E340 FA2019

Critical Conversations in the Classroom By: Abby Fogleman Involving children within the classroom can be a struggle. The teacher must take race, gender, class, and differences into consideration. There can be many ways to teach a certain topic in the classroom and every student will have a different way of learning. That’s why texts and text sets are so valuable. Students may not learn from just reading and listening, some need the bigger picture or actually see a visual of what is going on. That is when teachers must use other resources, such as picture books, poems, etc. Teacher’s role: Discussions within the classroom should progress as the year goes on. At first, it will have to be taught to the students so that they are aware of how conversations will go in the classroom but as time goes on they will begin facilitating conversations on topics on their own. Ways to get students involved… Partner work - students can share ideas more openly with each other without the intimidatio

Teacher “Rules”   Being uncomfortable about a topic is no longer an excuse to avoid talking about that topic, especially when it comes to race. We are the future of change, and we can’t create positive change if we avoid talking about crucial topics, such as race. Teachers, specifically white teachers, often try to avoid the race topic as they feel uncomfortable or uneducated. Watson states that, “ People of color have no choice but to think about and understand race on a daily basis. It’s really up to us as white people to educate ourselves to the same level.”   She’s right. Again, there is no excuse, it is time to educate ourselves so we can educate our students and become agents of change. To do this, we can use the guidelines that Watson provides…   What 10 things white teachers need to know when talking about race Racism is not just hating others or believing you are above others just because you are white There is no such thing as reverse racism There are differen

Curate the Curriculum  Are you a Curator?  How do we as teachers curate the curriculum? To curate means to care. We have all wanted someone to care for us in some type of way to make us feel accepted, wanted, or important. But as teachers, that is our main role, to care about our students wants and needs. To be a "Caring Curator", we need to discover what they care about and inform ourselves on the particular topic then share with others what we have learned. After gaining knowledge on a particular topic that brings interest to our students, we ask ourselves these set of questions that will allows us to reach a goal in the curriculum while hitting the standards. Out of all the texts we could teach, which texts are the best? What combination is most likely to inspire students into "coming out of their seats with excitement, recognition, and identification"? (Elliot Johnson, English Teacher) As teachers, we can incorporate their lives within the readings,

Hip-Hop Pedagogy vs. Average Curriculum in the English Classroom First of all, what is Hip-Hop Pedagogy? Hip-hop pedagogy incorporates hip-hop and rap into english classrooms. The purpose of this is to improve student empowerment, cultural responsiveness, and critical literacy skills. This causes much more engagement on the students' part because they are genuinely interested in the subject matter, specifically students in the minority. Not only do minority students benefit from this kind of learning, white students do as well. Without hip-hop being incorporated into classrooms, it deprives even the white students from learning about other cultures.  "We are asking a great deal from our students when we ask them to invest in material that does not reflect, respond to, or engage with their cultural identities," (Kelly). Average curriculum with average and out-dated texts does not do our students any favors. Incorporating hip-hop into mainstream schooling

Meeting students where they are, Culture and all   by Mark Sloan 1.         How can we as teachers step away from the more traditional and less effective tenets of teaching, learning and curriculum while respecting the methodology that has had great past success in Education? a.     An unfortunate truth in education as well as society as a whole, is that we do many things for no other reason than that it ’ s the way people have done things for as long as anyone can remember. One specific tenet that was talked about in the reading is the traditional banking model, academic systems like these are rooted in unreasonable and unrealistic expectations for students. Pose, Wobble, Flow ch.2 discusses the concept of ‘ Hacking ’ modern educational infrastructure, tweaking things like the educational banking system to maintain the expectations of retaining and regurgitating knowledge, but modifying lesson plans to accommodate a variety of learning styles. b.     One of ma