Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch Book

Cynthia Ballenger's book titled Teaching Other People's Children: Literacy and Learning in a Bilingual Classroom shares the perspective of an educator teaching children whose cultural backgrounds differ from hers. This highly relevant book focuses on the author Cynthia Ballenger, who is an inner city special education preschool teacher working with Haitian students. Throughout this book, Ballenger attempts to gain a deeper understanding of her students and their particular needs. She records conversations and interactions from her classroom in order to collect research as well as examine her own teaching style.

Through her research, Cynthia Ballenger discovers a lot about her students and their cultural background. She makes a disclaimer at the beginning of the book stating that she discovered a lot about the culture of the students and families that she interviewed and researched. She writes "Before beginning, let me say that what I know about Haitian culture comes mainly from discussion with Haitian friends, from questions I've asked them that came out of my experience" (Ballenger 15). An individual's culture often becomes generalized from the group he or she belongs to and it is important that Ballenger included this statement in her writing. Individual have their own unique identity and culture that shapes personal ideas and actions and the author wanted her audience to know this.
Cynthia Ballenger discovers many cultural differences when she interacts with her students. For example, she discovers that "Haitian children, as a sign of respect, often avoid sustained eye contact with their parents, and with their teachers as well. This is of course misunderstood by American teachers" (Ballenger 29). Cultural differences such as body language often cause miscommunication within the classroom. It is important that teachers are aware of the cultural differences within their own classrooms in order to improve understanding and communication.

As Cynthia Ballenger closely studies her students, she learns that her particular teaching style was not adequately supporting her preschoolers. Through close examination, she uncovers ways to improve her teaching style to meet the individual needs of her students. For example, she writes "These children were used to a kind of control talk other than what I had been providing, so I began to adopt some of the style of the Haitian teachers" (Ballenger 37). Ballenger modifies her language to accommodate and connect with her students. As a teacher, I need to be mindful of my own language and interactions with students and Ballenger expresses the importance of this.

The author writes a lot about behavior and classroom management. She writes, "I had been trained to handle behavior in certain ways, but this training was based on deep cultural assumptions" (Ballenger 40). While closely examining her interactions with students, she discovers that the way in which she responds to behavior is based on many cultural assumptions, so she decides to adjust her classroom management and response to student behavior. I think that as a teacher, classroom management is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching. I believe that the way in which we respond to student behavior directly depends on the individual students within the classroom. Ballenger offers a great point that most of the strategies we are taught in undergraduate courses are based on cultural assumptions and it is important to modify our own behavior to meet the needs of our students.
Cynthia Ballenger also examines elements of Literacy, particularly language development, concepts of print and storybook reading. These are critical skills that students should be working on in all preschool classrooms. Ballenger closely examines these elements of the classroom curriculum and offers a profound statement about language development for young children. She states, "Language develops as the child's story grows, and the story grows in the experience of relationships" (Ballenger 96). This is the main quote from this book that stood out to me because it is both inspiring and relevant to my own teaching. Many of my students are nonverbal or just beginning to speak, so I am constantly working on language goals. I have learned from this book that in order to support language development in my students, I need to build a strong foundation of relationships with my students, their families, as well as foster student relationships. This will allow students to make meaningful connections that support learning.

This book is a valuable example of a teacher reflecting on her own educational practices and approaches to learning in order to successfully support her students. I recommend this book to all educators because it instills inspiration and also raises the question, "Am I doing everything I can to support my students?" I am a preschool special education teacher so I was able to directly relate to this author's experiences and I found her writing to be very relevant and beneficial for teaching in my classroom. I also have many English Language Learners so I found her strategies for getting to know her students and their families very valuable.

I strongly related with one particular example from this author. Ballenger writes about organizing her classroom and labeling her students' cubbies. She writes, "I wrote their names on their cubbies, they watched solemnly, but still used any cubby one that was convenient. They knew no letter names. They couldn't recognize their own written names" (Ballenger 43). I was in the same situation with my English Language Learners as well as many of the preschoolers. I quickly discovered that students did not have any experience with their written name, so I decided to add a photograph of each student by his or her name. All of the students were able to recognize a photograph of themselves, so this allowed each student to independently put their items in the correct cubbies. Like the author, I discovered that I was making many assumptions of my students before I was able to get to know them.

Teaching Other People's Children: Literacy and Learning in a Bilingual Classroom by Cynthia Ballenger acts as an extremely relevant, current, and valuable resource for all teachers and ESL/Bilingual Education professionals in particular. Ballenger examines the importance of reflecting on your own teaching and researching ways to accommodate for students. I enjoyed reading this work by Cynthia Ballenger and I would highly recommend it to any professional working in the field of education, any professional working with people whose cultural background differs from theirs, or to anyone who works with children in any setting. This author instills inspiration for all educators to engage in continuous learning and grow as a professional, which is an area that all educators can improve on.