Final Reflection

Final Reflection 

When coming into this course, I was very excited to have the discussions around these topics as they are so incredibly relevant to society and the students I teach. After reading the reading about culturally relevant teaching and the ways in which we can make education a more equitable experience for our students, I became motivated to think about ways I can change myself and how I could share that with other Providence teachers. With that, I decided that for my project I would like to develop a workshop for first year teachers to improve their interactions in the classroom by discussing how we can be more culturally relevant.

What does it mean to be a culturally proficient and equity-oriented educator? Well, in short, I believe it means to think about your students, their backgrounds, and see how society and they interact with one another. This requires analysis of the ways in which each student and educator has privilege or oppression and whether or not there is any intersectionality between any groupings. This includes thinking about students and whether or not they are privileged or oppressed by pressures from socioeconomics, racism, sexism, and other topics such as these. Throughout this course, I have made myself more aware of the ways in which my students could and are affects by societal factors and the ways in which they present themselves to them. For example, in Providence socioeconomics and race play a huge role in the lives of my students. They face poverty on extreme levels, to the point where I have about two to three students with homeless status in each of my classes. Being aware of these issues and my positionality within the classroom is essential in being a culturally proficient and equity-oriented educator.

My project is broken up into three days with each day focusing on a different component of culturally relevant teaching. In Deliptt’s article “the Silenced Dialogue”, she highlights the experience of a few students of color. One student says, “No, they listen, but they don’t hear – you know how your mama used to say you listen to the radio, but you hear your mother. Well they don’t hear me” (p.21). This comment right here shows how essential it is for students to feel as though they are being included in the curriculum and in their classrooms. This idea/concept directly influences how I set up the first day of the workshop. It is purely about learning about culturally relevant teaching and how it affects students. Without being explicitly told what it is or how to use it, many teachers may continue to be unaware. The second day was influenced by Delpitt and her discussion of power and privilege. She states, “To provide schooling for everyone’s children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it” (p 28). Power is such a huge component of inequality and a huge part of the racism that we see in our society today. I know our students see it but I often wonder why Providence never addressed power dynamics and the effect of power dynamics in the classroom. I received a lot of information and training on that through TFA but never through PPSD. In Day 2 of the workshop that I planned, the goal would be to reflect on one’s privilege and whether or not they have experienced culturally relevant teaching. The goal would also be for teachers to recognize their place in the classroom and how students perceive them. Lastly, the third day connects directly to Finn and his discussion in his article “Literacy with an Attitude” where he states, “First, there is empowering education, which leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority. Second, there is domesticating education, which leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable, but not troublesome” (p. ix-x) The goal of the 3^rd day of the workshop would be to ensure that the curriculum we are working on with students is culturally relevant and leads them to the empowering education that is more beneficial to them.

My final project was based on culturally relevant teaching and the ways in which there is a need for it in classrooms and why it is beneficial for students. I bring this up because I think that throughout this course, every piece of material has helped me develop myself in a way that is more culturally responsive. I plan on taking the material we discussed in class and implementing it in my daily life as an educator. By this I mean fully analyzing situations and interactions between my students and I and forcing myself to constantly reflect and look back on ways that my positionality may have an effect on a situation within the classroom or with a student specifically.

            However, being a culturally responsive teacher is definitely something I still need to work on. Being a first-year teacher, I think there are things that I am still trying to understand about teaching and also about the ways in which I appear to a student within the classroom. Sometimes I am not able to process things or respond in a way that is as culturally responsive as it should be. This is something I really want to work on because that is what my students need from me and with this line of work students always come first. I also think it makes me a more self-aware person in general, which is always necessary when living in a society that is as diverse as ours. When I was talking to my mentor the other day, I specifically stated “How could our school system have failed our students so badly? Literally every student in my class is below grade level on their reading and math NWEA scores. I feel like I’m helpless in helping my students expand their education”. Unfortunately, I feel as though many educators in my school and school district feel these same frustrations. This is something I want to work on as an educator, especially after reading the various articles for this class. Many of us fall into the trap of feeling helpless, but it is important to remember that there is a way for us to make change and be culturally proficient educators; we just have to remind ourselves of the cycle of liberation. As an educator, I want to work on this and also being more culturally responsive because I feel as though every educator can always expand and improve on that.

This term has been incredibly challenging, but it was not without any rewards. I look forward to continuing to push myself in learning as much as possible beyond this course. This course will serve as a solid foundation for the rest of my educational experience within this graduate program and throughout my future work in the educational field.

