I, personally, have really enjoyed this class. I feel it has challenged me to be more creative in my classroom and thinking outside the box to teach multicultural education. In reflecting over my teaching for the last 3 years, I can admit that I have not been very intentional in teaching about other cultures. I can only recall Judaism being discussed in a book about the Holocaust, but beyond that, nothing was planned or purposefully created. I now have some ideas and practical skills I can apply to my classroom to help open the minds of my fairly homogenous classroom and teach them to be loving and understanding human beings. Lastly, I've even noticed some of my cultural hesitations and stereotypes have come out as I took this class. I never realized how intimidated I was by Middle Eastern cultures, and now that it's been brought to the surface, I see my personal life enriched as well--even in just simple trips to Costco! It has really been a pleasure to read all of my classmates' thoughts and ideas to incorporate multicultural education into their classrooms.
Final Question: How do you feel this class has changed your outlook and perspective on other cultures or multicultural education? Do you feel like you've had somewhat of a mindset shift? In what way?
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
Ch. 12 Post
The topic of this chapter is always a struggle for me personally as an educator; and judging by the video module and the information within, I can see I'm definitely not alone. It is so difficult to balance the issue of political correctness considering that you will most likely not be able to please everyone. However, I enjoyed learning some ways of teaching healthy spiritual/basic human values to students and not risking a major problem amongst different religious family in the classroom. I really liked the piece discussing Character Education as a way of including important values and morals to teach children essential parts of growing into a well-rounded human beings.
It was also very interesting for me to see the statistical breakdown of diversity on pg. 248. As a teacher in a fairly homogenous school and community, I don't see this much religious diversity; but it is pretty clear that if I would travel outside the community into another school, I would see these figures better represented. I also was made much more aware of the major current religious issues in the public schools on page 249--I never realized that all of the religious holidays schools release for are of the Christian faith. That would pose a challenge for other religions celebrating.
One struggle I have as a teacher in this regard is the idea of holding true to my own faith but teaching in a religiously diverse classroom. I am a Christian and I do not feel comfortable celebrating other religious holidays as I want to be faithful to Jesus. This issue causes a major wrestle in my conscience. My question is: As an educator, how do you handle celebrating other holidays/religious practices in your classroom that aren't your own?
It was also very interesting for me to see the statistical breakdown of diversity on pg. 248. As a teacher in a fairly homogenous school and community, I don't see this much religious diversity; but it is pretty clear that if I would travel outside the community into another school, I would see these figures better represented. I also was made much more aware of the major current religious issues in the public schools on page 249--I never realized that all of the religious holidays schools release for are of the Christian faith. That would pose a challenge for other religions celebrating.
One struggle I have as a teacher in this regard is the idea of holding true to my own faith but teaching in a religiously diverse classroom. I am a Christian and I do not feel comfortable celebrating other religious holidays as I want to be faithful to Jesus. This issue causes a major wrestle in my conscience. My question is: As an educator, how do you handle celebrating other holidays/religious practices in your classroom that aren't your own?
Ch. 11 Post
Some of the information in this chapter really shocked me. I could not believe the statistic on pg. 223 that said 3/4 students say their schools have negative attitudes towards students who are LGBT. How painful would it be to go to a school and be LGBT? Considering this and then reading the risk factors of p. 224 really makes sense. Feeling like you are without any support would make it very difficult to imagine succeeding in school. I never realized how important it is to reach out specifically to this community of students, and now I see the great need.
I really liked the "That's So Gay: Think Before You Speak Campaign." I think these would be really great videos to play in the classroom to open discussion with students about the things they say nonchalantly being hurtful to others. I think the "R Word Campaign" would also be a good one to tie in here as well.
One of the hardest pieces of this whole subject for me is when I see men who perhaps act a little more feminine or woman who act masculine and other students accuse them of being gay/lesbian. I have had friends who have suffered from this form of bullying, and it was a struggle as long as they were in school that caused them to doubt their sexual orientation when before they were confident in being heterosexual. What a distraction and terrible association with school for these kids. It's no wonder they tend to avoid school and social events within.
My question is: How do you instruct students in a class-wide format to accept and show love towards others who are LGBT without making them feel pointed out or uncomfortable? Do we teach in general terms (eg. "bully-free zone") or do we address it directly? What are some of your ideas?
Ch. 10 Post
I found this chapter very interesting as truthfully, I haven't thought about gender stereotypes related to education. Perhaps due to my upbringing, I didn't see this directly addressed in any way as I was growing up. I remember one of the advanced track math classes I was in during high school only had girls enrolled, and most of the boys were in the regular track. This chapter was really enlightening to me in showing this country-wide issue, and I can see that it is a definitely something important to be aware of as an educator.
