Double Entry Journal #6

 

Teaching for meaningful learning     1.     Read the Introduction. What "dominant paradigm" is showing signs of wear?   The “dominant paradigm" as discussed in the article is the system of educational thinking that originated a century ago and focuses on the teacher and textbook as the most important source of knowledge and conveyed through traditional educational methods of lecturing, discussion, and reading. This paradigm is showing signs of wear as educators are recognizing its weaknesses and are implementing more innovative teaching strategies that focus on project based curricula and performance based assessment that address open ended and complex questions, and move the teacher to the position of a learning coach rather than exclusive instructor.   2.     According to the research, how does Project-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.   According to Thomas, in general research on project-based learning has found that students learn as much or more factual knowledge than students who engage in traditional forms of instruction, while also enabling students to transfer their learning to real situations and problems in a way that traditional education does not. Other studies, such as Gallagher, Steipien, and Rosenthal, 1992, found that performance based learning is superior to traditional education in teaching students to define problems, and to support their reasoning with clear arguments ( Stepien, Gallagher, and Workman, 1993).   3.     According to the research, how does Problem-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.   Problem-Based Learning is superior to educational teaching approaches in teaching students to learn to analyze complex problems and situations and to develop knowledge to guide decisions ( Lundeberg, Levin, &Harrington, 1999; Savery & Duffy, 1996; Williams, 1992).Problem Based learning also has been found to be more efficient in teaching flexible problem solving, application of knowledge, and hypothesis generation. ( Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, &Gijbels, 2003.) Students who participate in Problem Based Learning are also more successful at generating accurate hypothesis and coherent explanations (Hmelo, 1998b).   4.     According to the research, how does Learning by Design support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.   Learning by design has been particularly effective for helping students develop understandings of complex systems (Perkins, 1986). Fortus and colleagues (2004) also found that learning by design projects helped both high and low achieving students to be motivated in their work and exhibit  strong progress in targeted science and design concepts.     5.     What are the differences between the three approaches?   Project-Based Learning requires students to complete a complex task that generally results in a realistic product, event, or presentation to an audience. It focuses on problems that occur in the real world. Problem-Based Learning are closely related to Project-Based Learning, and is typically composed of lessons that involve a specific activity focused on the use of reason and resources to solve a problem, using small groups to generate a solution. However, unlike project-based Learning, which is more general and may or may not involve a problem, Problem-Based Learning focuses specifically on solving a problem. Learning by Design is based on the premise that children learn deeply when asked to design and create and artifact that requires understanding and application of knowledge. Unkike the other two learning models discussed, it has the specific outcome of designing a product.     6.     In your opinion, what is the most important benefit to learning that is common across the three types of inquiry-based learning approaches?   I think the most important benefit that is associated with each of these learning approaches is the application of learning into real world situations and life skills. For example, it may not always be important for me in my life to know all the facts involved in finding the cosine of angle B, as I was taught at one time in a traditional learning approach, but I will always need to know how to support my arguments, draw conclusions, make decisions, and be able to collaborate with others to solve a problem, which are all skills that are supported by these inquiry-based learning approaches.

Sources

Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond,, L. (2008). Teaching for meaningful learning. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-teaching

Double Entry Journal 5

1. What is reverent listening and how can it support culturally responsive teaching?

Reverent listening is listening with a humble and respectful mindset, seeking not only to cognitively grasp what is being said, but also to form connections between listeners and speakers. It involves keeping in mind that even if the listener is older or more experienced, as human beings we can all learn from each other. It is respecting the speaker as another person who deserves respect and to be listened to, remembering the limitations we all have as people, as well as our potential to teach one another, regardless of position.

Reverent listening is central to culturally responsive teaching because both emphasize knowing students individually as people, and cultivating a sense of mutual respect and connectedness in the classroom. A characteristic of reverent listening is transcendence- attending to the needs of a variety of students with varying needs- a characteristic that is almost synonymous with inclusion. If a teacher knows how to reverently listen to his or her students, knowing their subject matter as well as their students, and keep in mind that the classroom is an extension of the community, not a separate box in which to force-feed instruction, teachers will have a major step forward in being successful as culturally responsive educators.

