TE 822: Concluding Post: Culture in Our Schools

In order to compare several different views of culture and schooling, I reflected on my own experiences with school as a student and as a teacher, the views of school portrayed in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, and Richard Rodriguez’s school experience in his 1982 biography Hunger of Memory. I connected with the film because of my inner-city teaching experience in Chicago Public Schools. With a range of culture and schooling both experienced and researched, I was able to think through what culture and schooling really mean to me.

The movie Stand and Deliver is based on the true story of Jaime Escalante, who teaches math to inner-city Mexican-American students at James A. Garfield High School in Los Angeles. Despite their rough home lives and attending an under-performing school, Mr. Escalante helped to transform the stereotype of where his students would end up. Each one of them gained college credits through his course in A.P. Calculus, something they would not have attempted if it weren’t for him coming to the school. The film shows really great aspects of real-life teaching, but also many aspects that I do not feel are typical of teachers and/or schools.

One of the most amazing parts of teaching is witnessing the growth in your students. Many people see this as only academic growth, but I love to see the growth behaviorally and socially, as well. Mr. Escalante gets to experience this joy as his students grow in nearly every way. Because of his ability to instill hard work and determination into his students, they learned a tremendous amount and were able to pass the A.P. test. This is the real meaning of teaching and the drive that keeps teachers coming back for more. It’s so great to see how much young children can learn despite challenges they face. I live for the “ah-ha” moments where a child learns something new. Since the movie only shows the success story, it’s necessary to also think about all of the other students at inner-city schools around the nation who don’t share the same success. Some schools don’t get to celebrate growth like Jaime did because of triumphant challenges that the students face at home.

A part of teaching that is accurate in the film and in real life is the rough home lives that students face. The rough home lives that the students had to deal with from caring for family members young and old all the way to gang-related activity are true to many inner-city students. These children often deal with abuse, neglect, relationship trouble, drugs, and a complete lack of consistency and still come to school wanting to learn. When I first encountered students who had such hardship in their lives, I was in shock. As a brand new teacher fresh out of college, I felt so prepared for my students. When I met them, I had no idea how difficult some of their lives at home really were. I grew up in a small town where I had miniscule worries compared to what my students faced. I feel entirely grateful for my upbringing, but at times find it hard to relate to my students because of my privileged life. Even the aspect of doing homework is so different. As a child, I completed my homework with few distractions. For the students in Stand and Deliver, homework is the least of their worries with raising younger siblings, working to provide for the family, and caring for ill family members. Jane Roland Martin mentioned in her book The Schoolhome that some teachers expressed that they didn’t sign up to “deal with kids like this”. These teachers are referring to children with difficult home lives. Children come to school with a wide variety of issues that teachers have to learn to sympathize with, as Mr. Escalante showed in the movie.

Another aspect of teaching that is accurately portrayed in the movie are the meaningful connections Mr. Escalante makes with his students. Although the movie makes it seem like the relationships built up very quickly, in real teaching it takes time to truly get to know your students and build relationships with them. You must connect with them personally and create a learning environment that is relatable to them. The students were rude and tested him at first. My students my first year did the same to me. I was told by another teacher at the school that they try to test every new teacher. One of his very challenging students walks out of the classroom and expresses a “don’t care” attitude early in the movie. Due to his growing relationship with Mr. Escalante, he eventually seeks help and wants to work hard. Jaime Escalante strives to make connections to his students, so he uses math scenarios that relate to their home lives to get them to learn math. In my years of teaching, I’ve witnessed firsthand that teaching involves respecting your students and building trust. Without this, you can’t build positive relationships. My first year teaching, I had a student who was very difficult to reach. It took a long time for him to respect me and want to learn from me. Once I figured out his interests, I was able to connect his learning to them so that he saw it was meaningful. What I have learned is that teacher and student relationships are not always naturally formed and a lot of work must be put into creating them.

The title Stand and Deliver bothers me a bit because it does not match my style of teaching. I am not the only one in my classroom who teaches. My students teach one another as they work together. Within education, there is a push for students to be communicating and learning from one another. The communication amongst children is invaluable because they can learn so much about the cultures, beliefs, and values that other children home. It’s amazing to listen to children speak their minds. I believe it’s best practice to promote student to student engagement because the teacher is not the only person in the room who holds valuable information to be learned. I am not the type of teacher who stands and delivers information to students.

