Rodriguez Reading Response

I was so intrigued by Rodriguez’s article. His journey through his schooling was really mind-opening and inspiring. Reading that he first entered a classroom struggling, barely able to speak English, to a graduate student who was always so anxious of his schooling and was overly eager to learn was so inspiring. It’s so encouraging as a future educator to read that his earliest teachers were nuns who made it their mission and ambition to help him achieve success. Rodriguez mentions that his primary reason for his success in the classroom was that he “couldn’t forget that schooling was changing him and separating him from the life he enjoyed before becoming a student”. Schooling was a whole new world for him in which it gave him new interests and passions in life that separated him from the “real world”. He was too impatient to ask for help from his family members that he would hide himself in closets reading library books and studying on his own to gain as much knowledge about the subject as possible. I notice that I tend to do the same thing at times. When I ask for help from someone who doesn’t particularly understand the problem either, I get impatient as well, watching them try to figure it out with me, that I just take the thing and spend hours trying to figure it out on my own. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a helpful method, as group interaction can help you gain multiple points of view about things. Although reading over and over through chapters in books can be extremely educational. For example, I thought it was very interesting that Rodriguez read books by modern educational theorists and saw himself within the text. He talked about the “typical case” of a lower-class student who is barely helped by his schooling. He then relates himself to the “scholarship boy” he reads about in Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy. Hoggart mentions that the “scholarship boy” must move between environments, (at home and in the classroom), which can be stressful towards their schoolwork and studying habits. For example, Rodriguez notices early on the cultural differences between the two environments in which the house may be too noisy for studying. The “boy” has to mentally restrain himself to be able to get his work done. I recognize that kind of strategy in myself, especially to have been living with 17 other girls. Rodriguez mentioned a lot of tools he used and learned about from personal experiences that truly have opened my mind and will be put to further test throughout my own schooling. An important aspect I took out of this article was a very motivational message: “without the extraordinary determination and the great assistance of others, (at home and in school), there is little chance for success”. This just reminded me that it’s okay to ask for help and that I won’t always know the answer to every problem I’m faced with. I really enjoyed reading the different obstacles Rodriguez has overcome to achieve such successes.