I learned a lot of things in this class. I could just write a list and it would go on forever, but I will tell you the two things I found most important.
-Love your students. You never know where they are coming from. They may go to a lot of work to hide their struggles from you and their friends, so give them the benefit of the doubt. You don't know what they struggle with at home, if they even have one. Maybe they were kicked out because of homophobia, or maybe they got caught up in a gang. Every student is different. So whatever you do, make your classroom one place that they can feel safe and happy. If they are hard to love, pray to God to see them the way he sees them, and fake it 'til you make it. You don't have to be cuddly and warm, but be trustworthy and safe--let them know you care. It is like Principal El said in one of the first videos we watched: every child deserves to have someone who is crazy about them. Support them and advocate for them. I agree with Dr. Draper, teenagers really are just kids in adult bodies. Sometimes we look at the outside and forget, so make sure to ask God to help you see the inside.
-You can't do everything, so just do your best. I believe that we would like to do everything, but we are also human. I cannot fix every student's life, neither can I give every one a passion for learning. They have their agency. You do your best, love them, teach them, and then at some point you have to leave the rest up to God. There may be times when he asks just a little bit more of you. When I see all the things these students go through, sometimes I want to just give up, but it helps to remember that scripture that says that if it so be that we bring one soul unto God, we will have joy in the kingdom of heaven. If I make just one student's life a little brighter, then it would still be worth it. Perhaps they learn everything in the curriculum and how to be happy and successful and the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Or maybe all they learn is that there is one teacher who will never give up on them. It doesn't matter. God will take care of the things that we can't, and he has a much longer time frame than we do.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Book Review- Holler if You Hear Me, by Gregory Michie
Points of Disruption: First of all, I have to say that I loved this book. I liked feeling like I was there in the classroom with the kids. However, this was also difficult, because I felt the conflicts of both the teacher and students. For instance, the story about Reggie being beat up by a cop for no reason was heartbreaking. How do you let a student know that they matter when the very people who should be protecting them are hurting them? I also had to kick myself a little. With all the protests going on about cops shooting black men, I just kind of thought that we've moved past this, people don't do that for no reason and they are beating a dead horse. However, this is obviously not true. As much as I want to believe in the goodness of mankind, these kids live in a world where they have to watch out for themselves--even among friends at a school sponsored event.
I also struggle with the idea of helping kids outside of class. I am just one person. I want to teach English, and I'm not very outspoken outside of the classroom. How involved am I supposed to get, and how much influence do I really have. If I interrupt my students doing a drug deal, because they hardly have the money to keep food on the table, what am I supposed to do? There are also fine lines. This teacher goes and visits students outside of school, takes them to concerts, but aren't there laws about how much contact you are supposed to have outside of school?
When Mr. Michie first begins team teaching, he and his fellow teacher create a unit on being Mexican American. I thought this was brilliant, I also saw some problems. What if I end up teaching in Arizona? The law prohibits teachers from involving Spanish or hispanic culture in the classroom, but these students live right next to the border even if they aren't hispanic themselves. That culture is part of their lives. I want to bring it into the classroom, but I also don't want to lose my job.
Examples of Ideas We Discussed in Class: I mentioned before how much I loved the idea of a unit based just on Mexican American identity. I felt like this incorporated a lot of what we talked about with inclusive pedagogy. The teachers didn't take the kids experiences and apply them to school, they took school and applied it to things the kids were already a part of. The kids were allowed to use their funds of knowledge to enrich the course. They had the opportunity to explore and value the culture that they had been so afraid to share with their peers before.
One of the other stories I appreciated was the very first one about Tavares. You loved the cheeky kid from the teacher's side of the story, but hearing Tavares' own background really shed a lot of light on what he went through as a kid. He was involved in gangs and drug-dealing. He was poor and got kicked out of his home and later dropped out of school. He fit right in with the stories we discussed of kids struggling with poverty or identity. He found it educating as an adult just to discover that not all black people were poor. Wasn't that something he should have learned long before then? He was so honest of about getting mixed up in gangs--he just wanted to get his life back on track, and for a while it looked like that would do it for him.
