The first thing I noticed
on a cursory glance at the texts was that they all have to do with the culture
that is created in the classroom and the school so that's what I'm going to be
focusing on in this post.
Thinking About Schools evokes the same problem with it’s opening
experience of a black teacher in a white college classroom. If this pedagogy
wasn’t so focused through a white gaze and if it were more open to other areas
of knowledge how would things be different?
How can we do this though? It
isn’t normally enough to just say you’ll think differently.
How do we fight
this bias and not make our classes more inviting and let everyone feel like
they have a place there? I’m glad that these articles exist to help point out a
struggle that we need to be aware of. I’m curious now though, what the rest of
you have taken from these readings? Do you have any ideas about what is another
main idea from these readings?
Not everything has to just be just what one person can do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ1kDWv-uv0 is a link to a youtube video about how several CPS elementary and highschools are making school wide changes to improve student involvement and life. Most have to o with placing power into student hands and trusting them a bit more, which is an interesting idea for what we saw in those readings. there new ideas, CHAMPS and GROUP have made real impacts.
(PS: sorry I forgot to have links and pictures and stuff. feel free to respond like you want I just have to add a couple of things which should happen today. Thanks for your patience!)
Not everything has to just be just what one person can do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ1kDWv-uv0 is a link to a youtube video about how several CPS elementary and highschools are making school wide changes to improve student involvement and life. Most have to o with placing power into student hands and trusting them a bit more, which is an interesting idea for what we saw in those readings. there new ideas, CHAMPS and GROUP have made real impacts.
(PS: sorry I forgot to have links and pictures and stuff. feel free to respond like you want I just have to add a couple of things which should happen today. Thanks for your patience!)
It seems that one of the main ideas from these articles is the fact that small actions can have greater consequences than you’d think at first. This happens both in beneficial and detrimental contexts - for example, in “The Silenced Dialogue,” Delpit discusses how subtly pretending that certain gatekeeping points simply don’t exist, such as usage of language in different contexts, still harms students even though there wasn’t actively malicious intent behind the action. However, it’s also true that relatively smaller actions that provoke deeper thought and introspection - ie. discussing societal problems like racism and sexism in youth culture without assuming students are completely naive, as discussed in the “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy” piece - can accumulate over time to lead students to better understand the interactions between people both similar and different to them, leading to a broader acceptance of diversity.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, what I took from the readings was that as teachers, our role would be to utilize our place/role in the classroom in an effective, yet responsible way - what we say and do and express, as subtle as we may be, affects students not just in the context of the classroom but even beyond it. I agree that it was good to read these pieces to kind of gain a more multifaceted understanding of what we have to be mindful of while teaching - we’re not going to be perfect, but we have to do what we can. I think a follow-up question I'd ask, though, is how we can narrow this broad topic to specific practices in class - we might believe and agree that we need to work to make our classrooms welcoming, but how can we put that into direct action?
Trying is always the first step, but yeah I've been thinking about your question for a bit and this an idea I came up with.
DeleteI think that, as the teacher in the room, you have to channel an inner actor. Thinking in that kind of a head space can help you judge the emotions at play and the "feel" of the room. This also means you would have more practice taking in ways that would make people feel calmer or interested and welcome.
Most of this idea really just boils down to thinking about your craft and how you teach. By being conscious of how you act in your room you can carefully sculpt the environment to match-up with what you want... and supposing no one ruins it. So be calm, speak and act inviting and make sure that you think about what you say.
To answer your question on how we can make classes more inviting and let everyone feel like they have a place. I feel like teachers need to know their audience. It is important to know your students name and asked them question to make them feel more welcoming, even if it is the first few minutes in class,ask them about their weekend or ask them questions about what they like. I feel like students engage more in classes when they have a good relationship with their teacher or when they know that their teachers care about what they do not only in school but outside of school as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat I took from the reading was basically we need acknowledge students that may come from different cultures with different values that differ from the american culture. Methods of teaching that are used for a high school classroom of white kids may not work for a classroom of mainly Hispanic students or a classroom of African Americans.
On the topic of answering your question about how to fight bias and not make our classes more inviting and letting everyone feel like they have a place there, I think a tangible solution to that is acknowledging the fact early on in the production of making all inclusive teachers. By that I mean that what we are doing now in class talking about these issues is the first step in preparing our classes to be all inclusive. For example, I hate to say it but this is one of those "it starts with us" moments. I understand that teachers have a lot of different responsibilities to uphold but this one should come natural in that we should be able to understand and respect different cultures.
ReplyDeleteFrom the readings we can see that blacks experience prejudice and whites can distribute this feeling. By having precautionary courses and having a lots of culture shock classes, this can be a preventative measure from these types of "name to face" terms from happening.