I was somewhat confused with the information in the chapter. At the beginning, it opened up saying that the gap between male and female math performance has narrowed or closed, but then later it was talking about the major difference in performance. It also is evident there is controversy in the research, some saying the gap is due to ability and others proposing other factors. However, I did find it very interesting that the studies on p. 198 were showing females who had a mindset of inability in math due to their gender were the ones who performed lower. It seems there are some grounds for self-fulfilling prophecy for what students believe about their gender and ability level.
As an educator, the piece of the chapter that was most compelling to me is the debate on p. 197 surrounding what teachers are expected to do in terms of gender role education. Personally, I feel uncomfortable with teaching gender roles because I do believe since it is a sensitive topic, I would like to leave it to the family unit to discuss. My question to you is: What do you feel? Is it our responsibility as educators to teach gender roles OR is it our right to decide what we want to do?
I was somewhat confused with the information in the chapter. At the beginning, it opened up saying that the gap between male and female math performance has narrowed or closed, but then later it was talking about the major difference in performance. It also is evident there is controversy in the research, some saying the gap is due to ability and others proposing other factors. However, I did find it very interesting that the studies on p. 198 were showing females who had a mindset of inability in math due to their gender were the ones who performed lower. It seems there are some grounds for self-fulfilling prophecy for what students believe about their gender and ability level.
As an educator, the piece of the chapter that was most compelling to me is the debate on p. 197 surrounding what teachers are expected to do in terms of gender role education. Personally, I feel uncomfortable with teaching gender roles because I do believe since it is a sensitive topic, I would like to leave it to the family unit to discuss. My question to you is: What do you feel? Is it our responsibility as educators to teach gender roles OR is it our right to decide what we want to do?
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Ch. 9 Post
The information in this chapter gets my heart stirring. As a special educator, my passion is creating an inclusive school, and a lot of what I have done over the past 3 years of my career has been just that! All the inclusion information discussed on pages 172-175 is what I have recently gone to several conferences and workshops to learn about, and as I have been implementing some ideas to facilitate inclusion, I have seen WONDERFUL results!
I created a "Buddies" club where different clubs in the school (StuCo, Key Club, National Honors Society) host and plan a night to get to know my students by playing games, making crafts, and, of course, eating! This has really helped my students to form relationships with their peers in the regular division. We are also going to start a "Buddies" study hall to do the same thing! My school also currently has no co-taught classes, which as you can see by the information in the chapter, this doesn't align with the Least Restrictive Environment laws. Next year, one other special educator and I will be going into general education classes as true co-teachers and not just glorified aides. I am SO excited to see the results of this!
One of my favorite things we tried this past year is I came in as a guest speaker into the Human Relations classroom and spoke about forming friendships with people with disabilities. I taught the students about what it is like to be in the shoes of someone with a disability (eg. What does it feel like to have autism) and the students in that classroom were SO interested! I had never seen a classroom of high school students so engaged for so long! It was clear they wanted to learn, and the following day I brought my students into the sections of this course and the students in the Humans Relations class got to practice what they learned the next day. Out of this event, one of the students in the HR class asked one of my students to prom! AND another student was asked by kids in the HR class to be a bat boy on the baseball team, and he's been doing this ever since!
I definitely feel my strength is including people who perform below the average range. However, after taking that quiz Dr. Cantu posted in the resources section, I can see that my weakness is reaching out to the students who perform ABOVE. I usually would take all the approaches that were proven to be ineffective in that document (eg. More work, Helping the other students).
My question is: What strategies have YOU used in your classroom to enhance the education for the gifted students? What has worked? Is there any time-efficient approach that fits nicely into the curriculum for the rest of the students?
I created a "Buddies" club where different clubs in the school (StuCo, Key Club, National Honors Society) host and plan a night to get to know my students by playing games, making crafts, and, of course, eating! This has really helped my students to form relationships with their peers in the regular division. We are also going to start a "Buddies" study hall to do the same thing! My school also currently has no co-taught classes, which as you can see by the information in the chapter, this doesn't align with the Least Restrictive Environment laws. Next year, one other special educator and I will be going into general education classes as true co-teachers and not just glorified aides. I am SO excited to see the results of this!
One of my favorite things we tried this past year is I came in as a guest speaker into the Human Relations classroom and spoke about forming friendships with people with disabilities. I taught the students about what it is like to be in the shoes of someone with a disability (eg. What does it feel like to have autism) and the students in that classroom were SO interested! I had never seen a classroom of high school students so engaged for so long! It was clear they wanted to learn, and the following day I brought my students into the sections of this course and the students in the Humans Relations class got to practice what they learned the next day. Out of this event, one of the students in the HR class asked one of my students to prom! AND another student was asked by kids in the HR class to be a bat boy on the baseball team, and he's been doing this ever since!