How the Stories Will Influence my Work as a Teacher: If you haven't noticed yet, I was absolutely enchanted by the assignment on exploring what it means to be Mexican American. I feel like this is a unit that should be done in any classroom in the west, just so students are aware of it. THere are plenty of Mexican American authors who I would like to include in my classroom. My students should understand that not all authors are just one background or culture. You could also bring school to the students more subtly by assigning a small paper on the cultures of the country that their ancestors came to America from. However long ago that was, they would have the opportunity to look at a culture and say what they wished had stayed with their family. This would also allow more recent immigrants to share their stories without picking them out specifically.
I also thought about how Mr. Michie tried to involve literature that had multiple backgrounds. There is no one kind of student, so there should never be just one kind of book. I think it would be interesting to have book discussions where students are asked to read books on different perspectives of the same event. The students showed that they could argue a point they didn't agree with even with little preparation. I would love to see what a class could do with more time.
The thing I most identified with however, was the importance of showing genuine curiosity and interest in a student. Some of them may be hard to love, but that doesn't mean that they are less deserving of it. You have to watch out-make sure none of them slip through the cracks, and that is hard. But I do believe that in order to really teach a student, you have to show that you care about them and respect them. No matter what is going on in their home life, they should feel safe and comfortable in your classroom. That may at times require me to be less distant that I, as a reserved person, am comfortable with, but it is worth it.
I also struggle with the idea of helping kids outside of class. I am just one person. I want to teach English, and I'm not very outspoken outside of the classroom. How involved am I supposed to get, and how much influence do I really have. If I interrupt my students doing a drug deal, because they hardly have the money to keep food on the table, what am I supposed to do? There are also fine lines. This teacher goes and visits students outside of school, takes them to concerts, but aren't there laws about how much contact you are supposed to have outside of school?
When Mr. Michie first begins team teaching, he and his fellow teacher create a unit on being Mexican American. I thought this was brilliant, I also saw some problems. What if I end up teaching in Arizona? The law prohibits teachers from involving Spanish or hispanic culture in the classroom, but these students live right next to the border even if they aren't hispanic themselves. That culture is part of their lives. I want to bring it into the classroom, but I also don't want to lose my job.
Examples of Ideas We Discussed in Class: I mentioned before how much I loved the idea of a unit based just on Mexican American identity. I felt like this incorporated a lot of what we talked about with inclusive pedagogy. The teachers didn't take the kids experiences and apply them to school, they took school and applied it to things the kids were already a part of. The kids were allowed to use their funds of knowledge to enrich the course. They had the opportunity to explore and value the culture that they had been so afraid to share with their peers before.
One of the other stories I appreciated was the very first one about Tavares. You loved the cheeky kid from the teacher's side of the story, but hearing Tavares' own background really shed a lot of light on what he went through as a kid. He was involved in gangs and drug-dealing. He was poor and got kicked out of his home and later dropped out of school. He fit right in with the stories we discussed of kids struggling with poverty or identity. He found it educating as an adult just to discover that not all black people were poor. Wasn't that something he should have learned long before then? He was so honest of about getting mixed up in gangs--he just wanted to get his life back on track, and for a while it looked like that would do it for him.
How the Stories Will Influence my Work as a Teacher: If you haven't noticed yet, I was absolutely enchanted by the assignment on exploring what it means to be Mexican American. I feel like this is a unit that should be done in any classroom in the west, just so students are aware of it. THere are plenty of Mexican American authors who I would like to include in my classroom. My students should understand that not all authors are just one background or culture. You could also bring school to the students more subtly by assigning a small paper on the cultures of the country that their ancestors came to America from. However long ago that was, they would have the opportunity to look at a culture and say what they wished had stayed with their family. This would also allow more recent immigrants to share their stories without picking them out specifically.
I also thought about how Mr. Michie tried to involve literature that had multiple backgrounds. There is no one kind of student, so there should never be just one kind of book. I think it would be interesting to have book discussions where students are asked to read books on different perspectives of the same event. The students showed that they could argue a point they didn't agree with even with little preparation. I would love to see what a class could do with more time.
The thing I most identified with however, was the importance of showing genuine curiosity and interest in a student. Some of them may be hard to love, but that doesn't mean that they are less deserving of it. You have to watch out-make sure none of them slip through the cracks, and that is hard. But I do believe that in order to really teach a student, you have to show that you care about them and respect them. No matter what is going on in their home life, they should feel safe and comfortable in your classroom. That may at times require me to be less distant that I, as a reserved person, am comfortable with, but it is worth it.
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