During
this summer three texts resonated most deeply with me were the Rosin article
about adventure playgrounds and free play, Tobin, Hsueh and Karasawa’s piece
about Japanese Preschools and Rodriguez’s autobiography. The one piece that I continuously came back
to each week and had on my mind and discussed with many friends and family
outside of class was the first article we read by Rosin. After re-reading my old posts and trying to
understand my current position in life (which has been going 100 mph since I have
been moving , getting a new job and buying my first house) I have made a few
observations and realizations about how I view culture and education especially
in the different areas I have lived and experienced.
As a person who grew up in a very
religiously and ethnically diverse area I have never thought about other
cultures as weird or “wrong” like some of my students in the areas where I have
taught. I lived in Michigan in the
Detroit and Lansing areas until I started my first teaching job in Utah. Michigan, to me, always seemed open to
different ways of thinking and I had many friends and classmates that provided
different points of view and experiences to my education as a person. But when I moved to Salt Lake City I had
culture shock with the church running the state and schools, inadvertently, and
with my students’ lack of world-views. When
I then moved to South Dakota I received another kind of culture shock with
social desertion. Living in such a
desolate area the population rarely changes and so the children the students
started kindergarten with are the ones they will graduate, without much fluctuation. South Dakota is a stranded town with most big
towns separated by 2-3 hours and not much but farms and rolling hills in the
middle. It is very easy to disconnect
and limit oneself in a place like that.
Now living in Wisconsin, I feel like I am back to living in Michigan but
with much more disdain for teachers.
During this course I lived in both isolated South Dakota and
strong-minded Wisconsin and it made me readjust my viewpoints on how to
approach my classroom and the example classroom in The Wire.
Emotional Reaction to Clips
Now-
Each student knows what actions they want to portray in their public sphere and
they are making the executive decision to act out or obey classroom
expectations but each person is also in charge of their response. Knowing this
after reading the Tobin and Rodriguez text I started to embrace the idea of
more free decision making and exploration as discussed in Rosin’s article. I felt overwhelmed and anxious from the clips
because I have never experienced a scenario quite like the first day of school
clip from The Wire. But I also
started to understand that I am someone who embraces differences in others and
actively seeks out students’ and teachers’ personalities. My husband has often told me that I have a
freaky superpower of understanding people upon the first time of meeting and talking
with them. My mom has told me that since
I am so open to others I am very non-threatening and that allows people to open
up to me. I completely credit my friends
from elementary through high school for showing me different cultures and
allowing me to share their experiences so I could welcome them in my students
later in life.
Moral Reaction to Clips
Now-
Knowing myself I would need to enter the classroom from the clips understanding
the teachers around me to feel more grounded and supported and so I would not
be surprised by how students would act on the first day and what they were
going through in their personal sphere.
Once the school year started I would feel an obligation to myself and my
students to get to know them and plan lessons for them to meet their needs and
interests. As my mother always said, I
have a very fierce sense of right and wrong and my students quickly learn that lying
to me does not work and that acting out to me is just a cry for help. Students need support and I would want to
help them feel supported and confident to share with me any issues they choose
to share.
Aesthetic Reaction to Clips
Now-
In middle school arenas like in The Wire, action and social interaction
are the main players to having a successful lesson. Stationary seating charts, rigid lessons and
rules without explanation or follow-through are the death of an effective
teacher. Flexibility and the ability to meet the needs of the classroom through
exploration with others tends to be the most meaningful to the students.
Intellectual Reaction to Clips
Now
- The homeroom teacher bothered me during the first couple clips because he
seemed to be in over his head and not seeking help in how to reach the
students. Towards the end of the clips I
started to see the teacher’s participant-observer teaching style where he read
the students from a far and then started designing lessons for the students’
interests. He tried to understand how to
make applicable education accessible to the students through math games and “street”
games with dice and probability. Students
need time to be understood and then to try new things but most importantly they
need time to reflect on those skills and try to use them outside the classroom.
Goal 1: to be achieved by August 2, 2014: Understanding
how my mindset has changed and how I want to apply that mindset into my 6th
grade classroom in the fall. Come up
with the top 3 “take-aways” from this course that I want to share with my
students throughout the next school year.
I want to reflect more deeply on my notes, my blog and the responses
from my peers to determine what I took as the most important underlying themes
of this course and figure out what of those themes I can adapt to make
accessible to my students.
Goal 2: to be achieved by September 15, 2014: Take
those three themes that I determine and after learning the curriculum I will be
teaching this school year, meld those themes into my behavior management
systems, my curriculum and my teaching practice.
Goal 3: to be achieved by September 15, 2019: Review
how my teaching has been modified since this year, 2014, and try to understand
how it is changed based on my position in life.
Share my progress with my students so they can see how important it is
Readings Cited
Richard
Rodriguez. (1982). Hunger of Memory: The
Education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston: Bantam Books.