 

2. Give an example from your own schooling experience of what this quote means:   Reverent listening is not to be confused with humiliation and domination by others who force us to listen, and even less so, with the kind of incompetence that wants to be told what to do.

I have had experiences with adults in my life growing up who I always listened to very carefully, but mostly because I was afraid of making them mad. I would actually get myself into more trouble that way, because as soon as they started speaking I would try to guess what they were going to say and analyze every word for possible meanings. Often I would just get confused about what I was supposed to understand, making them angrier, and I would be called stupid or that I never listened. That only made me try harder to please them, because I didn’t want to hear that. My experiences with authority figures in my life like that has taught me that fear hinders communication. I think that relates to this quote because as a teacher, I don’t want students to hang on to my words because they are afraid if they don’t get it right they will be ridiculed or humiliated or left behind. I want them to listen because I have created a community inside the classroom in which the students are motivated by internal motivation and by each other, and are actually interested in what I am saying. I want them to listen because even if they don’t personally find the material fascinating, they are drawn in by my own excitement and motivation that I communicate in instruction. I also don’t want them to listen just because I am the teacher and that’s what they are supposed to do. I want them to listen not because they fear me, but because they can tell I respect and care about them, and as a result, they respect me in return.

 

3. What is meant by a "laundry list of value ethics"? Give an example from your own schooling experience. And then explain how this     approach to character education can be NON-culturally responsive.

Suzanne Rice explains “a laundry list of value ethics" as the narrow set of shallow, conventional character values that focus on work ethic and duty that dominates many Character education programs. Programs that dogmatically stick with this list are often over confident and exclusive, completely missing the virtue of reverence. I have had many classes in which posters were hung advertising the virtues of “recreation comes after education” and “don’t speak while others are speaking”. I think these posters were on the right track, but very seldom do I remember getting instruction about why these virtues are important. Since I did not see an immediate application of them to them in my life, I barely even noticed them until I began to develop my own set of morals.

As Rice points out, virtue and vice are delicately balanced, and there are many fine lines between them. Simply drilling detached virtues such as “be considerate of others” into students’ heads might not hurt them, but it is not a particularly culturally responsive approach to character education. Students come from many different cultures and backgrounds with a vast range of what is socially appropriate and what constitutes good character. Also, what constitutes right and wrong often depends on circumstances. So instead, Rice supports situating “..virtues in the context of human capacities and limits.” Reverent listening can facilitate this because teachers who apply it must listen to their students and be willing to have shared, ongoing, democratic deliberation about right and wrong and its application in the classroom. Teachers must be flexible, listen to the concerns of students and be willing to change rules and implement new strategies.

 

4. Have you ever had a teacher that at one time or another exhibited the traits of a reverent teacher? What did they do? How did they make you feel?

My AP Geography teacher in high school exhibited many of the traits of a reverent teacher. She implemented a lot of discussion in the classroom, so that soon we were like a group of friends with shared interests that could come together on a neutral ground and talk about issues in the world that would otherwise not be breached. She made us feel comfortable enough to disagree with one another and taught us how to form an argument. She had a structure for the class, but she also made a lot of statements like “We will try this, but if doesn’t work, we can take it in a different direction.” She was interested in what we wanted to learn, and she took the ideas we brought up in discussions seriously. We could all tell she respected and cared about us, and was invested in our learning for our sake as well as her own. She shared a lot of stories about her life experiences and the places she had traveled and people she had met, which helped us to respect her even more as an educator because we knew she was someone who really knew what she was talking about and who we could learn a lot from. Somehow she managed to make me feel connected to something larger than the class, and sparked new interests beyond just getting an A. She managed to communicate and pass on to hers students her transcendent mindset, respect, and awe and wonder of the world.

 

5. What factors contribute to a "toxic" school culture?

One factor that contributes to a toxic school culture is leadership that doesn’t listen reverently.  Leaders who are closed minded and self-seeking close the door on collaboration and a sense of community that should be in a school. Authorities in education must be willing to listen, be self-correcting, and be willing to apply what they are hearing if necessary. A school is a network of students, parents, custodial staff, teachers, secretaries, and principals, who each have an equal right as human beings to be listened to. 

