...When looking at the past few weeks of my fieldwork in Academy of Accelerated Learning, there have been several instances where I have seen culture take a prominent role in the classroom. There is one instance in particular that was striking that I will be narrating and discussing in this paper. Before I discuss the nature of what happened, I would like to discuss the demographics of the classroom. The room that I am in is a 1st grade classroom with about 32 students. This is a diverse classroom with about half of the students being Caucasian, ¼ being Asian or Mung, ⅛ being Hispanic, and there are only 3 African American students. There are a handful of ELL students in the classroom who come from refugee camps and barely speak English....
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...Diane Uonites Cultural Diversity in the Classroom March 13, 2016 Sean Diana Part One: Collage: Personal Cultural Identity My ancestors came from Germany, Sweden, and Norway. My ancestor’s journey was by ship and landed in Ellis Island. What I value about my culture is my family and how important they are. I also value how we depend on one another to get through the day. Sisters, brothers, nieces and nephew, son and daughters. To be an American is to have the freedom to do what I want. To love the country I live in and respect the people who fought for my freedom. Citizenship is a feeling of belonging to a country and standing up for the country that you love. Being able to vote, pay taxes, and defend my country. Part Two: Interview: Cultural Identity Use the questions below to interview one adult: 1. When did your ancestors come here? Carol Moriscato grandparents came from Italy in the 1800’s. 2. What process did they take to make the journey? They came over by boat. They each had to have a relative in the USA to sponsor their trip. They also had to promise to have a job. 3. What do you consider to be your culture? Carol said that pretty much their culture was American. 4. When did you first become aware of your culture? When Carol was about 8 or 9 she realized she was Italian when she heard her grandparents speaking Italian on the phone with relative that still lived in Italy. 5. What do you value about your culture? Carol stated...
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...17 years old. My mom still wakes me up. I haven’t created a new technological machine yet. The only instrument I can play is the recorder. I forgot how to play it, though. And I’m not locked up in my room studying the whole day. What I have to offer isn't as obvious as most applicants, but what I represent is important. “Utho. Skool time.”, my mom softly whispers for me to get up. “5 more minutes”, I weep to my mother. Slightly displeased from my minimal sleep, I remember my dreams and aspirations ahead of me, which awakens me to achieve my duties for the day. My day starts with rigorous study and assessments and ends with an intensive soccer training session to regenerate my mind. My attitude and identity guide me through every single moment: my identity shapes me. I enter school ready to tackle my day. The classroom setting is a great environment to be in. I perceive the classroom as a place where I am able to explore my curiosities and have my questions answered. I raise my hand numerous times throughout the class, however, I don’t get positive responses from my peers....
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...in mathematics education. “The industrial pragmatists see mathematics as an established collection of very useful techniques and skills that can be applied to a large range of technical and scientific contexts.” (Johnston-Wilder, Johnston-Wilder, Primm, & Lee, 2011) Mathematics is needed in the school curriculum for the prosperity of our country; industry needs the future workforce to have the necessary skills to push the economy forward. For this reason it is seen as important for education to provide good standards of numeracy, data handling skills and use of ICT. Although I acknowledge this is an important requirement of mathematics’ place in the curriculum, it appears a very sterile reason for its inclusion. In a recent Y8 classroom observation the teacher told the class that “maths is just a toolbox for solving problems”. I was somewhat mortified by this definition and had to restrain myself from speaking out; why should a child be motivated to learn maths if that was all there was? I had originally...
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...students meet with their buddies to practice the tasks. Circulate in the classroom and provide assistance as necessary. WRAP IT UP 8 MINUTES Discuss the...
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...Capacity Building Series SECRETARIAT SPECIAL EDITION #20 Student Voices Teacher: What happens in your mind when you read a chapter book? Student: I dream of something – like I’m flying or I can be a superhero. In my mind I can be anything I want from those books. Conversation with Grade 2 student Student Identity and Engagement in Elementary Schools Developing awareness, understanding and respect for what matters to students has become critical in education today because “learning can no longer be understood as a one-way exchange where we teach, they learn.” Rather, “it is a reciprocal process that requires teachers to help students learn with understanding” (Willms, Friesen, & Milton, 2009). In the shift from a transmission to a discourse model of education, researchers verify what classroom teachers know intuitively – that ensuring students are listened to and valued and respected for who they are leads to greater student engagement which, in turn, leads to greater student achievement (Cummins, et al., 2005; Flessa et al., 2010; Leithwood, McAdie, Bascia, & Rodrigue, 2006; Willms, Friesen, & Milton, 2009). In their recent work on education reform, Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley (2009) also build on this insight, urging education leaders and policy makers to ensure that students are recognized as “partners in change rather than merely targets of change efforts and services – more involved in their own learning and learning choices, actively consulted about the quality...
