TALKING POINTS #2: "Why Can't She Remember That?" by Terry Meier..............Alexandra Sullivan

          The first quote that I found interesting concerned all three children that Meier's refers to in the beginning of the article. The author says, "All three are alert to nuances of other people's verbal and non-verbal behaviors and are able to adjust their own language in response, skillfully employing subtle intonation and prosodic features to convoy their intended meanings." I like how the author used different children of the same age, 3 and showed how they react differently to social situations depending on their culture. This is a great example of how children learn and behave on different levels. For instance, the latino girl turns her reaction into a playful joke, the white english-speaking girl repeats a nursery rhyme her mother read to her, and the young african-american boy recites a rap off the top of his head. All three social reactions proved very different, but they were effective! 
          The second quote that caught my eye concerned the importance that our society places on book knowledge. "Book knowledge becomes, in essence, part of these children's sense of identity in the world," explains the author. Children that don't have books read to them or don't experience books a culturally important, start off behind in our educational society. What is the difference between a book and a verbal story, which the latino girl tells? They both can teach lessons, they both can create excitement, they both can teach children about things which they do not understand. The main difference is the ability to read and comprehend the words in english text.
          The third quote that I actually found helpful was, "By no means do I underestimate the very real constraints under which many teachers have to operate...Whatever efforts teachers can make to create spaces for extended discussion about literature will be richly rewarded as children begin to forge deep connections to books." This was very interesting to me because she goes on to explain how reading to children in the classroom helps bring up conversations and it helps the children to open up to the teacher. It helps them to talk about topics that they might not normally talk about with a teacher. I find myself that when I read to kids, books really do help them to open up because they relate their own lives to the stories.
          I liked that this article concerned a topic, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual children and books, which many people would not normally consider an important aspect to bridge differences in classrooms. She is able to broaden the children's learning by reading to them, which is an important aspect of the democratic educational system, and uses books to connect with children that didn't grow up with an importance on reading. The article in my opinion, does not correlate with other articles because it explains a teacher using a traditional way to incorporate many different types of children that have different educational backgrounds. I wonder though if she took her research and studied children in higher grades like 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on. All in all, I appreciated the teachers different outlook on teaching multi-ethnic and multi-lingual children