Prompt 7:
Overall, my VIPs experience has been an experience that I will reflect on for my entire teaching career as the starting point of a journey. This journey is not only a journey about teaching, but it is equally about learning. I will never stop learning about new information, improved teaching methods, learning about other cultures than my own, the list is endless. FNED and my experience in my VIPS classroom have taught me immense amounts of knowledge that I will undoubtedly utilize within my classroom when I am a teacher.
There were several technical techniques that I learned while spending time in my VIPS classroom that I will undoubtedly utilize when I have a classroom of my own. These skills include how to accommodate for students who are having trouble with a certain subject while not getting frustrated. Another skill was how to maintain your composure when a student loses his cool. I learned this skill when one of the third graders in the classroom suddenly got extremely with the teacher, yelled, threw things, and even flipped his desk. The teacher’s response surprised me at first as she calmly maintained her composure but quickly sent the particular student to the principal’s office. I am glad that I got to observe the response of my teacher to a problem that disrupted the classroom so that I am more prepared if my own classroom every has a similar issue.
One of the key elements of my experience that I am especially glad I encountered was the opportunity to teach a group of students very different from the classes where I had been educated. As I have said in previous blogs, I was raised in the rural town of Burrillville. With a student population that is over 95 percent white, Burrillville has never been known for its diversity. My father had been an Columbian-American immigrant himself, and when I was raised, although I did not get exposed to diversity in my classroom, outside of class I had been raised to be accepting of all races.
Despite my prior exposure to different races, I had never considered the advantages that I have had growing up. For years, African-Americans have been marginalized in our culture. In a writing by Allan Johnson titled, “Our House is on Fire,” Johnson addresses the face that there are no inherit problems with differences among people. The problem in society today is that sections of society are established to attribute certain advantages to these differences, and this has created an oppressive system of privilege. Johnson references how whites dominate political groups, statistically make more money and have a higher life expectancy. The statistic that I found to be most astounding was that one out of every eight African-American males is currently in prison, and an estimated 28% of African-American males will spend time behind bars. Another statistic was that although 85 percent of drug users are white, the majority of prisoners in jail for drug-related incidents are people of color.
With such astounding statistics, it is our social responsibility as people to rectify these issues. As educators, it is not only our responsibility, but it should be our primary initiative to generate a society who grows up to be aware of the issues of the past, but willing to accept all people for who they are, regardless of their differences.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Level 5: Parents and Pedagogs
Prompt 5:
As I continue on through my VIPS experience, I look at the students in the classroom and I consider their background. In the environment that I was raised in, I have little in common with the diverse bounty of students in the classroom. But with every student, there is some sort of parental involvement. In terms of parental situations, I started to consider issues that I would have.
The first problem was a reflection of statistics of the region of providence. According to a report published by Kids Count in April, 2009, Providence faces certain statistics that puts parents at a disadvantage when interacting with their student’s teachers. The first statistic that made me consider the situations of students was that 51% of children live in a single-parent family. If a parent has to single handedly raise a child, it can often be difficult to communicate with a teacher to monitor their child’s progression. Another statistic was that 40.5% of children live below the federal poverty threshold. With such a large percentage of students living in poverty, parents need to work harder to provide for their children, and due to this, are unable to spend as much time monitoring students progression. As a teacher, the solution that I saw for this problem was to go out of my way as a teacher to let each parent know how their student is doing. Whether it is leaving a message, sending home a letter, or making a phone call, it is critical for the parent to know and support how their child is doing, and if the situation at home makes this difficult, then it is essential to do all that you can to rectify this situation as best as possible.
Another problem that I would anticipate is the diverse cultures that parents would expect their students to learn about. It would be extremely important to promote the work of Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, among other groups. Even despite the young age of the students, parents appreciate observing the incorporation of their own culture into a curriculum. This reminded me of an article by Ira Shor, titled Empowering Education. It is within this article where Shor promotes education as a tool for social change, a place that students can be trained as critical thinkers, skilled workers and active citizens. One crucial element of education is to make sure that the material that you are teaching your students is relevant to them. One effective method of empowering education was the implementation of problem-posing, the utilization of applying classroom lessons to problems in their own lives. Culture relevance is also extremely essential to take into consideration. Parents in a classroom that primarily consists of minorities do not want their students taught by a curriculum that reinforces the dominant ideology. In his work, Ira Shor acknowledges that curriculum is one place where the dominant culture can be supported or challenged, depending on the way knowledge is presented. It is the responsibility of myself as a teacher to not only include the voices of marginalized groups, but to make them prominent for the students to see intertwined throughout the curriculum.
As I continue on through my VIPS experience, I look at the students in the classroom and I consider their background. In the environment that I was raised in, I have little in common with the diverse bounty of students in the classroom. But with every student, there is some sort of parental involvement. In terms of parental situations, I started to consider issues that I would have.
The first problem was a reflection of statistics of the region of providence. According to a report published by Kids Count in April, 2009, Providence faces certain statistics that puts parents at a disadvantage when interacting with their student’s teachers. The first statistic that made me consider the situations of students was that 51% of children live in a single-parent family. If a parent has to single handedly raise a child, it can often be difficult to communicate with a teacher to monitor their child’s progression. Another statistic was that 40.5% of children live below the federal poverty threshold. With such a large percentage of students living in poverty, parents need to work harder to provide for their children, and due to this, are unable to spend as much time monitoring students progression. As a teacher, the solution that I saw for this problem was to go out of my way as a teacher to let each parent know how their student is doing. Whether it is leaving a message, sending home a letter, or making a phone call, it is critical for the parent to know and support how their child is doing, and if the situation at home makes this difficult, then it is essential to do all that you can to rectify this situation as best as possible.
Another problem that I would anticipate is the diverse cultures that parents would expect their students to learn about. It would be extremely important to promote the work of Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, among other groups. Even despite the young age of the students, parents appreciate observing the incorporation of their own culture into a curriculum. This reminded me of an article by Ira Shor, titled Empowering Education. It is within this article where Shor promotes education as a tool for social change, a place that students can be trained as critical thinkers, skilled workers and active citizens. One crucial element of education is to make sure that the material that you are teaching your students is relevant to them. One effective method of empowering education was the implementation of problem-posing, the utilization of applying classroom lessons to problems in their own lives. Culture relevance is also extremely essential to take into consideration. Parents in a classroom that primarily consists of minorities do not want their students taught by a curriculum that reinforces the dominant ideology. In his work, Ira Shor acknowledges that curriculum is one place where the dominant culture can be supported or challenged, depending on the way knowledge is presented. It is the responsibility of myself as a teacher to not only include the voices of marginalized groups, but to make them prominent for the students to see intertwined throughout the curriculum.
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