Anita Kesto EDU397 Jim Colbert Case Study Leanne Kang 12 April 2012 Jim Colbert Case Study

The Jim Colbert case study examines a third-grade teacher, Jim, in an urban school who is teaching language arts using a district-required curriculum. He experiences an issue when one of his students, Carlos, has trouble spelling in English as well as pronouncing words and stammering while reading. Carlos does very well in his other classes and thus was not tracked into the lower level class. Carlos also has very good reading comprehension of text in English. Jim tries different ways of helping Carlos. One thing he does is send Carlos home with a dictionary. He asks Carlos to use the dictionary to check his spelling when he is doing his homework. Another thing Jim does to try to help Carlos is send him home with a library book each night and have Carlos write a book report for him. Still, he struggles with the spelling and phonetic skills. An important characteristic of Carlos is that he comes from a home that only speaks Spanish. Outside of the classroom, he does not speak any English. Thus, the only practice he has with the language is at school. I believe Jim Colbert comes up with many good solutions to help Carlos. Jim uses the resources the school has to offer. For example, Mrs. Rush is a retired teacher who works at the school to assist teachers and also to help students get extra practice with the subjects they struggle with. Jim has Carlos meet with Mrs. Rush to assist him with his English. However, because the school has more budget cuts, Mrs. Rush is no longer at the school to assist Carlos. Jim truly has limited resources and I believe he tries to make the best out of what he has. When Jim offers Carlos the dictionary, he does not stop there. He continues to try to help Carlos by

assigning him book reports and then sending him to work with Mrs. Rush. Jim even researches Carlos past and examines his previous grades and school work. In addition, Jim receives information about Carlos home life. With a school district that is situated in a dangerous environment and has limited resources, Jim does the best he can do. Truthfully, with scarce resources, there is not much extra a teacher can do. This raises the question, is a teacher the greatest resource? I believe a teacher can be an invaluable resource for students. At the same time, however, a teacher has a personal life too. As much as Jim and many other teachers would like to stay after school and individually tutor Carlos, the reality is that teachers also have homes to attend to. We then must ask ourselves, What can be changed that is not dependent on resources? As humans, the one thing we have control over, regardless of what resources are available to us, is our attitude.