The film depicts teaching as a solo profession where you work by yourself to educate students. Undeniably you are more than likely in a classroom by yourself all day with students, but there is so much teacher collaboration that goes on behind the scenes. I’ve experienced a great deal of collaboration with the teachers at my former school in Chicago Public Schools. We worked together in every aspect to make sure what we were teaching was best practice for our students. The culture of teaching is to help one another. If teachers don’t work together, then how can we expect our students to do the same? I believe that many first year teachers get burned out on teaching because they are doing too much of the work themselves. Teaching is a profession that can be so isolating, yet remarkably connected at the same time.

The movie does not show teachers who work together, rather one teacher who is the hero for his students. The rest of the faculty don’t seem invested in the education of the students, which I don’t find realistic. The other staff members don’t believe in the students and even the principal thinks they have no self-confidence. My own schooling helped form for me a picture of what an ideal school looks like. My elementary, middle, and high schools were all places where the school culture was overwhelmingly positive. Everyone seemed to work together and understood that the ultimate goal was learning. The environment was always calm and inviting. Some schools that I have been in lack the positivity of learning and lack the structure to ensure success. These are both aspects of culture in my opinion. If you want to create an environment where students learn, give them the tools and the school culture to do so.

Some families and cultures see education as a means to escape the life you’re in. They value education as the ticket out so you don’t end up on the streets. This mentality is conflicted by the families who don’t appear to value their child’s education. For me, going to college was desirable and expected. I always planned to go to college and there was never a question that I wouldn’t go. In Stand and Deliver, one mother of Mr. Escalante’s student said to her daughter, “boys don’t like it if you’re too smart.” This statement is a true thought process for some women. I think that’s why it was so hard for me to grasp during my first years of teaching when I encountered families that did not feel the same about education as my own parents did. Richard Rodriguez experienced this at home where his own family didn’t value education like he did. It put a strain on his relationship with his parents because they didn’t understand his view. He selected the culture that he wanted to be a part of and his family was torn apart because of Richard conforming to the American way.

In our growing population, a main concern for many families is the language barrier from school to home. I think people sometimes forget that your native language makes up part of your culture. Richard Rodriguez experienced this when he was forced to conform to the school culture and speak English. His teachers even told his parents that he should be speaking English at home rather than Spanish. Language is such a huge part of culture, that it shocked me that the teachers said no more Spanish at home. This makes me think about how we expect other cultures to assimilate to the American way of life. How can we dictate how a family is supposed to raise their child?

In a classroom of 20 to 30 students, you have 20 to 30 cultures represented. This is why there can’t possibly be assimilation to one culture. Although students may look the same racially, they do not necessarily share the same beliefs and values. I think too many people in our society forget this as we sometimes assume that if you look a certain way then you probably act a certain way, as well. Children in our classrooms belong to many groups that all have different cultural experiences, such as families, religious organizations, clubs, neighborhoods, etc. It’s inaccurate to assume that all of our students share the same culture. Teaching is such a difficult profession because while you’re trying to create a classroom culture each year, you’re also embracing the home cultures of so many students.

Throughout my reflection, I have thought a lot about stereotyping of cultures in relation to their academic abilities at school. All cultures experience prejudice in some ways. I’m wondering if we have more judgment here in the United States compared to other countries and if this is because we have so many different cultures living in the same places. The students at Garfield High School in Los Angeles in Stand and Deliver faced extreme stereotyping. They were told by members of the Educational Testing Service that they cheated on their A.P. Calculus exam because they all passed the tests, which was unheard of at their traditionally low-performing school. Because of the students’ race and socio-economic status, it was assumed that they shouldn’t have all passed the exam. These students nearly had the hope of going to college taken from them because of racial biases. Luckily the students had their teacher to stand up for them in a desperate time of change. Richard Rodriguez faced stereotypes as a young child entering school speaking Spanish, where at first they thought he wasn’t capable because of his language barrier and eventually he broke the stereotype by becoming highly educated. Where I taught in Chicago, the thought was that if school didn’t change them, they had no hope of gaining a better life and at the very least weren’t going to go to college. Most people that weren’t from the area assumed that they were very low-performing students academically. Stereotyping is inevitable, but what concerns me most is that it’s a natural way of thinking until the stereotype is broken. To me, it reminds me of our United States judicial system where one is innocent until proven guilty. Many people have biases toward other cultures until proven wrong. I think that we are all predetermined to think in certain ways because of how we grew up in our culture, but those views can change drastically when we are educated about others. Mary Dilg (2004) describes the cultural pulls of students in a very diverse school in Chicago. The students are conflicted based on the racist comments that they hear at home and the cultural acceptance they see at school. It’s a fine line that teachers walk to not overstep what a parent believes for their child, but to at the same time teach them other ways of approaching people who are different. As a teacher, I want what’s best for my students just like their parents do, but sometimes these viewpoints are not the same. I’ve learned that each family is different and requires a different relationship. My beliefs may conflict with a family’s beliefs and at the end of the day it is their child, so I must approach cautiously on difficult topics.