Link to final presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DiyXwwSDylL0stBlu9yHDpGxmXXpPM_kZsQshwNpi1A/edit?usp=sharing

Week 6 - Assignment B: "Teaching at the Intersections" - Bell (2016)

Week 6 - Assignment B: "Teaching at the Intersections" - Bell (2016)

I started off this week’s lesson by watching the YouTube video “5 Tips for Being An Ally” by chescaleigh first. This was not the first time I have seen this video, as I had watched it during a training for TFA, but it was definitely a nice refresher. Often times when doing work such as teaching or pretty much any job where you interact with others you forget about the ways in which your actions can positively affect others. My favorite thing she says is, “It’s not about your intent, it’s about your impact” – this in itself is SO powerful. Often times, we try to cover things up by saying “Oh, well I’m sure they didn’t mean that”. Well, guess what? It isn’t about intent, it’s about the ways in which we can make our society better. Anyways, this video connected very well to the article. Bell (2016) starts off by sharing a case study of a student named Nicole. Let’s just say this made me think about one student that is in my 5^th period class and everything Bell (2016) described made sense. First, it is important to bring out and highlight the definition of intersectionality, which Bell writes as, “Intersectionality refers to the social, economic and political ways in which identity-based systems of oppression and privilege connect, overlap and influence one another.” To understand what this article is even discussing, knowing this definition is essential. To further enhance my understanding of intersectionality, I did a little more research and came across this TED Talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw at TEDWomen 2016. Here is the link: https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare 

She begins the discussion with an exercise about awareness of African American violence and who is victimized by these issues in society. The point that she makes is that the names of the individuals who we as a society recognize and are aware of deaths caused by police violence through the names of male individuals but are often unaware of the female victims. Her discussion revolves around the fact that there are multiple levels of social injustices that overlap because of the concept of intersectionality. This idea connects directly back to what Bell (2016) discusses in her article. Bell (2016) states, “In Nicole’s case, the problems she faces aren’t just about her multiple identities, but stem from the multiplied oppressions that accompany her particular combination of identities: Her situation reflects the experiences of low-income people more than affluent people, girls more than boys and black students more than white students. “ There is no situation that is black or white and it is important to see the overlap between identities to better understand the ways in which society affects each role individually and then together. Another part of Bell’s (2016) article that I really liked was the discussion of intersectionality in the court system. Bell (2016) states, “Crenshaw argued that the court’s failure to see the ways in which sex and race compounded the injustice against the plaintiffs indicated a systemic failure—one that isn’t limited only to black women” which again further enhances the discussion we are already having. I still wonder where the direction of our courts is headed in today’s society. Are they changing with our current administration? Can they? Will they further neglect the idea of intersectionality? Ugh. Sorry, so many questions.

Week 5 – Assignment A – Collier, Rodriguez, and Teaching Bilinguals

Week 5 – Assignment A – Collier, Rodriguez, and Teaching Bilinguals

Talking points:

1 – (Collier) – “Being a bilingual teacher seems to multiply the complications of teaching” (p. 223). This quote is on the first page of the article and stood out to me as soon as I started reading. I felt as though it connects to the rest of the article because of the way Collier presents the information. She goes through and presents seven guidelines for teachers to develop and utilize better teaching techniques to suit a classroom full of ELL / bilingual students. Being a teacher of students who understand and speak multiple languages can be tough because of how important it is to include both cultures in the classroom. This goes back to the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy; the inclusion of activities that connect to the identities of students is essential.

2 – (Rodriguez) – This reading broke my heart, as I could not imagine what it would feel like to be stripped of your identity in your own home. Rodriguez states, “In an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and accentuated our family's closeness” (p.35). While his parents were doing it to help Rodriguez learn in the classroom, it took away from their identities inside their own home. However, despite that, Rodriguez makes a point to share, “So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality” (p. 39) which is also an important aspect of a bilingual education.

3 – (Teaching Bilinguals) – This video goes into the background of how ELL students were treated prior to the 1970’s in public school classrooms, specifically NY classrooms. After a movement to stop this treatment of students, it became recognized that it is important for teachers to leverage the language of students in the classroom. It helps them learn and further express their ideas and identities. Translanguaging pedagogy is something that is extremely important for students in our world where speaking and understanding more languages is more beneficial than it previously was.

Argument statement: (for all 3) – The authors make arguments that it is important to keep the culture, especially the language, or students alive in the classroom, even if the educator only speaks one language, to help with students and their retention of their identity.