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...education, students are able to have many kinds of perspectives and use them appropriately. For these reasons, I believe learning just like Tangram which is a square divided into seven pieces that can be arranged in many ways. People hold on consistently and persistently to find the possibility of the world and themselves. This journey is permanent and people should enjoy it and embrace it. And students should see invisible changing when they are learning. Fortunately, at Drew University, I did see students were eager to embrace the process of learning from my observation of Chinese classes. In the class I observed, I found my notion of freedom, a key to embrace learning, was confirmed. More interestingly, there were plenty of ways for the pursuit of freedom. When I observed Chinese class, I saw the classroom had blue wall which differs from the yellow chairs in other class and evoked tranquility, freedom and esteem. To my surprise, the placing of tables and...
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...ideas of the writer that have proved particularly insightful for you? Reflect on the contribution of this writer to your thinking in the light of the course material you have studied and your reading of other authors. Due Date: Email Sent: I certify that this assignment is my own work. STUDENT’S SIGNATURE: Parker Palmer has made a significant contribution to my understanding of teaching in a Christian community. Through access to his published works “To Know As We Are Known, The Courage To Teach” and “Let Your Life Speak”, I have been enriched by Palmer’s viewpoints and themes on teacher’s, teaching and community. In many instances I found his viewpoints and philosophies insightful, exciting, challenging, daunting and confronting. In some instances I found his position unrealistic to my experience of teaching while also finding myself disagreeing with what I would see as being his liberal approach to theology. Other author’s including Frisken, Hekman and Van Brummelen, compliment many of the themes explored by Palmer while importantly providing another viewpoint. The key ideas that I have found to be personally insightful are explored in this essay and in brief include; the identity and integrity of the teacher, the concept of selfhood and the undivided self, the nature of the teacher and teaching and the...
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... The American classroom can at times contain many different cultural diversities and backgrounds. Students from different states or countries offer the classroom a cultural masterpiece that is designed to somehow work and at times this can be an accomplishment. A world of separation exists that can cause a series of emotions especially in regards to a student’s cultural background or race. Everyone is placed in a way by our race and the cultures we represent. Educators must be aware of this and their own position in the classroom in order to create relationships with their students in a teaching and learning manner. Race matters in everyday life. It can have a very powerful effect on interactions between students, students and teachers, and effects learning in some cases. One way to offer support for all students from different cultures is to offer multicultural education. Multicultural education is put in place to provide equal opportunities to all students in educational settings by changing the environment to reflect the cultures and groups within the classrooms. Offering this support makes the learning experience better for students who may struggle fitting in due to their race or cultural difference. The cultural differences that come with being from a different state or country should be embraced in order to allow our educational system to move forward into embracing cultural differences and diversities that make up our nations classrooms. My interviewee shared...
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...important thing in this chapter to my learning was the figure on page 56. I felt that this was crucial to my learning because it gave me the full picture of the iceberg that is culture. In reading all the different elements that are apart of the bottom of the iceberg, I began to think about what culture really is and what all plays into it. Now knowing the different things that play into culture I can help create a classroom environment that is respectful and consistent for the students. Lastly, I really enjoyed reading the sections about bilingual students. When I was learning a second language, it was challenging for me. I can only imagine how challenging it can be for students and families to learn a second language; therefore, I think that it is truly important to support home languages. In chapter six, Deman-Sparks and Olsen Edwards discuss racial identity and fairness. The language of racial identity was on thing in this chapter that stuck out to me and I felt was important to my learning. By giving children the tools they need to explore racial identity, and by helping facilitate conversations with...
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...students, even those typically left out, learn how to implement the Equity Framework, enabling you to close the achievement and eliminate it permanently. Tatum believes in straight talk about race, particularly in the classroom. Tatum also show how to create an inclusive and safe environment for both teachers and students. She examined multiple classrooms, schools, and districts where the achievement gap has been successfully eliminated. Tatum want to explore that students of color face a gap between their own culture and the culture of school. The gap emerges at the earliest phases of school where students’ pre-existing knowledge is not honored in the school environment and students are “set-up” to fail. Students of color end up behind white students at the earliest stages of school. Students of color therefore feel a conflict between their home racial and ethnic identity and the identity that is required to be successful in school. Inclusion of race-related content in a college course identified three sources of resistance to learning about racism: race as taboo topic; myth of meritocracy; and denial of personal connection to racism. Strategies for reducing resistance include a safe classroom climate; opportunity for self-generated knowledge; model of racial identity development; and empowering students as change agents. The question of this is “Why do we must talk about race?” This is to move racism and ethnicity from abstraction to real human experience. Tatum identifies three...