I believe that us teachers are doing our students a disservice if we aren’t embracing their cultures and constantly teaching them about other cultures. I truly believe that culture is reflected in everything we do. The reason we act a certain way or think a certain way is because of our cultural beliefs. In our ever-changing United States population that is becoming more and more diverse, we must talk about the topics of culture, race, and identity with our students starting at a very young age. Young children are so quick to notice and point out differences in people, that it is our job as educators to help them see the similarities within the human race. I firmly believe that the family is the first educator for a young child. What a child learns at home in the first years of life impacts their views on culture. As a kindergarten teacher, I feel that I am often times the first school experience that a child has, so I can help form their view on school and how culture plays a role in school. This may be the first time that a child has been a part of a culture outside their own family culture. School has its’ own culture and it’s up to the teachers, students, and staff to make it a positive one to be a part of. From my experience, “culture” is usually touched on in school and students will read books about many cultures, but they don’t truly experience it. In Chicago, the school was made up of 99% African American students. At my school, it seemed that we only “celebrated” the culture during Black History Month each year. I’m not saying that we need more celebrations in schools, just that there should be more opportunity for students to learn about themselves and others. All in all, we need a better connection between our school lives and home lives.

After thinking about culture and how it ties in with school, I’ve thought about how prejudices play a role in student’s experiences at school. I’ve thought of some ways that I can be more proactive about the culture of my students and attempt to change stereotypical views. One of the easiest ways that I can incorporate culture in the classroom is through inviting families into the room. This will be a way for all students to learn about one another and their families. My hope is that it will break some of the stereotypes that children and parents may have about other cultures and help create an overall positive environment. Rather than only mentioning history or culture on various holidays, I will strive to build a solid foundation of what culture really is for my kindergarten students. I will help them to bring their home culture into school and take their school culture home.

A personal goal for myself is to learn more about others. Currently, I have just moved to a new city, have a new job, and am learning a new way of life. I have the perfect opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and get to know others who are similar in ways and dissimilar in others to myself. I’m truly excited to learn about the school culture and the culture of the staff members. I have a new outlook where I want to get to know so many others at school. Starting fresh, I have a chance to be open-minded to all ideas, beliefs, and values that others share. At my former school, I had a routine of working with the same teachers who I had a lot in common with. This was a blessing and a curse because I got to know those teachers really well, but there are other teachers who I did not learn much about. I believe that I worked so closely with those teachers because I was used to being around others like me. I grew up in a neighborhood and attended school where nearly 100% of the students looked and sounded like I did. I want my own children someday to experience varying cultural views, opposite of my upbringing. The reason I want this for them is so they can learn to appreciate others for who they really are and learn to work with others who may have different ways of thinking. In our culturally-expanding country, it’s important that children learn at a young age to collaborate with a wide range of people. Reflecting on my own experiences and setting new goals for myself will only help me to be a better educator for my young students, a better parent for my future children, and a better person as I continuously grow.

 

References

Dilg, M. (2004). From home to school to home again. Schools: Studies in education. 1(1). 140-164. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/589200

Martin, J. R. (1992). The schoolhome: Rethinking schools for changing families . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Menéndez, R. (Director). (1988). Stand and deliver [Film]. USA: American Playhouse.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston: Bantam Books.

TE 822 Cycle Three: The Relationship Between Schools and Homes

Whose job is it to raise our children to be educated members of society? Is it the job of the school or the home? Some teachers feel that it’s the parent’s job and some parents feel that it’s the teacher’s job.