A lack of reverent listening in schools leads to frustrated, limited teachers, bored and resentful students, tension between school and parents, misunderstandings and power struggles among faculty and staff, and possibly an unbalanced emphasis in school policies. Reverent educators keep the mindset that nobody can ever have a full and accurate view of a situation by themselves, therefore, everyone from the custodian to the students’’ guardians, has a valuable perspective of what is important in education.

6. Find a quote in this article that you would like to incorporate into your own philosophy of education and explain how it fits or changes your philosophy of education.

One quote that from this article that seems really profound to me is this:

 ‘“Respect is given, not earned’…We may respect others, including our students, solely based on our common humanity.

All my life I have heard “you have to earn respect”, which might be true in some ways, but I don’t think it applies to the way teachers should view their students. Teachers have to remember that their students are children, not fully developed people, who will probably develop qualities that we would deem worthy of respect as they grow. We should not expect children to behave as mature adults. This fits into my education philosophy because I believe we should respect students because they are people who have unlimited potential. We may be teaching a disruptive, unmotivated, and disrespectful student, but that same student may become the next Beethoven. I want to look at each student and see not just where they are, but also where they could be, and assume that each of them will do far greater things than I will. We should show respect to our students regardless of how they treat us because as teachers, we are supposed to set the example. If problem students are given no respect from teachers simply because the teacher does not feel respected by them, how will these students learn to show respect?

7. Find a strategy/activity conveyed in a video, blog posting, lesson plan, or online article that will help you become a  teacher who cultivates a reverence in their classroom and school community (key search terms: teachers and reverence, teachers and mindfulness, teachers and rituals, routines (do not search teachers and ritual without the routine qualifier. If you do you will se disturbing stuff ). Link to it and describe how you will use it in your future classroom.

This PowerPoint is full of examples of school traditions and ceremonies that can be implemented, (especially in the second half) and explains why they are important. It makes some good connections between rituals school connectedness and how they form a sense of community. It could be very useful practically because it includes questions for evaluating the effectiveness of rituals, such as “what message does it send?”, “What are the underlying values?”, and “what are the desired student outcomes?”

Sources

RUD, A. G., & Garrison, J. (2010, November). Reverence and listening in teaching and leading. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_lNdCbUdjDIvAFO7LhRAQqe9fJc-YReeKH7qGTWlxy4/edit

Anderson, Ph.D., L. V., Schneider, Ph.D. , S., & Arnow, M.Ed., M.S. , B. (2006). Impacting school culture: Examining rituals, traditions, & ceremonies. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http://charactered.ocde.us/Assets/CharacterEd/ice-materials/LV-ImpactingSchoolCultureRTCfinal.ppt&ei=pd1ZULDDCab10gGgsIGwCw&usg=AFQjCNFmDOTCRjKPCUm4_ItzL0BOPErlsw&sig2=UzabpyRovw-xWUyf6RC03A

 

 

Reflection Rough Draft

1. As Victoria Gates points out in “...As soon as she opened her mouth!”:

“….children from homes of poverty who experience other people in their lives reading and writing for many different reasons in the years before they begin school are better equipped conceptually to make sense of- to learn from- the beginning reading and writing instruction in their schools. It also suggests that, as a group, children from homes of poverty experience fewer instances of people reading and writing for a broad number of purposes than do children from mainstream homes. To the extent that parental education-which is going to affect the frequency and types of reading and writing people do-, is related to poverty, this makes some sense.”

