Response to "Engagement"

This section was a really interesting combination of uplifting stories and depressing, but motivating ones. Many of these stories involve students making some kind of breakthrough. One trend that I thought was interesting in this section was that it had a lot more focus on rural schools and the issues that come with that, rather than the urban stories which I generally think of with Erin Gruwell’s work. The section where the teacher worked with the white student with racial prejudice was a scenario that I think about a lot. I thought it was handled well in that the teacher didn’t merely lecture him as to why that was inappropriate – the teacher asked questions and made it a long-term goal to introduce new perspectives to compare with those proposed by his family. I think my favorite breakthroughs in the chapter were those in which a student decided to open up with either the teacher or the entire class. 

One section that I was uncomfortable with the teacher's behavior was Section 56, which dealt with a homophobic student who had made inappropriate statements of opinion. Although the teacher may not have intended to do so, the technique they used to deal with the student was not one that encouraged tolerance or explained why those statements were inappropriate - the teacher basically just embarrassed the student in front of everybody in the classroom. That was not the action of an impartial tolerant instructor - it pointed out ignorance without pointing the student in the right direction. Essentially, it was hating the sinner, and not the sin.

PBS Documentary: 1950-1980 Response

This section of the documentary was very interesting. It definitely seemed a lot closer to the way schools are now. It’s good to hear a more complete and finished telling of what happened with the different civil rights laws and court cases. With Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, I wasn’t aware that some southern schools used the National Guard to keep black children out of schools, or that the President called in the military to enforce the law.  That was really interesting to me, to think that a military conflict, very much along the lines of North versus South, was occurring almost 100 years after the American Civil War. I also wasn’t aware that Brown v. Board of Education was a unanimous case in the Supreme Court.

As a longtime rebel, modeled after those in the 1960s, I was surprised to hear that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a champion of civil rights, or that he was a teacher. I clearly see my own bias in that perception, and I’m glad that was opened up.

As for most of the documentary, I am painfully uneducated about the majority of the issues. I know a good bit about Title 9, thanks to a friend who is an expert on the law, but I know almost nothing about bussing, the demands of Mexican-American students and faculty, and other more contemporary issues. That is obviously something I will have to keep an eye out for to study. 

Response to 1900-1950 History of Schools

I was fascinated to learn about the history of standardized testing in schools between 1900 and 1950. Entire educational history, from Dewey to the experiential schools to Sputnik, is really cool to me. It’s really interesting to look at all of the things in schools – what I like, what I hate – and see what the circumstances were that led to the institutionalization of those elements. Of course I’m not surprised, for instance, that in the midst of World War I, students were encouraged to speak only English and to burn German-language books. No matter what the issue of the day is, people are passionate about it. The thing that really struck me about the documentary, however, is that when I go out into the school, simply by teaching and doing my job, I will be contributing to the future “history of education.” This is all the more reason to be deliberate in everything I do.

Generation Reflection

This was a very interesting article. In my summer job, which is my main work environment, I work entirely with people in my own generation, excepting our director and assistant director. While I’m hesitant to put everybody into a big group with the same traits, I understand that culture over time does produce certain trends, and the article is not necessarily declaring these as universal truths. That being said, I think this is a fascinating collection of commonalities and differences between generational groups. One reason that this article is great is because failure to notice common differences between generations can definitely lead to protraction of one’s own generational traits. The example about the Gen. Y manager who offered a vacation to a Boomer instead of a bonus is a good example of this – the Gen. Y manager may have preferred a vacation to a bonus, and assumed that this was true for other coworkers and employees.

As a member of Generation Y, I see myself working for administrators in the two generations above me, at least right away when I begin teaching. I will also be working with these generations, in addition to my own age-peers. Given my own interest in working together with other teachers, it is very likely that I will be collaborating with members of other generations. Communication in particular will be a topic that I will have to pay particular attention to.

