Jim Ruiz Case Study Early Childhood Education

This case study examines a third-grade language arts teacher, Jim Colbert, who has been teaching at an inner-city school in the Northeast for four years. In his instruction, he uses basal readers and a district-required curriculum, but the case study examines a specific problem he has been facing in his class. Jim teaches the advanced third grade class, and one of the students in this class, Carlos, has difficulties spelling in English, properly pronouncing words, and reading out-loud. Jim, after taking some steps to attempt to improve Carlos’s spelling and phonetic skills, becomes frustrated and finds himself at a loss, not knowing what to do to help Carlos improve. Educational psychology can be used to analyze this case study by using theories
The school that Jim teaches at is in a low-income and slightly dangerous neighborhood, so it can be inferred that this is where Carlos resides. This would make Carlos a minority student of a low socioeconomic status (SES). In an attempt to improve Carlos’s learning capabilities, Jim addresses him privately at school, asking if he could perhaps get help at home with his spelling. In this moment Carlos tells him that his parents only speak Spanish at home (Silverman et al., 1997). Studies have shown that parental support towards their children’s schooling varies by social class and ethnic group, with Latino students being less likely to get support for academic achievement from parents compared to White or
Asian American students (Snowman et al., 2013). This is true in Carlos’s case because his parents are not willing to learn or improve their English skills even if it means bettering their son’s education.
Another problem stems from Carlos being placed in the advanced-level classroom. At his old school, his English scores were below average but his math scores were very much
Reading Upgrade is a program that “uses music and video within an interactive environment to maintain student attention to and interest in lessons.” The group of students who used this program scored higher than a group of similar students who received conventional instruction without the use of technology, and their reading skills improved by a whole grade level in just 8 weeks (Snowman et al., 2013). Pulling Carlos aside during English class and allowing him to use a program like this could help him with spelling and phonetics.
While there is a chance that this doesn’t improve his skills, it is highly unlikely that it would make his reading any worse and at the least, it would be a change of scenery for Carlos in a sense. Jim uses basal readers and even assigns Carlos nightly book reports to try and improve his English skills (Silverman et al., 1997). A program like Reading Upgrade would provide a completely different learning environment for Carlos, which could prove to be beneficial