected to our book in the aspect of teacher student relationships depicted in chapter 3 of Subtractive Schooling. The value of human connection and relationships with our students, in Subtractive Schooling-U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, the teachers have these ideas that the students do not care when in fact there is such an extreme language and cultural barrier which causes a gap in their relationship and in turn the students feel as if the teachers do not care. “students as not sufficiently caring about school, while the students [saw] teachers as not sufficiently caring for them” (p. 61) When the students were in school in Mexico their teachers were Mexican just like them, so they did not feel this relationship gap because their teachers were able to make closer connections because that cultural and language gap was not present. The students who attended Seguin high school often said they wished they could go back to their old teachers because they cared. "Kids don't learn from people they don't like." We as future teachers are not there just to teach lessons we need to be able to see our students backgrounds and build connections in order to build relationships with them in order to teach them in the most effective way.

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Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion

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Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like.'" A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

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The Wondering's activity was the most beneficial in my eyes because after reading a chapter I would instinctively have a wondering about how could I solve that problem or a alternative method to handle the situation. It made me go out and research or think back on my own personal experiences or reading responses that could connect to the situations in the book. An example from the text I have for this would be From chapter four, I think about how this chapter talks about Mexican schools are harder and don’t mess around with drugs, gangs and that teachers are held at such high regards and the American teachers thought these immigrant students wouldn’t care about school. “Valenzuela’s qualitative data also indicates that academically, Mexican schools are more challenging and the curriculum is the same across the land. Many students reported having a positive schooling experience in Mexico especially because the teachers spent time getting to know the students.” (pg.158) But then these students immigrated and had an awful school experience I guess I wonder how this was so missed by American teachers, I know language was a huge factor but it blows my mind. I found a video that talks about the breakdown of the school system in Mexico. I liked this specific video because I liked how the school system was explained by a student who experiences it day to day. It connected me much more than someone from here explaining it. After having this wondering on how these students are so largely underrepresented and undervalued made me take a critical look at our education. We as future teachers need to build connections and become more culturally relevant teachers and ultimately human beings. It opened my eyes on how I could prevent this from happening in my own classroom by learning where my students came from and the family backgrounds in order to build better relationships and connections with them which in turn will help me to be more culturally relevant in my approach to teaching.

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This article helped me understand what equitable literacy practices are. From what I understood equitable literacy is being conscious of the various levels of inequity that exist in our social realm such as race, ability, class, gender, sexual orientation and language; and as teachers doing what we can to combat the inequities these parts of a students’ identity can allow within society and our classrooms. Looking at what equitable literacy means in the context of the book I think that race plays a huge role in the way students are viewed and treated in the classroom at Seguin High School. In the book, Subtractive Schooling the students at the school were a majority Mexican American. An overlying theme of the book was how the students were constantly Americanized and the Mexican part of their identities actively ignored by their teachers who were predominantly white. The disconnect there and the lack of effort by the teachers to bridge that gap of inequity because of race is where a majority of the problems came from. The teachers were not making any attempts to connect with their students based on their race, they did not make any attempts to understand their students at all or where they came from, and they did not make any moves to accommodate or incorporate the students’ culture in the class. These teachers blatantly ignored this huge part of their students’ lives so it makes sense that the students became disenchanted with the state of their education. I think that after reading this book I became more aware of the way race can play a role in education, especially when your teachers are not mindful of the population of students that occupy their classroom. I didn’t make the connection until now so it wasn’t included in my activities I originally submitted but I have never had a teacher who was the same race as me. Growing up, from elementary through high school all of my teachers were white so it really makes me wonder how my schooling would have differed if I had a teacher who was mixed as I am or even Black, or just a person of color. I wonder if I would have gotten more out of my education than I did if I was able to connect to my teacher in that way or if they had made an attempt to include my background the way I now know how to. I definitely understand how the students at Seguin High School felt because in a way I had a similar experience. This is something I could have included in the text-to-self section of my book club activities or even the wonderings section because I am now truly curious and would like to know more about the experiences of others who have had an equitable experience in the classroom according to their race.

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In Subtracting Schooling students felt like they had to Americanize themselves in order to succeed in school. The teachers constantly degraded them and told them that they weren't allowed to take part in any Mexican habits. For example, students weren’t allowed to speak Spanish anywhere in the campus, this took a real toll on students. They felt like they weren’t American enough for society and because they were constantly told to “let go” of their Mexican side that their family’s or communities felt like they weren’t Mexican enough for the Mexican community. The first video I chose for this section discussed about how someone coming from another to the US felt like they have to be and act “white” because that’s what has don’t to successful. In the second video, it’s from the “Selena” movie where one of the character’s say, “I mean, we gotta know about John Wayne and Pedro Infante. We gotta know about Frank Sinatra and Agustín Lara. We gotta know about Oprah and Cristina. … Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, German Americans. Their homeland is on the other side of the ocean. Ours is right here … We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting!” This quote explains perfectly how the students from Seguin high school felt about our education system.