Response to Teaching Hope, "Challenges"

This was a very intense reading. All of these teachers had incredibly emotional experiences to write about. Most of them had been through trauma in their lives, but many of those had hopeful outlooks for what was to come. One section that deeply affected me was Section 24, which recounted a scene in which a tense classroom wrote positive Post-It Notes to one another, and one girl who was being victimized by bullies and rumors to the point of suicide received a note saying “I am happy you are here.” It really clicks with a philosophy of mine that while most people are inclined to naturally behave indecently with one another, almost everybody will eagerly step up and be a good person in a time of need.

Another section that connected with and reassured me was the one about the student who wrote a letter to his teacher about how he came from a more together home than his peers, and he felt left out of their discussions about their difficult home lives. The teacher’s response was one that I felt well about – a response explaining that everybody has their own situation and that the student is in a wonderful learning situation, to see what parts of the country can be like. The teacher also modeled good behavior by creating a classroom where that discussion was encouraged and appropriate. 

Response to "Anticipation"

Of all the things that worry me about being a teacher, the “first day” is definitely in the running for first place. It seems that everybody around me is really confident about it, but this chapter is definitely calming and relieving in that it shows people, who seem like really good teachers, having the same fears and worries that I do.  A lot of the teachers in the book made decisions that I would have seen as mistakes, such as showing up on a student’s doorstep. These things took a lot of guts, but I was glad to see that these issues worked out in the end. I have a tendency to see critical make-or-break moments where there really aren’t any, and it’s good to know that there is enough leniency to account for not everybody being perfect.

That being said, there was a positively immense amount of courage in the chapter – an amount of courage that I’m not sure I have. Perhaps I’ve just never been in a situation where I need to step up the way these teachers did, but that is one nagging thing in my mind.  I’ve worked with children who had particular issues with racism, heterosexism, sexism, etc. at summer camp, but that has been easier to help with because I live with the campers for two weeks with no negative outside influences. I imagine it is heartbreaking to feel like you’re making a breakthrough in the classroom, then the school bell rings and you watch them go off into what could be a bad world. I guess it just comes down to doing what you can while you can.

Abstract/Response to "Diversity, Learning Style, and Culture"

The article “Diversity, Learning Style, and Culture” refreshed and redirected information and insight we’ve been gaining over the past several years. It illustrated how instructional technique can either positively act with a student’s culture, benefiting the student’s sense of self, or it can negatively reverberate with the culture, putting the student in a position of uncertainty and shame. It also looks at another version of the same complex, substituting the student’s culture for the student’s learning style, which is made up of cognition, conceptualization, affectation, and behavior. Despite these two items being the primary focus of the piece, it was frequently reiterated that while the classroom teacher needs to take both culture and learning styles into account, it is important not to combine the two factors into one, as this is learning style stereotyping of a culture. While certain cultures may espouse certain values, there is no reason that these values will necessarily translate into a specific uniform learning style, nor is there reason that the student will fully embrace the values of the culture. The main point of the article is that teachers should sincerely employ a variety of instructional techniques because the more limited instruction is, the smaller the group that can learn, and the less the entire class can learn fully.

I got a lot out of the article. The article frequently reminded me that it is important not to get lazy and to make my instruction very deliberate. I kept recalling a particular camper I had this summer whose behavior was problematic. I remembered telling myself over and over again to keep in mind that the fact that this camper was black was not a direct factor in his behavior, but the fact that he’s grown up being chastised for his thinking style (highly physical, kinesthetic) has negatively impacted his desire to cooperate with an authority figure. I had to remind myself and other counselors that ethnicity was not directly involved in his behavior. The worst part was when I had to explain this to other campers who were trying to take matters into their own hands. In a classroom environment, I would hope that I had more opportunity to redirect his energy in a positive direction, but it’s definitely easier said than done, as the article made clear. As a teacher, I will need to be constantly vigilant in planning my teaching styles and observing the learning styles of my students.