Jane Roland Martin mentioned in her book The Schoolhome that some teachers expressed that they didn’t sign up to “deal with kids like this”. These teachers are referring to children with difficult home lives.

Many years ago American schools adopted an unwritten policy that students should leave their worries at home. Nowadays, this separation of school and home is nearly impossible. Many students today can hardly focus on their school work because of the complex issues that burden their home lives such as violence, abuse, homelessness, hunger, sleep deprivation, etc. Teachers have to “deal with kids like this” by being aware and being receptive of what’s going on at their students’ homes. You can’t separate school and home, no matter how hard you try. We have so much need for social-emotional education for our students to help them learn how to appropriately deal with issues both at school and at home.

I believe that we must bridge the gap between school and home like Jane Roland Martin describes in her book. Although her portrayal of the Schoolhome can seem utopian, there are several core values that I agree with. Martin discussed several times the importance of the 3 C’s: care, concern, and connection. These are values that I feel are important to teach our children, but are also especially important for us adults to live by. The best way to connect school and home is through relationships. We must genuinely care about, show concern for, and connect with the families of our students and expect the same in return.

“Home is the hidden partner in the education of our young,” says Jane Roland Martin. I couldn’t agree more about the value of home in a child’s education. In our society today and years ago when Schoolhome was written, we don’t see a housewife’s labor as real work. Home’s contributions to a child’s development are not called “education” even though it is. We often underestimate how much (or how little) parents do to teach their child from birth about the world at home. As a society, we have to start valuing what parents do at home to prepare their children for the world and we also have to educate parents on how important their job of educating really is in the first few years of a child’s life. There are significant gaps in achievement between social  classes, which I believe is partially due to lack of education from birth. There is so much violence now that home life is not ideal and kids aren’t getting the home education that they need. Research has been done to show that some children hear 30 million more words than other children by the time they enter kindergarten! Dr. Dana Suskind explains the research in her book Thirty Million Words. Parents must know the value of talking to their young children for their future development.

If children don’t learn words, skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values at home in their first years, then teachers must make up for the lost time. In my former Chicago elementary school, I saw so much of this in the differences of kindergarten students entering school with such a wide range of abilities.

Educating our children starts with our conversations with them. Parents must constantly talk with their children about their learning in school. Teachers must constantly talk with their students about their lives at home. Openly conversing helps children feel a connectedness between school and home. It’s all about relationships! Student to teacher, teacher to parent, parent to student.

“It is a fact too seldom remembered that school and home are partners in the education of a nation’s young children,” stated Jane Roland Martin. She expressed the need to make school more like home, but I think integrating the two is the best method.  The core instruction of the Schoolhome was not on specific knowledge students must know, rather attitudes, skills, and values. Our American students need to learn more social-emotional skills and values during their time in school.

We have to stop blaming each other for children’s failure. Administrators blame teachers for not doing enough in the classroom to educate our youth. Teachers blame parents for not doing enough for their children at home. Parents blame teachers for not doing enough for their child at school. School and home should not be separate entities working against one another. They should form a partnership like the one suggested in Partners in Education, which is an educational article that discusses the importance of the family-school partnership and provides recommendations for achieving that. When will we realize that it is the job of the school and the home to raise and educate our children?

Resources

Jane Roland Martin (1992). The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

TE 822 Cycle Two: Schooling, Cultural Assimilation, and Social Mobility

 

Culture depends on one’s perception at any given moment. Views change as people learn more and more about others who are similar and different from their own self. Insight changes as people become more educated, whether for the worse or better. Culture intertwines with education, public society, and social class. Richard Rodriguez shows us this in his book Hunger of Memory.

“It is education that has altered my life; Carried me far,” mentioned Richard. I couldn’t agree more that education plays a huge role in our society in terms of opportunity. For me, education was always a way of life. I have always loved going to school. It never crossed my mind not to go to college or even not to get my Master’s degree. My community valued education and saw the opportunity that comes from being educated. Rodriguez, on the other hand, described his education as separating him from his family. At times he looked down on them for not speaking fluent English and essentially not being as educated as he was. Richard had his own achievement gap with his family as he grew more and more educated. He almost couldn’t relate to them because of what education had done. I had an opposite experience where education (and sports) were a dominating focus of my family that brought us closer together.