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After reading Subtractive schooling U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring by Angela Valenzuela it made me think of my future classroom, the layout, the students who will be sitting in the chairs, and all the different backgrounds they will come from. What language will they speak at home? What socioeconomic backgrounds will they be from? What will they look like? What will they think of me trying to teach them? I have learned all about creating a culturally relevant and diverse classroom not only physically but content based as well. Growing up in a diverse family and home, I want to embrace my students’ cultural differences. In order to achieve this, I have a few ideas. I don’t want my classroom to just be decorated with my things, I want my students to feel free to bring things from their own families/traditions to make them feel at home. After thinking about my future instructional decisions makes me go back to chapter three from Subtractive schooling U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. My mind goes to how this happened; that there wasn’t one teacher who cared enough to look at her students and think hmm this isn’t fair. I understand times were different back then and most of the teachers came from white middle-class backgrounds who have never experienced the complete deculturalization that their students did, but they didn’t care enough about their student’s education to notice that they do care about their education they just need an advocate to help make it equitable and accepting of their culture and language. The whole chapter examines teacher-student relations and the politics of caring. I do wonder how many teachers are currently this way, there has to be so many and that hurts my heart. Our students should be the main priority everything from the physical classroom to the lesson plans should be created around them. and their multiple identities. It is our job as teachers to make sure our students have us as their advocate. I want to be that advocate! I hold such a special place in my heart for immigrant students/ emergent bilingual students because my brother an sister are categorized in that group of students and i've seen the inequalities first hand. I also want to connect with the community around my school in order to build a better rapport with my students and their families I think this is something that can build a stronger classroom bond and relationship with my students.

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To have a successful or effective equitable classroom environment, students of all backgrounds should have the same opportunities to learn and develop their knowledge. To create an equitable learning environment, teachers must be culturally competent and possess the ability to communicate and work effectively across cultural lines. Where a student comes from shouldn’t be a barrier that works against them in the education system. The shame that some students endure, similar to what the students from Seguin high school had to experience is unacceptable. Ironically the “shame” should fall not only on some teachers but the educational system all together. Venezuela argues in chapter 1, that students do not fail school, but instead schools fail students “with a pedagogical logic that not only assures the ascendancy of a few, but also jeopardizes their success to those among them who are either academically strong or who belong to academically supportive networks” (p. 30). Venezuela emphasized that the district hired out of state teachers resulting in social and cultural barriers. In fact, few teachers invested “their time, money and resources in the community” (p. 38). To make matters worse, students were not academically successful in school. There was a high dropout and failure rate, and “in any given year more than half of the school population is composed of freshman or ninth-graders” (p. 42). Therefore, not only do we need to create a culturally competent environment, but we need to create culturally competent teachers. The most effective way to develop cultural competency among staff is to provide long-term, sustained professional development that enriches teachers’ cultural understanding.

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The students in Subtractive schooling U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring by Angela Valenzuela were students of color who were not being represented in school curriculum as well as being taught by a majority of white middle-class women. How were they supposed to make connections to what was being taught to them when they were being taught to disregard their culture and become more Americanized? “Teachers want Mexicans to know English. Mexicans want Mexicans to know Spanish. Students want to speak Spanish well “to maintain a sense of self-identify and self-fulfillment” (p. 169). We need to make changes in our curricula in order to represent our students in our classes, this can vary with each group of students we have, we need to be mailable in our teaching methods in order for our students to benefit the most, this was not the case for the students that attended Seguin High School and they became outraged as they should, the had to ultimately become their own advocates, when the staff saw them as acting out or bad, it simply wasn’t the case. We need to “value and actively promote a search for connection, both between teacher and student, as well as among students themselves” (p. 255). Our students need to feel valued and accepted in their learning environment as well as their identity being reflected int the curriculum instead of reading books written by or about old dead white men. Because of this educational injustice immigrant students are falling behind when it comes to standardized testing, these students are not able to make personal connections and ultimately the language gap. The tests are not testing what they know content based but English based placing students unjustly in lower academic tracts than U.S. born students. This is a HUGE problem, we need to recognize these inequalities and address them in order to make waves in the education system for our immigrant/emergent bilingual students.