From this reading, and the readings about Cultural Deficit and Cultural Capital, I have learned that the idea that a student’s culture is to blame for hindrances in his/her ability to learn may seem to be grounded in evidence, but are actually false. As pointed out in this quote, an educator may make the argument, “Every student I have ever had from this part of town and with this way of speaking and with this skin color also performed very poorly as students, so I conclude that those factors are what is causing a deficit.”, but they are missing an important point. Some minority students face significant challenges to learning not because of the cultural characteristics that set them apart, but because they were not given the same advantage of exposure to literacy at a young age. The parents did not forgo this duty because of the way they spoke or because of their ethnicity, but because they did not receive solid literacy instruction themselves, and therefore are not comfortable preparing their children for school. It is a vicious cycle of poverty and lack of education that can lead to learning set-backs, not a student’s culture. And even these setbacks do not limit an individual’s ability to learn, just make it more difficult. When teachers and employers (people in power) form stereotypes about people based on the way they speak, it causes another achievement cycle, one supported by the stereotypes themselves and not the person’s actual abilities. A child with a dialect that a teacher automatically associates with low achievement will likely fulfill the teacher’s low expectations because he or she will adopt those expectations for him/herself.

However, it would easy to get into the habit of making assumptions about students if the same cultural factors and poor achievement seemed to go hand in hand, which is another reason that it is important for teachers to be culturally responsive. In order to have an inclusive classroom, a teacher should know about the cultures and backgrounds of students, and know them as individuals. If teachers did this, they would be able to see that a poor student was struggling because he had never been read to before Kindergarten, not because he is from West Virginia. Patterns of poor performance may appear because the minority group is stuck in literacy-education-poverty cycle that is not at all inherent to his/her culture.
It is important for teachers in Appalachia to understand these cycles and the relationship between language, literacy, and power because many students will speak in Appalachian dialect. The teacher must know how to increase understanding and achievement in Standard English without alienating students by teaching them that their dialect, which is a part of their culture, is wrong. Doing so would only feed the cycle of Appalachian children with strong dialects performing poorly in literacy and dropping out of school just like their parents did, because no one wants to hear that who they are is wrong. Telling a child that how they speak and how their parents speak is wrong will likely create hostile feelings toward school, and tensions between parents and educators. Instead, a teacher must balance instruction in Standard English with code switching, making sure the students understand that the way they speak is an acceptable part of their culture, but there are other, more formal ways of speaking that need to be learned as well.

2.To overcome cultural deficit perspective in students, teachers can use the cultural capital, the knowledge and resources the students have as a result of their cultures, as a starting point for learning. Luis Moll’s research into hidden family resources revealed that instruction methods and assessment in the classroom were overlooking a vast amount of knowledge and resources that the students already have.

“ By the end of the semester, 20 parents and community people had visited Hilda’s class and shared their knowledge with her students….’These visits shaped the students’ and teacher’s perception of the parents and the community.’ Moll concluded”

By tapping into the students’ culture and personal interests, teachers implementing Moll’s research found a gold mine of motivation for students to learn, and saw achievement levels of poorly performing students rise significantly. By building on what students already know, teachers avoid intimidating the students about the material. Also, In this way, teachers can show students that their own heritages, family histories, and culture are valuable resources, just as the students in this reading learned that their parents and the people in their own communities have an important place in the classroom, and had thier perspectives of where they were from shaped in a positive way.

3.Teachers and schools can contribute to poor literacy instruction by alienating minority students by making them feel that the way they speak or look is unacceptable (and therefore that they are unacceptable) in school. A child who is constantly drilled that the way he speaks is wrong will likely feel hostile towards school and choose to side with things he already is invested in, such as his family and culture, and may decide he doesn’t need school. A teacher should avoid creating dividing lines between school and home, instead working to integrate students’ culture and family resources. Instead of suggesting to students that their backgrounds are something that hold them back and must be overcome to learn, as in the cultural deficit perspective, teachers should take the cultural difference perspective and use the students’ interests and backgrounds as grounds for learning, teaching children that those things are valuable and a source of pride and identity. The benefits of the “cultural difference perspective” over the “cultural deficit perspective” are clear.

