Cycle Three Post

Jane Addams- Applicable Education

            Social acceptance and application of education in the social world is an interesting concept.  So often the social aspect of school is overlooked or forgotten by people outside of the educational field and sometimes even for people inside the field.  School is such an important step in the lives of all people because it requires interaction whether passive or active with others and it applies to life outside the classroom.  No one likes to waste their time so to have a social interaction while in school, we want to be able to use it and apply it outside of school.  We need a sense of purpose for our education and typically it is a collective purpose with peers and classmates.  I had a class two years ago that drove me up the wall because they could not understand one another nor did they want to take the time to learn how to interact so I took time during the day to provide team building activities.  Within the first two weeks of taking 10 minutes daily to do social activities, my students started interact with each other during class and our discussion became deeper and more extended.  The class started to feel more comfortable together and so they could deepen their education and I started to notice them talking at recess about what happened during class or asking each other for help.  They applied their social “training” into their educational life and their everyday life.

Montessori- Exploratory Education for Personalized Natural Education

            Natural development is such a difficult idea to institute into the classroom because of teacher’s feeling that they need to control their classroom to maintain a positive, safe environment and learning community.  I have always felt that students should be able to practice their social skills and learn to resolve their own problems without much interference from me.  If I have to constantly be the referee students will never learn how to talk to one another but if I teach them processes to solve possible issues that could come up in the future, then they have a base for learning social cues and resolutions.  I teach 6^th grade and the amount of social interaction is astounding which gives a lot of opportunity for students to practice good habits.  I like to model good behavior socially and academically for my students and I like to have my students understand when I think an action is good or bad but I do not believe in a whole lot of extrinsic rewards or punishments.  I know my students and my students understand my emotions because I explain them to my students so they can begin to understand acceptable responses to actions.  By no means am I always correct but I try to show my students that it is okay to feel the spectrum of emotions but how frequent and intense those emotions are in response to others needs to be reflected and analyzed for appropriateness. 

            Exploratory Education is always a wonderful concept but not an easy plan to implement. I would love for my students to discover their potential and their natural abilities and how they can be developed but I have a lack of experience planning for this kind of curriculum.  Just like with free play/ adventure playgrounds with detached equipment and lack of adult supervision as well as the Japanese preschool model, we need to trust our students to explore and improve themselves through experience.  Teachers should help guide but not direct with absolute control.  The mind needs to flex and expand and it can only be done with a teacher allowing opportunity and room for exploration.

Culture and Curriculum- Reflection for Expansion Education

            School is like “a surrogate home” in the sense that a community is built among a group of students that are different, diverse and varied.  They become their own learning coalition and bring different perspectives, background and lessons along with them to advance the curriculum they are learning.  The curriculum students learn should be a reflection of the culture of not only the class but of the country and an introduction to other societies around the world.  School is a chance to explore culture in a safe zone (hopefully) where multiple voices can be heard and considered while absorbing different ideas and synthesizing it into a student’s own experiences in personal life.  Culture and Curriculum are like the chicken and the egg concept for education.  Which do you consider first?  In my opinion, they reflect one another but it is up to the teacher and the school to make sure they are syncing the two large subjects into one cohesive unit. 

            When I taught in Utah many of my students had similar demographic stats sheets and they all held their lack of travel as a common theme.  I felt, as a person who grew up in a very ethnically and religiously diverse area, that it was my job to introduce my students to different cultures, ways of thinking and new types of approaching people from other areas.  I taught Ancient Civilizations and linked it into modern globalization and societal factors and the students loved the discussions we held.  Very often we would have a very tangent filled tap root with many side discussions about culture and how it related to my students, me and to others they knew.  I loved working to help link culture into my curriculum but it made me think about how important it is for teachers to feel the same importance for sharing culture in a safe space to discuss and dissect how students felt and understood other cultures and people.

Cycle Two-Hunger For Memory

         Richard Rodriquez gives a very honest portrayal of himself that almost seems to border on pessimistic.  His critique of his private versus his public identity and persona made me think about how teachers and students act and perceive themselves in school and outside of school.  This week I began applying for new jobs in Wisconsin since I am moving there (as of next week I will no longer be a South Dakota resident) and one of the school districts I was applying to required that I take a survey.  This survey took about 40 minutes and asked me three sets of questions, one of which was a preference section that gave me a scenario and I had to pick my most likely response from a set of multiple choice prompts.  One of the common questions was how much to share with students about your own (teacher's) life, emotions and private persona.  I did not have a lot of time to respond to each prompt (50 seconds per) but it really made me think afterward considering they asked me that same questions a handful of times in different ways.  I like to think that I share my emotions with my class because a personal emotions can affect a group and I want students to understand my happiness, frustration, anxiety with how it relates to school but I do not think a teacher should "unload" their emotional baggage on students.  That is inappropriate and unprofessional.  But as I was relating my thoughts back to Rodriquez and how important his teachers were to his academic development, I wondered if maybe I am just someone who is too personal. 

