Family

I was unable to go to my partnership today due to illness. Everything in this blog will be about things that I have observed in previous visits.

The most important assumptions that I have been making about MayZin in the last few weeks is that she may not have a lot of motivation when it comes to her schoolwork. She has missed school quite often, and when her teachers talk to her about her assignments she is almost always missing homework assignments. I often notice she is unfocused during her reading plus work. She will look around the room, instead of reading the prompt on her computer screen. I also see her drifting off and checking her phone when she should be doing her work. MayZin spends a lot of time talking to her friends during class time, and it can be difficult to keep her attention on the task at hand. I assume she isn’t motivated, but there could be something going on in her home life that I do not know about. She does not talk to me about anything other than her homework, so it is hard to know if there is an outside source. It could also be as simple as she does not like the course, so she does not have a strong desire to do the work. I’m assuming she is not motivated to do the work, but it could be as simple as she is not interested.

            I do not know much about her family life. MayZin does not talk about her life at home. I will often ask her about her plans for the weekend, or how her week went and she does not give me any information. All I know about her home life is what I can infer from background knowledge I have on her culture. Her culture appears to encourage a traditional parenting style. According to CultureGrams, parents have five obligations to their children; these are keeping their children from being bad, telling their children to be good, make sure their children have an education, ensure they are financially supported, and organize their children’s marriages (CultureGrams, Family).  Traditional parenting is defined as “The kind of parenting typical in traditional cultures, high in responsiveness, and high in a kind of demandingness that does not encourage discussion and debate but rather expects compliance by virtue of cultural beliefs supporting the inherent authority of the parental role” (Arnett,J.J pg. 186 2013). Based on MayZin’s cultural background it definitely seems like this would be the case. The little I do know about her it does seem like her parents put a strong emphasis on education. It appears that they do want her to do well. She has told her that her parents want her to go to college, so it is clear her parents have higher education expectations for her. The description of parenting from CultureGrams also allows me to infer that the parenting style used by her parents is more of a traditional parenting style because Burmese parents seem to believe in the idea that they must provide their children with rules that teach them the difference between right and wrong. This seems more like traditional parenting, because CultureGrams does suggest that there is no negotiation when it comes to those rules.

            I wasn’t able to help MayZin with her WIDA standards, because I was unable to make it to Winooski today.

Works Cited:

Arnett, Jeffrey J. (2012-07-02). Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood (Page 168). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Myanmar: Family (2016). CultureGrams Online Edition. ProQuest. Retrieved from http://online.culturegrams.com/world/world_country_sections.php?cid=198&cn=Myanmar&sname=Family&snid=11