“Ultimately, the Cultural Deficit Theorists viewed cultures and environments outside of the mainstream Euro-American, as inferior. …In one article Martin Deutsch clearly outlined the middle class expectations and values existing in the educational system, while pointing out the deficiencies inherent in other groups such as ‘American Indian children, mountain children and children from other non-industrial groups’”

No one will be motivated to learn by a teacher whose educational philosophy automatically labels them as “inferior”. Teachers can also contribute to poor literacy by sticking with traditional teaching methods that clearly are not working for their students. As Amy Clark, Appalachian Writing Project director says,

"Some teachers tend to copy pedagogical instruction that mirrors the way they were taught. For many, this is a correctionist or formalist approach to teaching writing that has been around for years and places standard grammatical and mechanical forms at the forefront of writing instruction. The result is diminished writing among our local students due to a fear of judgment."

Forcing students to make “counterintuitive” choices on tests that conflict with their first language or way of speaking, puts these students at a considerable disadvantage. Therefore, standardized tests and rote learning methods of teaching may not be effective tools in classrooms with students of different language pattern backgrounds. (Gates)

4. Some strategies that can improve literacy instruction for speakers of non-standard English are to integrate literacy instruction into every subject, to recognize that students may struggle in some literacies while succeeding in others (and use the literacies they succeed in as a learning base) and to extend literacy instruction to new media such as non-digitized multimedia, digitized multimedia, and hypertext or hypermedia. (The National Council of Teachers of English)
For teaching literacy instruction to speakers of non-standard English, Victoria Gates suggests that educators must first hold and apply the belief that “children of poverty are learners, have been learning since birth, are ready to learn at any time, and will learn.”. Secondly, she says that it is “necessary to accept their language to help them begin their education” Thirdly, she concludes that “..we must realize that speakers will use the appropriate oral language…to fit to the social context they find themselves in. (Gates)

Another strategy, suggested by educational researcher Luis Moll, is to use the students' own "funds of knowledge" in the classroom. Every student has a background of resources in the knowlege carried by his or her family and community, and in areas that his personal interests have lead him to learn about on his own. Moll found that basing lessons on these funds of knowledge engaged students in education on a high level not prevously reached. Students will be engaged in learning when their culture is intergrated into education rather than excluded. Taking the "cultural capital" approach of viewing students' unique histories, ways of speaking, and ways of living as valuable, and showing them that those things can be assets to learning by incorporating them into lessons, causes students to be invested in learning the material.

The National Council of teachers of English also provides some strategies for teaching speakers of non-standard English.
“The teaching of writing should assume students will begin with the sort of language with which they are most at home and most fluent in their speech… The goal is not to leave students where they are, however, but to move them toward greater flexibility, so that they can write not just for their own intimates but for wider audiences...The teaching of excellence in writing means adding language to what already exists, not subtracting.”
Teachers must be ready to accept and incorporate a child’s native language or dialect in literacy instruction because teaching is a collaboration between the sudents and teacher. If the teacher only allows his or her language to be used, the child is left without a voice. If the teacher instead educates him or herself about the child’s language and community and works to make the classroom inclusive, the child is free to add a new “standard” dialect to the one he already knows.

5.Making this video, along with the readings and the discussions we have had in class so far, has helped me to think of my culture and heritage in a way I never have before. In fact, I have never really thought much about Appalachian culture. When I heard the word “culture,” I thought of people from Europe or Native Americans. I guess I hadn’t thought of culture as the everyday things- what our houses look like, relationship with nature, what we eat, and what we do for fun. But of course, those things are culture and West Virginias do have rich and interesting cultural backgrounds. Making this video helped me to understand the importance of my own culture, and built connections between home and school experience, which is an inclusive classroom practice.

I have learned that when a student walks into a classroom, the teacher gets the whole person, including his/her experiences, values, family influence, perspectives, and culture. Since one of the best ways to teach, and to have an inclusive classroom, is to draw on what the students already know and are interested in, a teacher must be able to accept and work with parts of a student’s culture that he might not understand. Making the Where I am from video was an example of this because I know I was personally very invested in doing as well as I could on it because it represents everything that is already important to me. I wanted to do justice to my family and the things I love. If I had just been making a video on some prompt that the teacher gave us (that probably would be something the teacher, rather than I, was interested in) I wouldn’t have put in all the time I did or have been as satisfied with the results. I enjoyed making it, yet I still feel like I met the learning objectives of the lesson. Since the video gave us a chance to share their varied perspectives and experiences, the classroom is more inclusive and supportive.