As Richard began speaking English, he felt Americanized. Isn’t it so interesting that language can make you feel part of a culture? People constantly create stereotypes and judgments of others based on the language they speak. Sadly we are often all about perception and first impressions, so many judge simply on looks and language. I believe that culture involves physical ‘code-switching’. I know that this is a term for alternating between languages, but I think of it as knowing when and where to do certain things and knowing what is appropriate to do or say in some places that is not in others. I think that learning to nearly switch between cultures at different times and places is what helps assimilate one to the American culture.

In Should Immigration Require Assimilation? a woman describes that “to become a citizen, she had to be able to speak, read, write, and understand basic English.” Requiring an immigrant to speak English in order to become a citizen seems opposite of our diverse ‘melting pot’. Forcing immigrants to adopt the English language can take away from their own culture, as it did for Rodriguez and his family. The Downside of Diversity is an article in which James Q. Wilson and Robert D. Putnam express opposing views about diversity. Wilson notes that it’s almost impossible to forge social cohesion among diverse groups, while Putnam thinks that diversity can help create community. In our diverse American society, we try to force social cohesion on immigrants to adopt our cultural, political, linguistic, and social ways of living.

J. Weston Phippen in How One Law Banning Ethnic Studies Led to Its Rise discussed the ban of a Mexican American studies course in Arizona in 2010, which has since spread like crazy to high schools nationwide. To residents of Arizona, the ban opened their eyes to the discrimination that was occurring and how important it was to embrace history and culture. Republican legislators designed the bill to ban Mexican American studies that attracted Latinos, but left the studies of Asian, Black, and Indian courses. As I was reading, I was appalled that in the 21st century, in a world of pro-education, some education was being banned. How could we take away the right in America to learn about your own culture when our country represents people from every part of the world? Is this the American goal to assimilate others to “our” culture? Putnam says it best when he states, “at the end we shall see that the challenge is best met not by making ‘them’ like ‘us’, but rather by creating a new, more capacious sense of ‘we’.”

Bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of individuality by becoming assimilated into public society. Rodriguez felt loss at home with the separation of his family, but gains in confidence in public. It created a family vs. society battle that played a great role in his childhood. Everyone experiences the family vs. society battle as they grow up and learn new things in the public that are different from what their family values. For many kids, it’s when they go to school. Richard’s teachers praised him beyond belief for his constant reading, while his mother always wondered what he saw in his books. Since his teachers valued reading, he received praise for doing the activity, while at the same time felt separation from his mother’s reaction to his reading. Maybe this is why it can be so hard for parents and teachers to work together because they value different things? The text made a statement that many working-class children are barely changed by the classroom and the ones that are impacted greatly by education are the exceptions like Richard. Are the parents at my CPS school the ones who were barely changed by education? Do some of them not see the value in education because it didn’t change them in the way that it did others? Once again, it’s the cultural perception that makes these parents feel opposite about schooling than I do.

In his Book Review of Brown Like Us, Russell Contreras mentions that Richard Rodriguez is often all over the map. I thought this to be very telling because he writes about race, society, and culture which are all ever-changing topics. Culture depends on so many factors including race, social class, and education. It looks so different from city to city and even within cities. Overall, our American culture can be so different and constantly changing so it seems difficult to force it upon newcomers to our country when we demonstrate such altering viewpoints ourselves.

Resources:

Richard Rodriguez. (1982). Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston: Bantam Books.

TE 822 Cycle One: The Culture of Childhood

What is culture? And how does it differ from country to country in terms of early childhood education?

I explored both of these questions as I read and thought about my own childhood.

I grew up swimming in my pond, playing in the mud, and riding four-wheelers. My favorite childhood memories are playing outside with my friends and cousins. My best memories don’t involve toys, rather the outdoors. I liked playing pretend and making up stories. My older brother and I often built forts in our woods with blankets and scrap pieces of wood that my dad didn’t need. We used hammers and tools, just like the kids in The Overprotected Kid. My parents weren’t nervous when we played outside because they knew we always stayed on our five acres of property. Compared to some of my friends growing up, I had a lot more freedom than others to be creative in my play.