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Valenzuela ends her research by reinforcing her belief that schools need to reevaluate their student-teacher relationships that take place in the campus. For example, in the case of Seguin high school, the “sensitivity to the politics of caring itself is the first step toward a more relevant and authentic pedagogy” (p. 255). Don’t get me wrong but I know it is difficult to create a culture of caring especially if the leadership is weak or ineffective like at Seguin high school. With this it reminded me that every student is different and just because they come from different ethnicities, it doesn’t make their value any less. For my future instructional decisions as teacher, I will provide a safe space and community in the classroom. Not all students learn the same and you can’t have just had one way of teaching or thinking. To make sure we make our students feel included and heard, it is important to account for their learning cultural background and their learning abilities. Being a teacher means you are constantly making accommodations and modifications to the students’ learning. Our students aren’t black and white therefore; the teaching styles shouldn’t be either. Teaching goes beyond just content, obliviously content is extremely important, but it shouldn’t just be about what is being taught. Content is the “what” in teaching but to teach the content you must understand who you are teaching. In order to have positive results you must make connections with the students. Building a teacher-student relationship is essential in providing a positive learning environment.

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One of the themes that occurred while reading was that students wanted teachers to show interest in them, their families, and their cultures. I found this to be of importance and connected this to the video and to myself as a Mexican American student. When I was in junior high, I felt very much like the students at Seguin High School. I did not feel very enthusiastic about the curriculum because my culture, although the majority Latino, was not being taught and I the did not see myself in many things such as in my teachers, or in the things I would watch, and read. When I got to high school, I just did what I could to pass. My parents did not go to college and when everyone around me was talking about what rank they were and what college they planned to attend I was not interested, nor did I have the support system or other family members who went to college to help me. Until one of my dual credit professors, Mr. Segura, noticed I was not putting my best effort in the papers he assigned to me in 11th grade. I broke down and cried in front of him because I did not know what I was doing in his class that was filled with the top 10% from the school. He did not let me take pity on myself and encouraged me to try harder. He heard my story and cared enough to help me realize I could do anything I put my mind to even attending college. This video also explains that if you’re the first generation to go to college it is harder for you because there are not many support networks in place. I can see why it is so important for teachers to build relationships with their students from personal experience and from reading Subtractive Schooling.

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Black, Latino Students Continue to Fall Behind White, Asian Counterparts

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After reading Subtractive Schooling, I want to accept all students unconditionally. I want to personally get to know my students, their families, and their communities. I want to include their language and content from wherever my students are from. I will recognize my student’s culture and language(s) and see that as one of their many strengths. I have realized that students from more diverse backgrounds are more willing to learn if they can relate to what is being taught. I will use the diversity of my classroom as a way to tailor my pedagogy. I understand that the world will come to my classroom and this is a wonderful learning experience for us all. I will also share about myself and encourage students to share, read, and write about themselves in a safe place where we can talk about real life issues that are happening to them and to their communities.

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This article I found that goes over seven tips for teachers who need some resources for teaching an emergent bilingual student. We as teachers need to take the "initiative to learn about students’
home language(s) and look for ways to connect with
students in speaking, reading, and writing." embed their identities into what they are learning make it relevant. The teachers from

Seguin High School were not going out and seeking counsel on how to better their craft and the profession of teaching is ever changing and we need to be able to keep up with the changes. Ultimately the students suffered. I am not saying all the teachers from Seguin High School were against growing, but the majority were closed minded towards their new students. Prior to 1970, Seguin was predominately all white and middle class high school; however, the school’s clientele and academic profile has rapidly changed since then because of a 1970 court order “that eventually completely eroded Seguin’s white, middle-class base” (p. 45). By 1984, the school’s population had shifted “to a nearly all Mexican composition” (p. 33) and in 1999 Seguin was one of the poorest performing schools in the Houston school district. Ironically, while the student population was primarily Mexican, the faculty was disproportionately white. Our classes are going to be diverse and ever changing which means we need to be open to growth just as our students.

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Equitable literacy practices are when a teacher can respond effectively in an equitable fashion to school and classroom inequities. Teachers should help students build facilitation skills and learn content knowledge necessary to intervene effectively when issues like gender, sexism, class, and economic injustice or equity concerns arise in the classroom. They should also engage students in critical examination of bias in classroom materials, classroom interactions and school policies, and foster discussion about equity concerns. “They [the honors students] gave the walkout legitimacy. They could articulate their grievances knowing that people would listen to them” (p.52) After reading about the walkout in October 1989 I realized the importance of teaching students equitable literacy because they should know how and when to use their voice to empower themselves and fight for what is just. In this case the students realized that they could peacefully protest the conditions of their schooling.

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"Furthermore, most parents were not educated. An alarming 68% of parents had completed fewer than eleven years of education and only 16% completed high school." This quote really opened my eyes and connected to what is still currently happening in classrooms, a lack of parent involvement because of language barriers between teachers and parents. As well as parents who have a lower education and are unable to assist their child academically. This article goes over types of parental support you can provide and how this benefits the students, when the teachers care enough to get the parents involved and make strides to accommodate for the language barriers it shows not only the student but the parents that you care for their child's well being and are supporting them. This is something the teachers at Seguin high school should have tried to do, parental involvement.