The project showed me how important being culturally responsive as an educator is also because one characteristic of an inclusive classroom is a sense of community. After watching and reading the poems of many of the other students in the class, I feel more connected as a group and as individuals. I still don’t “know” everyone, but I know enough to understand that we all have a lot in common, and I found many other students’ backgrounds very interesting. This changed my thinking in another way because I hadn’t thought of West Virginia, especially this area, as ethnically or culturally diverse. This was really a stereotype on my part because I assumed that because most of us have the same skin color, we are rather homogenous. But that’s not true at all. After watching the Where I am From videos, I found out that even though we all have many things in common ( such as being very close to family and loving to be outside) we come from a variety of cultural heritages that continue to influence our lives. Some of us are Irish, English, German, Italian, etc., and some have different experiences because they were raised in a different state. I am much more likely to start a conversation in class or ask someone I don’t know for help. And now I know that I want to create that kind of atmosphere in my own classroom too. Being a culturally responsive educator is tied to inclusive classroom practices because it would be impossible to be truly inclusive without accepting and utilizing aspects of students’ culture in the classroom.

6.One strategy I plan on using to support literacy learning for all learners in my classroom is incorporating literacy into my lessons. Even though I am going to be an Art teacher, I know that literacy instruction should be taught in all subjects because it is an integral part of every subject. Art has its own vocabulary and language and students will need to understand it. I do what I can to know students as individuals and know their interests so I can use those interests as a starting point for learning. I will use self-directed learning whenever possible to motivate students to read by drawing on their interests, not just mine. Since some students are more successful in some literacies than others, I will also be sure to incorporate a variety of literacies, such as social networks, media, and magazine articles, rather than just readings from text books. When I assign a reading or writing activity, I will be sure to discuss the material to check comprehension and retention, and to see if my methods are working. I will look for ways to keep informed about developments in literacy instruction and use assessments to reflect on my success as well as my students’.( The National Council of Teachers of English)

Sources

The National Council of Teachers of English. (n.d.). Adolescent literacy. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Chron0907ResearchBrief

(2002). As soon as she opened her mouth. In L. Delpit & J.K Dowdy (Eds.), In The skin that we speak: An anthology of essays on language culture and power. (Print: Anthology)

Inos, R. H. I. (n.d.). Research review for inclusive practices. Retrieved from http://www.prel.org/products/Products/Inclusive-practices.htm

Bolima, D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding: Educational learning theories . Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm

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Where I am From

Double Entry Journal #4

Honoring Dialect and Increasing Student Performance in Standard English.

1.One thing that I am picking up from this article and the other readings that we have looked at, is that sometimes teaching involves taking risks and drastically departing from the beaten path and traditional methods of teaching. Teachers may feel lead to disregard curriculum schedules and the content that they are “supposed” to teach in order to motivate the students to learn. Once students are engaged and are interested in learning, teachers can then use the inroads they have created to bring in traditional academic content.

Another thing I have noticed in the readings is that when they are faced with frustration and failure, the teachers in the readings do not stay there. They collaborate with other educators and experiment and if necessary, make changes to their methods and content. They don’t stick to methods that are clearly inefficient and pretend the students are still learning because they don’t know what to do. The ones who saw real success in improving the learning experiences of their students, like Liz Philips, were not afraid to admit that what they were doing wasn’t working, and worked together with others to find a way to fix the problem.

One thing that sticks out to me is that the successful changes in teaching styles that we have been reading about are all the result of collaboration. Maybe a teacher implemented strategies on his/her own, but the most work was done by group studies and experiments such as the team of teachers in this article who conducted a  focused inquiry into the structures of local dialect in order to help students learn code switching and standard English. I also noticed that the teachers were not on their own in their research- they received a grant help conduct their study.