I want my students and my own future children to actually play outside wholeheartedly and use their imagination. Too many times in my years of babysitting and teaching, I’ve heard kids who say “I don’t know what to play” or they ask me “What should I play?”. The new culture of American parenting relies on parents to schedule everything for their children and practically think for them. Of course, not all American parents are Helicopter Parents, but many parents today fall into the trap of scheduling “playdates” and planning what their children should play. “Playdates” were unheard of back in the day and kids still found a way to play together. Parents are practically making themselves miserable by constantly feeling the need to entertain their kids. Parents are getting so much pressure from other parents that “good parenting” is now seen as supervising children during play. What happened to simply letting the kids go play?

As I was reading Bringing Up Bébé, it solidified my idea that some parents are competing and working against one another. In the article, the author describes how American parents are tense, while French parents appear more relaxed. Both cultures of parents are very involved in the well-being of their children, but French parents do so in a calm and caring manner. Every parent wants their child to be the best, but rather than working as a community to raise their children, Americans are pressuring one another. As a result, children are feeling the pressures of our American culture. For some reason, parents are under the impression that each and every choice they make could damage their kids. Our culture is in a state of fear that they might make mistakes with raising their children, but what we’re really doing is raising kids that are afraid to take any independent risks.

According to Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and the United States, culture is thought of as something being passed on from one generation to the next. The Chinese culture of preschool education is slowly changing from a teacher-directed environment to a more child-centered approach. Formerly, Chinese teachers had a very strict and scheduled classroom where students followed the lead of the teacher at all times. Now, preschool students have more and more free time to play and explore. In contrast, parents are pushing more academics and blaming teachers for the failures of their children. My teaching reflects a child-centered approach similar to what China is reforming to. In Japan, many preschool students experience a great deal of free play and almost appears that there is no clear plan for the day. Teachers rarely intervene in conflict because their goal of preschool is socialization. Education reforms are pushing toward creating more of a curriculum. In the United States, children have free choice time, but are also given direct instruction for mostly reading. Early childhood educators in the U.S. are caught between the push for more academics for our youngest students, and the urge for a play-based curriculum.

As I was thinking through the culture of children in my own classroom, I constantly went back to the thought about the lack of play in kindergarten classes nowadays. The past two years of teaching kindergarten, I made it a goal of mine to incorporate more free play time into each day. Schools in the United States are taking away independent play in kindergarten because there’s so much academic knowledge that must be taught according to Common Core State Standards. Crisis in the Kindergarten and The Common Core’s First Casualty both argue for more play amidst the increasing demand of academic instruction. I completely disagree with taking play out of the day and even did a study on the positive impact of free play in the classroom. I needed a rationale for why my students were playing, so I studied what children were learning in math as a direct result of free play and found that children were expanding on what I had taught them and even teaching themselves new math concepts.

The culture of childhood is directly related to how parents raise their children. It is also impacted by schools and the changing economy. Schools have the pressure to change with the times to produce 21st century learners, but also strive to keep continuity in having children learn the traditional culture of the country. Culture is ever-changing for kids, parents, and educators in our global economy. Overall, culture is dependent on so many factors that it looks different from family to family, school to school, and nation to nation.

References

Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, & Mayumi Karasawa. (2009). Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and the United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Introductory Post – TE 822

Hello everyone! My name is Katelyn McCormick. I am in the MATC program and plan to graduate in December. I have been teaching for three years in Chicago Public Schools. I taught my first year in 2nd grade and then two years in kindergarten. I absolutely love teaching kindergarten! I am currently searching for a new teaching position near Ormond Beach, Florida because my fiancé and I will be moving there in two weeks!

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with friends and family. I grew up in Michigan and went to MSU for my undergrad before moving to Chicago for four years. I love running, riding my bike, and doing just about anything outdoors. I’m so excited to move close to the ocean, so I can sit and read on the beach and go swimming.

Honestly, I haven’t had time to watch too much TV lately. I used to watch Friday Night Lights and would like to re-watch some of the seasons. I like the show Friday Night Lights because it portrays a school that acts as a community. The characters are involved in sports, academics, and the school as a whole. As a teacher, I place a high value on everyone from students to families to staff being involved in the school community to make it a positive place to learn. The staff at the school act as mentors to the students to help them through their lives outside of school. I believe all teachers should take personal interest in their students’ lives at home. At my school in Chicago, many students had very difficult home environments that impacted their learning at school. Each morning, students had time to share about what was going on in their lives. This sharing time helped me learn so much about my students and helped me invest in their personal lives. I hope to do the same at my new school in Florida.