I definitely feel my strength is including people who perform below the average range. However, after taking that quiz Dr. Cantu posted in the resources section, I can see that my weakness is reaching out to the students who perform ABOVE. I usually would take all the approaches that were proven to be ineffective in that document (eg. More work, Helping the other students).
My question is: What strategies have YOU used in your classroom to enhance the education for the gifted students? What has worked? Is there any time-efficient approach that fits nicely into the curriculum for the rest of the students?
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Ch. 8 Post
In honest reflection of this chapter, I believe it was the most difficult to read as an educator. Due to some experiences I have had in the classroom as a teacher trying to do my best to help students living in poverty, I feel overwhelmed by this topic. That feeling continued to grow as I read the chapter and heard more accounts of what students lives are like when they live in poverty. Not only that, but it is discouraging to see that the situation in general isn't improving. This is the one area in education that makes me feel powerless because, as the Taylor stated, how are we to expect these students to sit in our classes and participate throughout the day acting as a typical kid when so many emotional and physical needs of theirs are unmet? I do, however, appreciate the "glass half full" outlook mentioned in Dr. Cantu's video module that talked about what specific strengths students in poverty could bring to the classroom. I have never thought of this as a part of multicultural education, and I think it is one way to view this painful topic in a somewhat positive light.
For the last 3 years, I have had one student in my class who lived and continues to live in poverty. For the purposes of the blog, I am going to refer to her as Sarah. Sarah's mom is a single parent. She has had 4 other children and raised them as a single mom, and Sarah is the youngest. Sarah's mom is unemployed and from what I gathered, she has not held a job for a very long time. They live off of government support including Social Security for Sarah's disabilities of emotional disorder and cognitive impairment. They do not have a consistently working phone and they have no transportation as they live out in the countryside. When Sarah came to high school, she immediately began accessing the general supports in place for all students living in poverty or low income households (eg. Free/reduced breakfast and lunch, Snack Packs for the weekend, and social work services for emotional support). However, I realized quickly that this was not nearly enough to support Sarah in order for her to participate in school to any degree. Sarah had very disruptive behaviors in class and I began to realize the serious medications she was taking for her behavior disorder were not given to her consistently. Her brain was suffering withdrawals and then being reintroduced to the medication frequently because when she would run out of the medicine, it would take days for the family to find transportation to get to the pharmacy. The social worker began picking up the medication for her and Sarah's bus driver would deliver it to her house. Because she lives in poverty, her health problems were numerous. She would go to the nurse's office to call home for someone to pick her up, but Mom would say they had no way to do so and she had to stay at school. There were a handful of instances where we could tell the problem was serious and an administrator drove her home. Due to the transportation issue, she couldn't access the doctor when she was sick until the illness was severe. One time during the school day, I drove her and her mom to a doctor's appointment because I could tell her psychotropic medication dosage was not correct. She was having major hallucinations and her mood swings were making it impossible for her to make any progress in school. We took her to an eye exam because she could not see the board in class. As a school, we felt it was safe to intervene when the problem was hindering her academic performance, but as caring educators, that line was unclear to us several times. Our last intervention was aimed at trying to break her out of the poverty cycle before she graduated by connecting her to a transition program. Our greatest fear was what would happen to her when she didn't have the high school to help her with all the things I mentioned. We took her to a local group home organization and community workshop which she loved, and we began helping her to fill out necessary paperwork to arrange the transition when she graduated. All our ducks were in a row until, to our dismay, her mother told her if she went to one of these places, she would be raped. The girl became scared and the process was stopped because she was no longer interested. We were powerless to help her. Unfortunately, she graduated with no plan but to live with her mom in poverty until further notice.
I tell this story to show the reality of the struggle of poverty. We went to great lengths in trying to meet her needs and consider her situation as we educated her, and I do believe the school did everything we could do to reach out to her. I believe, even though the very end was the most heart-crushing, we did make a difference and help improve her educational achievement as much as we possibly could.
My question to you is: What are the interventions you have done to help meet your impoverished students' needs? Have you done or thought of something that I didn't think of in this situation? Please share!