       It is crucial for teachers to set boundaries and make it clear that they are not students’ friends but rather a trusted adult that can and should be available to talk.  I like to get to know my students because when I understand my students and they begin to find a comfort with me we can learn a lot more easily because we have built a trusted relationship.  Richard talks about how he looked up to his teachers/ nuns at his catholic school because he saw what he wanted to be, but yet he did not know them.  So I wonder, how personal does a teacher-class relationship need to be?  And how would you respond to sharing your private life in your public life at school?

            At the same time I was annoyed and frustrated with myself for not realizing how much English as a Second Language students give up and sacrifice to become “educated” in our assimilating school system.  Language is a main component to a student’s family cultural and private development and it seemed like Rodriquez immediately lost his identity with his family and culture when he entered school and had to learn English like his teachers.  I grew up in a very diverse town with many races, religions, economic status and so forth, but I realize that is not the norm for many people.  Culture has never been a boundary to me, but rather interesting parts to the people I met and became friends, peers and classmates with.  I was blind to a lot of the cultural changes that some of my fellow students had to face because I did not have to deal with them.  Rodriguez’s book was very captivating and thought-provoking and I hope to read more books like his that open my eyes to more parts of teaching and people that I had not considered. 

           I’m curious because I have not had that much experience with ESL students, how much of what we teach is assimilating and detrimental to students acceptance in both private and public spheres and how much is just teaching them a new language so they can open up either spheres?  How much are we asking students to sacrifice in our ESL programs, or have the drastically changed since Rodriquez was a student?  I would hope as a time went on and as more students like Rodriquez moved through our education system that we would start to realize that students’ language is a powerful part of them that needs to be cherished and understood before we begin to ask them to learn a new language and its norms that come along with it.  From my own limited experience with ESL students, I recall one experience in particular that I kept revisiting while reading the book about an ESL teacher confronting a family’s culture.  At lunch this teacher was venting about how she was struggling to get this one student to listen to her because in their culture women do not hold positions of power or high levels of respect.  She asked the student’s parents to come in so she could talk with them and get an understanding of how the student could be reached.  Her frustration came from confronting a rivaling cultural expectation; the father was the same way as the son and did not hold the teacher’s comments in a high regard.  When two cultures clash it is hard to stay open to learning new ways or finding a middle ground, but I wonder, now, what our ESL programs and teachers are being taught for our students who are battling this equilibrium.  

Cycle One

        During the readings this week I kept coming back to the same idea of "helicopter parents" and "hovering teachers."  As a student and as a child I remember having a lot of time to explore, individually and with my peers, to the point where I rarely remember having adults around except for explicit lessons or times when an adult was mandatory.  Most specifically I remember going to my older brothers’ baseball games and tournaments and I would immediately leave my parents to meet up with the other younger siblings from the teammates to wonder around the baseball complex.  We had to keep an eye on the game so we could come back when the game was over, but otherwise we were free to roam, get dirty and use our imagination.  I remember it being a special activity to have my parents play with me and my brothers but it was never expected.  Now I see my nephews and nieces playing with their parents more than learning to play with their own siblings.  They are learning to play with adults who stop them from making mistakes before they are even made.  I’m a strong believer in learning from mistakes so if students are not allowed the opportunity to make mistakes, how do we expect our children to learn? 

         Learning is a product of opportunities to expand and explore in one’s own time without fear of judgment or overwhelming confinement.  All classrooms and societies have a set of laws and rules for safety and consistency which provides an environment that allows for people to feel comfortable to learn, but these should be basic necessities.  Children have a sense of right and wrong, which is why teachers typically know a student is about to do something inappropriate because the student seeks out the teacher to check if they are looking.  I’m sure all the teachers know this action, when one of your students’ looks at you just before they do something probably should not.  They either do this to check they are not going to get caught or they are seeking attention. That was a question I had in the Japanese pre-school model for attention-seeking behaviors that are not appropriate for the classroom, how does the teacher help students develop socially so they do not act out or feel the need to act out?  I completely agree with not intervening for every misguided decision or disgruntled issue so students can develop together and create stronger relationships, but when the behavior is meant to grab attention will the behavior stop if it is ignored?  Should the behavior have a scaffold lesson facilitated by the teacher to help students understand how it is not the best idea to act out?

          As a teacher I find it overwhelming to try and know everything in my classroom but I like to know about my students.  I find that the more I talk to my students the less likely they are to act out and break our class rules because they want to build a stronger community.  So when I get emails, phone calls and visits from parents asking me to watch their students specifically or about a specific disagreement, like at lunch that two girls had three days ago, I get frustrated because it is not on my radar of importance.  The girls obviously worked it out on their own three days ago considering I did not hear about it but those parents need to know everything that is going on.  I respect my students’ decisions and I trust that they will come to me for help or will use the lessons they have learned previously in school, at home and from their own and other’s experience, they just need to have the opportunity to have those experiences.