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