Diverse Learners Top Hat Organizer

Article One: Article Two:

Literacy Education and Disability Studies: Reenvisioning Emergent Bilingual Students in Secondary School: Along
Struggling Students the academic language and literacy continuum.

Similarities

One major similarity I noticed right away when having read both articles was how much some focus on the students'
struggles. In both articles it talks about how it has “perpetuated deficit views of these students by focusing solely on
their perceived academic shortcomings” and the need for a perspective change.

Although one focuses on disability studies and the other on students who are emergent bilinguals, they face similar
struggles and barriers and the same goes for both articles approaches of ways to provide instruction or being able to
determine where and why the student is struggling.

Both articles also talk about how the current (in correlation to both these environments and at the time these
experiences took place) construct of education does not serve everyone in front of them. It is not structured in a way
that could be accessible for a wide range or every single student and caters to a specific level of student in mind. For
example the second article talks about how content has been built with a certain level of fluency and understanding in
mind assuming most or all students will understand when it comes to learning a lesson or taking a test. They do not
consider the literacy demands and how they can be linguistically complex for emergent bilinguals.

I think both articles focus on learning about the student and also on disrupting “dangerous, exclusionary
consequences of deficit perspectives.” We have to take so much more into consideration and like the first article talks
about taking up a DSE perspective, it shares a theme to the second article in that we need to look at behaviors and
students struggles in different ways in order to provide a better well rounded form of education that can even
sometime not only benefit those struggling but can add to a lesson and provide a more efficient and more well
rounded lesson for every student.

My Thoughts
I still find it very strange to both read and hear teachers speak about students in a negative as if there is no hope for
certain individuals. I completely agree with looking into situations further (like the behaviors of Margarita and
Dwayne) rather than assuming the worst right away. It reminded me of the talk I went to with Michael Bonner and he
said it perfectly that students behave a certain for a reason, you cannot go into the angry teacher mode and be ready
to go straight to discipline students for their behavior but instead help and support the student and you will find that
there could be underlying pressures at home or unfortunate situations the students are experiencing.