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...next. Diversity is defined as a state of unlikeness, the condition of being different or a variety or range of different things. Everybody is diverse. B. Identify four aspects of diversity that have influenced your personal identity. Religion, gender, social status, personality 1a.) Social Status: One observable characteristic is appearance. Growing up, my family was lower middle class in a predominantly upper class town. Although we were always clean, our clothes were often ill-fitting, or third generation hand me downs. This led to a lot of teasing and bullying as a child and into my teenage years. As an adult, I am very conscious of my appearance, and am still very sensitive to any ridicule about my appearance. I am also very meticulous in how my children are dressed and presented to society, in hopes of preventing them from the teasing I was put through as a child. Religion: One observable characteristic is beliefs. I grew up Catholic, it was very apparent to others what religion we were due to specific traditions of the Catholic religion, especially during Lent. In high school, I made the transition from pubic school, to a private Catholic school in our community, which made my religious beliefs even that much more apparent. 1b.) Social Status: One non-observable characteristic is assumptions. I think most people make assumptions about a person based on their appearance. These can range from thinking...
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...approaches to “education as the practice of freedom.” Her essays exposed the degree to which our traditional system of education reproduces and sustains structural inequalities. Equally important, these essays offered new ways of thinking about pedagogy, and new strategies for creating a liberatory classroom. The only major downfall I saw in this volume is that the essays often repeated themselves. hooks acknowledges as much in her introduction, saying that since she wrote each essay separately, a certain degree of overlap exists in the collection. I would perhaps recommend that readers space out the essays rather than attempting to digest them all at once; this will allow readers to digest her thoughts before moving on, and will help them avoid becoming frustrated by these overlaps. hooks states that she intends these essays to be “celebratory” (10), and indeed I found that the experience of reading them was often a joyful one. The degree to which she loves teaching and connects with her students is incredibly inspiring. Teaching to Transgress has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf; I anticipate that I will turn to it often as I begin to teach students and create my own pedagogical style. Intro: Teaching to Transgress bell hooks ushers the reader into her collection of essays with a description of the various pedagogies that informed her own education. First, she presents us with the exciting, enlivened learning environment which she experienced as a young...
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...some while being threatening and intimidating for others. Throughout my academic career, I have learned a great deal about writing. Starting from grade school all the way up until college, writing has been a fundamental part of my life. I have come to learn that from all my experiences and influences, I have been shaped into a descriptive writer. My strength in writing has always come from describing a situation in as much detail as I can. This shaping of mine has been characterized by certain events and certain people in my life, and it has helped give an identity of what type of writer I am and what type of student I am. In order to develop into an adequate writer with an identity for yourself, one must have been educated a certain way. For me, there was one person in particular that helped turn me into a comfortable descriptive writer. In my sophomore year of high school, my English 2 teachers’ name was Jeannette Maldonado. She, like many of her other peers, was a first year teacher, and I did not expect to get an adequate grasp of writing and literature because of her inexperience. However, Ms Maldonado turned out to be a major turning point in my writing life, as she would not only challenge her students on assignments, but would give constructive criticism and work with you to help develop your ideas. Up until that point, I had been just an average writer and really did not give much consent on improving my writing skills since the instructors that I had prior to her class...
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...Before I started my research in Code-Switching, I had very little knowledge of what code switching actually was. Through my research, I came to find that code means language; switching means alternating between. Right as I started my research, I started to notice that authors spell “code switching” in different ways. For example, they use it as two words, with a hyphen between them, or as one word. The different ways to spell code switching is a perfect example of the meaning of the word/s itself. Switching languages can mean a variety of things. As the articles I annotate below indicate, language switching can occur without notice, between dialects of a language, between different languages, and so on. Due to its broadness, it is important to focus on a topic of interest when researching code switching. I decided to focus on the advantages and benefits that Code Switching provides. The articles I reviewed give reasons why code switching happens, and some articles present many explanations. However, the main reasons as put forth by Arnfast and Jorgensen (2003), imitate the three main reasons that code switchers give for using their skill. These reasons are: to fill in linguistic gaps for words, acquisition or maintenance of social power, and social acceptance. After much research and by reading several studies of these approaches, I came to the conclusion that code switching is used rarely for one purpose. It is also doubtful that the users are completely aware of all the reasons...
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