I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you in TE 822 this summer!

Passion & Curiosity

This week in CEP 812, I read an interesting New York Times article about Passion Quotient (P.Q.) and Curiosity Quotient (C.Q.) by Thomas L. Friedman. The article described how humans are hyper-connected digitally due to fast-paced technological advances and how we can adapt to this ever-changing world. Friedman suggests that in order for humans to be marketable in their careers, we must “develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it” (Friedman, 2013). I agree with Friedman because humans can easily be replaced by technology that is cheaper, faster, and more accurate than the human counterpart. “Everyone who wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value better than the new alternatives” (Friedman, 2013). Humans need to have skill sets that make them appeal to employers versus technology. The way in which we can do this is to incorporate human passion and curiosity as we are learning and expanding our minds. “The skill required for every decent job is rising as is the necessity of lifelong learning” (Friedman, 2013). I agree with Friedman because I believe that lifelong education can empower a person to triumph in our digital world.

As an educator of young children, I instill passion and curiosity to my students in a variety of ways. My goal is to give my students the knowledge and skills necessary so that they can become lifelong learners. The following infographic shows how I demonstrate passion and curiosity in my own lifelong learning, as well as, instilling that same passion and curiosity in my students. Since we are in a digital world, I use technologies to approach passion and curiosity. I know that technology alone will not teach my students, so I integrate Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) daily to create the best possible learning environment for my students (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). My students and I are, and will continue to be, passionate and curious about learning.

Resources:

Friedman, T. (2013, January 29). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as much as I.Q. [Article]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70. Retrieved August 10, 2015 from http://www.citejournal.org/articles/v9i1general1.pdf

Wicked Problem: Competition from New Models of Learning

The 21st century has brought about great change in the education world. With that change comes truly wicked problems for educators and policy holders. Throughout the duration of my CEP 812 course, I’ve been studying, researching, and critically thinking about the problem of “Competition from New Models of Learning”. Public schools have competition from other types of schools, including charter and online schools when it comes to technology and more personalized learning for students. My Think Tank and I explored several solutions and agreed upon the Blended Learning Model as the best fit solution. Blended Learning is a combination of face-to-face classroom learning and online learning, where students gain knowledge through digital platforms and their teacher. The Blended Learning Model allows students to have more personalized learning opportunities. If public schools incorporate Blended Learning, they are able to compete with the technological and personalized advances of charter and online schools.

Here you can view an infographic that I created to demonstrate my understanding of the wicked problem.

Below, you can read the white paper that was created with my Think Tank with ideas for a possible solution.

Infodiet Revision

James Paul Gee talks about affinity spaces, which are often online communities where people can “contribute in many different ways, with different people for different reasons” (2013, pg. 174). This week, I thought about the affinity spaces that I use, reflected on the limitations with my infodiet, and was challenged to find new sources of information that had different viewpoints than I believe.

When looking for new ideas about education, I often go to the same sources. I use Google to search for education in the news and often see current events in Chicago Public Schools. I enjoy reading about CPS issues because it’s relatable to me and I like to keep up with current education in my district. I also use Pinterest and Etsy that show great ideas and link me to teacher’s personal blogs with resources for teaching. The affinity spaces that I’m using inform my thinking about topics that I’m already familiar with and/or am already using in my teaching.

To be honest, my affinity spaces are very limited. I usually search for concepts that I already know something about. I don’t go out of my way to read articles that I don’t agree with. I thought that I was very open-minded, but I’m realizing that in terms of the Internet and affinity spaces, I’m actually close-minded. Google is contributing to the limitations that I have because I’m only shown information that I prefer. It’s now a goal of mine, as a professional educator, to expand the affinity spaces that I use to view a wide range of ideas and perspectives.

Eli Pariser discussed “filter bubbles” and their impact on the information we see online in his TED talk (2011). He explained how popular websites like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are filtering the information and news we see to make it personalized to our interests. These websites are sorting based on what you click, so that you see information that you agree with. As I was searching for sources that were outside of my typical affinity space, I noticed how Pariser’s ideas were spot on. It was difficult to find sources that I didn’t agree with. Eventually, I found websites that challenged my thinking about standardized testing, Internet in the classroom, and the Common Core State Standards.

