We read a lot writing improvements and techniques for teachers as well as students. In "Preparing to Teach Social Studies for Social Justices: Becoming a Renegade" by Ruchi Agarwa;-Rangnath, Alison G Dover and Nick Henning we read about the classrooms of Brian and Jared. It is very important to understand your students cultures and interest outside of school. Now with teachers who grew up in similar environments that their students are growing up in then it's easier to relate to students, but what about those who didn't? The article states that in order to achieve this teachers must respect the ststudents abilities, interests, opinions. Brian uses Living History. This technique is used as a way of "Time Traveling." This submerges students in the era that is being taught and allows the students to connect to it. It is meant to get them to critically think and start analyzing the connections on more than a surface level. It's meant to connect gender, race, sex, etc. on the issues addressed.
How do we do this?
We can see what Brian does in his classroom. He begins by asking his students to empty their pockets of everything except illegal things. This is a way to let them know they aren't in trouble and its an exercise. I like the part of the article where he brings them into the French revolution. The way that he implements the readings. He breaks them up to who is a noble and who is a peasant and each becomes an expert on the system that the people were in during that era. Then in class they act out the general assembly. This is to get them thinking critically on the actions of the era. I believe I have seen a strategy like this play out when we were learning about World War 2 in high school. We were separated in each European country and one student would use their group to annex our desk/land for themselves. This got us thinking and understanding as the student who was taking the desk had the most students in their group. There was little we could do. It gave us a little insight on how the politics were. We then read articles and went into a deep discussion on why this happened. Not so much answering questions as Brian is posing in the article but to an extent. This is a strategy that is easily implemented in History classes but not math classes. So I pose this question, what is a way, if any, that someone learning math can benefit from these strategies? Have you ever seen a strategy like this in action? If so please share with us. Also please feel free to answer the questions posed by our professors:
How do we do this?
We can see what Brian does in his classroom. He begins by asking his students to empty their pockets of everything except illegal things. This is a way to let them know they aren't in trouble and its an exercise. I like the part of the article where he brings them into the French revolution. The way that he implements the readings. He breaks them up to who is a noble and who is a peasant and each becomes an expert on the system that the people were in during that era. Then in class they act out the general assembly. This is to get them thinking critically on the actions of the era. I believe I have seen a strategy like this play out when we were learning about World War 2 in high school. We were separated in each European country and one student would use their group to annex our desk/land for themselves. This got us thinking and understanding as the student who was taking the desk had the most students in their group. There was little we could do. It gave us a little insight on how the politics were. We then read articles and went into a deep discussion on why this happened. Not so much answering questions as Brian is posing in the article but to an extent. This is a strategy that is easily implemented in History classes but not math classes. So I pose this question, what is a way, if any, that someone learning math can benefit from these strategies? Have you ever seen a strategy like this in action? If so please share with us. Also please feel free to answer the questions posed by our professors:
- What texts are students consuming and to what disciplines are these texts central?
- What texts are students producing and within what disciplinary practices?
- From the Gallagher (2001) chapter:
- What "real-world discourses" are being introduced?
- What "authentic modeling" is being employed?
- What "mentor texts" are being used?
- From "Writing Next" (2007), which of the "11 key elements of effective adolescent writing instruction" are being employed?
Hi Juan. I do like how Brian utilized living history in the classroom. Its a way of engaging with material that really makes the students have to completely engage with the material. What I would like to see is at the end of the unit how he can have the students reflect on what they learned. The way it is proposed is that the students would have to leave their modern personalities at the door and embrace their character, similar to a drama class. I would want the students to use their personalities in the classroom to the fullest as I believe they would get more out of it rather than just acting. I also do not how a math class can really engage with this style of learning. I feel as though the moving around in the room is still plausible as the teacher can put a real hard math problem on a group of desks and then have the students move to each table, but that really is not all that similar to what Brian proposes.
ReplyDeleteJuan, I think your personal experience makes a great connection to the article, "Preparing to Teach Social Studies for Social Justice: Becoming a Renegade." The authors in the article, expressed the need to give students more perspective on historical topics. It is important not only to know about the context of history but it is more important to make connections within that time period in order to have a deeper understanding about history. In math a good way to make students think about social justice is relating topics in math to the students real world. For example, teaching students about geometry and relating it to how much area in a community is sold and given to people at what price points. They can compare areas in North Chicago versus South Chicago. This could put into perspective how disproportionate the value of these communities are, and it could lead into a conversation about the inequality that persists in Chicago to this day.
ReplyDeleteI have also had a similar exercise in my World History class in high school. It was a lesson on pilgrims traveling to west America because of the Gold Rush. My teacher let us all start with a certain amount of money and we had to decide what materials and objects we can bring. Our identities were also given to us and this guided what things we could buy. For example, I was a married woman with two kids and that made budgeting harder than my peer who was a single male. This put into perspective the few resources that were offered and how some people had a bigger advantage to survive than others.
I think it is very important to give students the opportunity to think of history with added context. Students are more able to follow why certain things about history resulted in the government and systems of power that we have today. We owe it to our students to be able to contextualize and deeply understand the content that they are given.
Hi guys, I have also done something similar like this in my US History class in high school. We were all given a person of notoriety during the Revolutionary War and had to research them. Then, we had to pretend to be them at a "tea party" at the end of the week. It was a really engaging way for us, as students, to get to know these people who formed the history of the Revolutionary War. I think it's okay that this style doesn't particularly apply to math. In the Gutstein article posted for us in math, where Gutstein worked at a school in North Lawndale. He was able to actively engage his students in learning about interest because this topic was prevalent in many of their lives. I think using topics that confirm these problem-solving skills are important in their daily lives is essential to their participation. Like helping to understand finances algebraically or understand things like home improvement geometrically!
ReplyDelete