2. One example of literacy instruction presented in the article that uses inclusive classroom practices is the way Philips allows the students to speak in their dialect without correcting them or telling them they are wrong. Teaching them instead the concept of code switching, and the differences in structure between Standard English and their local dialect allows students to learn to speak in different ways and know what is appropriate without making them feel threatened. As Philips said “ I know my kids as individuals, and this is who they are.” She accepts her students as they are, and knows that their way of speaking does not affect their ability to learn.

Another inclusive practice that was used is the incorporation of multicultural information, resources, and materials. Philips branched out from book and internet research and had her students interview parents and grandparents about Appalachian English. This is also connected to building bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences.

    3.  In the third grade my class did a project similar to the “Where you are from” video we are making now. We read a book in class based on the author’s description of her home and cultural roots, and then we made our own book.  We started the text with “When I was young in (name of hometown) and then described our family and home. We also took pictures to go with the text, printed it all out, and pasted it on construction paper pages. The finished books were laminated and bound. I remember it because I was so proud that I had made my own book. It was a very rich literary experience for me, and I think the whole class enjoyed it immensely. It reflected many inclusive literary practices, especially building bridges of meaningfulness between home and school. It also covered all the learning styles since it involved reading, writing, listening, and actively working with our hands to put it together. It also gave us an opportunity to share our varied perspectives and experiences, and helped us to listen and get to know each other. It was a great experience, and if I can find a way to incorporate it into an art lesson, I would love to use it someday with my students.

 

Citation

Epstein, P., & Herring-Harris, L. ( 2011, September 15). Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard english. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   This article, A Look in the Mirror: "Polishing" Inclusive Practices with Self-Reflection, focuses on the importance of self-relection to inclusive classroom practices and provides a list of questions teachers can ask themselves to evaluate how well they are incorporating them. The questions apply very well to the area of literacy. For example: "Do I use active learning strategies such as "think, pair, share" to promote recall and understanding of new learning? " This strategy could be useful for ensuring student comprehension of reading content.

 

 

Citation

Sulzberger, L. A. (n.d.). A look in the mirror: "polishing" inclusive practices with self-reflection. Retrieved from http://education.wm.edu/centers/ttac/resources/articles/inclusion/polishinginclusivepractices/index.php

Where I am From

I am from steep, rocky trails, from Merrill hiking boots, and long walks rewarded by apple blossoms.

I am from the hand built rough lumber house on Dunkard Mill Road; the one without a drop of paint, hidden deep in a valley and protected by tall trees on all sides.

I am from the time my Dad carried Mom across the creek to see the property where they would build our home, from the bridge they built first.

I am from a couple of back to-the-landers from the city with a dream,   green thumbs, and determined work ethic.

I am from the morning glories on the garden fence, the pots of petunias.

I am from corn roasts and Saturday Night Oldies; my Mom’s height and my Dad’s black-brown eyes.

From “Remember the seven P’s” and “This is a one cat household!”

I am from a faith in Jesus Christ that I found on my own…with the help of a pink Bible and the creative power I saw in the land and sky around me.

I'm from England and Savage Mountain, from blueberries, and everything else that can be grown in a garden.

I am from an older sister who taught me that family defies distance and time; an older brother who read the entire "Goosebumps" series to me, and has been a friend and role model for me all my life.

I am from a way of life shaped by the ebb and flow of the seasons.

From a family that only needs to be together to have a good time. Gathered around the warmth of bonfires in the summer, of the woodstove in winter.

From the picture wall by the dart board, where a snapshot of everyone who plays ends up-a growing collection of family and friends.

I am from a family tree planted in solid ground and grown closer together by love, by work, by good times, by loss, and by healing.

I am from a Father of few words and all capital letters; from a mother who was a librarian with beautiful handwriting and a vocabulary like a dictionary, who introduced me to the love of travel through books.

I am from roots deeply grounded in the years of work and love that my family has invested in our home

I am from hills  that have inspired  an interest in Geography and people and places; an interest forever accompanied by the knowledge that no matter how far I travel, nothing will ever compare to where I am from.

 

 Citation

The where i'm from template . (2005, March 05). Retrieved from http://www.swva.net/fred1st/wif.htm