As a public educator, I feel strongly there is too much standardized testing being forced into schools. At my school, students in grades K-8 are required to take the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) standardized test from Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) for reading and math (http://www.nwea.org). This test is a computer-based test that assesses students’ knowledge in reading and math. I feel strongly that the test does not accurately demonstrate what my kindergarten students know. Some of this is due to lack of computer experience so students simply click any answer, but some of this is due to the design of the test. In order to expand my infodiet and to learn more about this test that I disagree with, I started to follow @NWEA on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/NWEA). I have found some success stories from other schools, as well as some information about the test from the link to the NWEA blog. The NWEA blog has some posts that I do not agree with in terms of the importance of testing, but I find the reading interesting.

When reading The Most Powerful Tool in the Classroom, I noted that Loyola said teachers used to be the most powerful tool, but now the Internet is (2014). I feel that teachers are being undervalued because the Internet is taking over our expertise. I do feel that teachers must learn to utilize technology in effective ways in order to keep up with changes, but I don’t think the Internet is the most powerful tool. This article made me want to read more controversial articles from the Huffington Post Education website, therefore I started to follow @HuffPostEdu on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/HuffPostEdu). Since reading that first article, I have come across several others that have varying views from my own (video games in the classroom!), as well as some that have similar views. @HuffPostEdu is constantly tweeting links to educational topics that I will continue to read.

Going into my third year teaching,  I have always taught using the Common Core State Standards. Although I may be partial to the CCSS because I haven’t used other standards in the past, I believe they are a good set of goals/expectations for students to achieve. I like how they are standards and not a strict curriculum that tells me how I have to teach. As I was expanding my affinity spaces, I came across @stop_commoncore (http://www.twitter.com/stop_commoncore) which is an anti-common core feed. I researched many of the links and found myself shaking my head in disagreement at some of the videos and articles. Many of the sources claimed that the CCSS are forcing teachers to teach in a ‘one-size fits all’ fashion. I didn’t agree with this before, and still don’t after reading the sources. I was intrigued to continue researching because of how little I agreed.

This activity allowed me to search for sources that I don’t typically read. Although it was challenging to find sources that were not in my typical realm of interest, I enjoyed searching. I will continue to look for sources that open my eyes to opposing views.

Sources:

Gee, J. P. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Loyola, S. W. (2014, October 20) The most powerful tool in the classroom. Huffington Post Education. Retrieved August 3, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-wike-loyola/the-most-powerful-tool-in_b_6012136.html

Pariser, E. (2011, March). Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles” Retrieved August 3, 2015, from http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles#t-372143

Technology Integration Survey

Last week in CEP 812, I created a survey about technology integration in the classroom for the professional learning network at my school. I sent the survey to classroom teachers, specials teachers, and teacher assistants at my school. I chose not to send the survey to administrators or employees that are not in the classroom because I was focused on technology integration inside the classroom.

My primary focus of the survey was to determine how my colleagues are currently using technology, how my colleagues would like to change or improve their technology integration practices, and what type of technology-focused professional development my colleagues would find most useful. I also designed the survey as a tool for helping me solve the wicked problem of Competition from New Models of Learning. This wicked problem is a problem for public education competing with new types of schools, including charter and online schools, that often utilize more technology and digital learning for students. I’m attempting to solve this problem with a group of peers in CEP 812 by examining how public education can keep up with new trends in technological learning.

If you would like to read my analysis of the survey data, click here.

The following survey was sent to my community of practice:

Response to Gee

This week in CEP 812, I was required to read a portion of James Paul Gee’s book The Anti-Education Era to learn about “why people are stupid”. I read the text to think about the question: What limitations prevent us from solving big, complex problems smartly? Gee discusses many limitations in his book for why humans do not solve problems in the smartest way. One limitation that I focused on for my essay was how humans do not store knowledge in their brains that is not applicable to their life right now or in the very near future. In my essay, I reflected on an issue in my kindergarten teaching and how it aligned with Gee’s idea that we learn and do things that are useful to us right now. You can read my essay here.