For the last 3 years, I have had one student in my class who lived and continues to live in poverty. For the purposes of the blog, I am going to refer to her as Sarah. Sarah's mom is a single parent. She has had 4 other children and raised them as a single mom, and Sarah is the youngest. Sarah's mom is unemployed and from what I gathered, she has not held a job for a very long time. They live off of government support including Social Security for Sarah's disabilities of emotional disorder and cognitive impairment. They do not have a consistently working phone and they have no transportation as they live out in the countryside. When Sarah came to high school, she immediately began accessing the general supports in place for all students living in poverty or low income households (eg. Free/reduced breakfast and lunch, Snack Packs for the weekend, and social work services for emotional support). However, I realized quickly that this was not nearly enough to support Sarah in order for her to participate in school to any degree. Sarah had very disruptive behaviors in class and I began to realize the serious medications she was taking for her behavior disorder were not given to her consistently. Her brain was suffering withdrawals and then being reintroduced to the medication frequently because when she would run out of the medicine, it would take days for the family to find transportation to get to the pharmacy. The social worker began picking up the medication for her and Sarah's bus driver would deliver it to her house. Because she lives in poverty, her health problems were numerous. She would go to the nurse's office to call home for someone to pick her up, but Mom would say they had no way to do so and she had to stay at school. There were a handful of instances where we could tell the problem was serious and an administrator drove her home. Due to the transportation issue, she couldn't access the doctor when she was sick until the illness was severe. One time during the school day, I drove her and her mom to a doctor's appointment because I could tell her psychotropic medication dosage was not correct. She was having major hallucinations and her mood swings were making it impossible for her to make any progress in school. We took her to an eye exam because she could not see the board in class. As a school, we felt it was safe to intervene when the problem was hindering her academic performance, but as caring educators, that line was unclear to us several times. Our last intervention was aimed at trying to break her out of the poverty cycle before she graduated by connecting her to a transition program. Our greatest fear was what would happen to her when she didn't have the high school to help her with all the things I mentioned. We took her to a local group home organization and community workshop which she loved, and we began helping her to fill out necessary paperwork to arrange the transition when she graduated. All our ducks were in a row until, to our dismay, her mother told her if she went to one of these places, she would be raped. The girl became scared and the process was stopped because she was no longer interested. We were powerless to help her. Unfortunately, she graduated with no plan but to live with her mom in poverty until further notice.
I tell this story to show the reality of the struggle of poverty. We went to great lengths in trying to meet her needs and consider her situation as we educated her, and I do believe the school did everything we could do to reach out to her. I believe, even though the very end was the most heart-crushing, we did make a difference and help improve her educational achievement as much as we possibly could.
My question to you is: What are the interventions you have done to help meet your impoverished students' needs? Have you done or thought of something that I didn't think of in this situation? Please share!
Ch. 7 Post
I love how Taylor begins this chapter by describing the 3 types of orientations educators can have toward students with different cultures and languages in their classroom! Doesn't this just make you want to be a teacher who has a social reconstructionist orientation? What an amazing classroom could be created by embracing and respecting each person's culture--both the strengths and unique features! The students that come out of that system can be community--or even WORLD--changers! How beneficial would it be, for example, to create activities where the independent-minded cultures would intermingle with group-minded cultures! They could glean off of each others' strengths and be better people because of it!
As exciting and glamorous as it sounds, the reality of being a teacher who tries to create this type of classroom can be tricky. As we saw in the Ch. 6 case study, a teacher with a wonderful heart who so desired to create a classroom with multicultural education ran into problems with a mother who had a wonderful heart and wanted issues like race to be personal to families and not discussed publicly. When you look at the Ch. 7 Native American mascot controversy on p. 123, you see the actions of people who are trying to preserve the history of a region and honoring those of a different culture are interpreted as offensive to others with different viewpoints. It is obvious this whole concept can be very controversial and challenging for educators.
My question is: As we implement multicultural education in our classrooms and run into parent/student feelings of discomfort or offense, what do we do? Do we always yield to the students and their families when they feel uncomfortable or disrespected, even if what we are doing is "right?" I believe firmly that if we cause a child to feel alienated in our classrooms, we lose them completely ("They don't care what you know until they know that you care"). How do we handle situations where something we believe is right and done for the good of class is challenged as being inappropriate or making a student feel uncomfortable?
As exciting and glamorous as it sounds, the reality of being a teacher who tries to create this type of classroom can be tricky. As we saw in the Ch. 6 case study, a teacher with a wonderful heart who so desired to create a classroom with multicultural education ran into problems with a mother who had a wonderful heart and wanted issues like race to be personal to families and not discussed publicly. When you look at the Ch. 7 Native American mascot controversy on p. 123, you see the actions of people who are trying to preserve the history of a region and honoring those of a different culture are interpreted as offensive to others with different viewpoints. It is obvious this whole concept can be very controversial and challenging for educators.
My question is: As we implement multicultural education in our classrooms and run into parent/student feelings of discomfort or offense, what do we do? Do we always yield to the students and their families when they feel uncomfortable or disrespected, even if what we are doing is "right?" I believe firmly that if we cause a child to feel alienated in our classrooms, we lose them completely ("They don't care what you know until they know that you care"). How do we handle situations where something we believe is right and done for the good of class is challenged as being inappropriate or making a student feel uncomfortable?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)