Responses and Ramifications

Abstract

Chapter 6 reveals the critical role teachers play in translating class-based problem-solving strategies into unequal opportunities in school. Teachers almost always rewarded middle-class students’ strategies of influence. They did so by granting requests for assistance, accommodations, and attention and by creating conditions in which middle-class students (but not working-class students) felt comfortable making requests. That privileging of middle-class students, however, did not seem intentional. Teachers tried to support working-class students, but time and accountability pressures made it difficult for them to recognize students’ tacit struggles, forcing teachers to rely on students to voice their own needs. Teachers also relented in granting middle-class students’ requests, even when they seemed reluctant to do so. In those moments, teachers gave in because they wanted their students to feel supported and, more problematically, because it was often easier and less time-consuming to say “yes” and much riskier to say “no.”