1) At the National Archives Picturing the Century Exhibit I viewed a haunting photo of a mining family in the Post War America section. A mother and her children in a bleak room with newspapers on the wall as wallpaper. If you want to know what poverty looks like, here it is. Primary sources are the best because they are unedited. The reader, viewer, or listener can make their own judgments directly from the source. No spin. No looking through the lense of someone else's interpretation--a direct response. They're always the most interesting because they're the most real.
2) At the National Education Association website Acheivement Gaps page under "Becoming a Culturally Competent Educator," there are three ways to promote culural competence that fit my teaching style
3)At Kidsclick I found the Encyclopedia Mythica which appears to be a great site for finding myths, folk tales, legends ect. from a variety of cultures. It's written for a 7th grade level or higher.
4)Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators is a great site. I liked the Literature and ELA page. It had an endless array of resource material for teaching English. For example, there's a step-by-step guide for research and writing "help site" for high school students and a usage guide, book reviews, information about authors, free ebooks and a lot more.
5)Instructional Model on Multiple Intelligences. I've been introduced to the ideas before, but it was great to find a resource that explores it thoroughly; it's one thing to talk about in theory, but another thing to know how to identify the different learning styles, and how to teach to them. That's why I was particularly drawn to the section on listening in the classroom. I would like to understand better how to spot these differences early and adjust the classroom environment accordingly. I thought the powerpoint introuction in Resources was good because you could develop something like that targeted to your students to teach them how to identify their own intelligences, so that they know how they learn best, where their strengths are, and how to get the most out of their education whatever the setting--and to perhaps learn how to communicate to their teachers what works with them.
6)Teaching Tolerance. The lesson that I chose to tag was "Interviewing Immigrants" designed to help high school students be more sensitive to the needs and struggles of English Language learners at their schools. I though this was a brilliant idea. The teacher brings their history class to an EL class, and has the students interview fellow students who are learning English. The students don't know why they are going to the class and the element of surprise is part of recreating the immigrant experience for them. They sit down with a student and a helper to hear the students story of their journey to the U.S. and ask questions. They each have to:
The activity is designed to help students appreciate and have empathy for their immigrant classmates and by having to learn phrases in another language themselves, they see how difficult and frustrating is can be. I think this is a great activity, especially in this area. There are som many misconceptions and unwarranted fears about immigration. This activity can not only reduce tensions, but help a student to make those connections to our common humanity. Also it's just very interesting to learn about other people's experiences. Students need to understand this country was built on immigration.
6)Multicultural Education and Equity Awareness Quiz. I was surprised by a couple of questions. First that the U.S. and U.K. treat their children worse than some of those other places. I know there are some serious poverty issues in places like India, so I was surprised that they ranked higher than we did. I've never been to India, but I've seen things in documentaries and film that showed some pretty dire circumstances, so I'm interested to learn more about that. I suspect it has to do in large part with health care, since we have nearly 50 million uninsured people many of whom are children. It may have something to do with education spending since I think our per capita spending is quite low compared to other countries, especially considering our wealth. I'd like to see the criteria that was used.
I was also appalled that doctors are giving subcare to their gay and lesbian patients. I would expect more mature, professional and compassionate behavior from them. I had been operating under the assumption that doctor's took their hippocratic oath more seriously than that.
I liked the question about crime and immigration. It was great to see that immigrant men are 5 times less likely to end up in jail than their white counterparts. Too many people blame crime on immigrants when all the ones I know are honest, hardworking people.
I thought it was obnoxious that legacy privileges can equal a higher SAT score of 10%, but not surprising. A lot of things didn't surprise me, like the high mortality rate of mothers in Africa, since they're aparently not getting the care they need. Childbirth has always been a big cause for high mortality in women; it was in this country too, for a long time. It's still shocking though to think that in modern times women are still dying in childbirth at these rates.
A lot of the questions about wealth didn't surprise me, although I did guess it would take a CEO at least a week to earn my annual salary.
8)Netiquette Guidelines. I got a 90% on the quiz. I missed question 3 about scrolling in chat rooms. I never go to chat rooms so I guessed on that one. I'm still not sure what scrolling means in this way. I figured it was reading back over the conversation.
It's essential to teach students about netiquette for the same reasons you teach them manners. So they won't embarrass themselves :/) or get into trouble, and to keep our humanity () and civiliity alive in an anonymous environment, where it's easier to foroget your still dealing with a person on the other end. With all our new technlogy tools for communication, we need to be respectful of other people's privacy, content rights, and their time.
What insights did you get from the article on how to be a better teacher?
First of all, as teachers we need to model good digital citizenship. I liked the article's emphasis on working with parents. It's been apparent to me that some parents are lost when it come to technology and can't assist their children. For example, the class I'm substitute teaching for now uses the ARIES grading system and Turnitin.com (which is a website that checks papers for plaigerism). I've had calls from parents who have expressed trouble in using the system, so it would seem like a good idea to have a technology night where the parents could learn how to monitor their children's progress online. Perhaps this is already being done. Issues of safety, ettiquite, security, laws, and appropriate use could be addressed at such a meeting. This might be a way to start the conversation between parents, teachers, and students that the author mentions. I also liked the article's suggestion that teachers encourage an atmosphere of exploration and risk taking with new technologies. For his Eagle Scout project, my nephew created an animated public service announcement for the Houchin Blood Bank to encourage blood donation and it was really clever. He coordinated a group of other students in the project and it aired on television, but you wouldn't believe the resistance he got in proposing the project.
See my nephew's commercial spot on my education site list.
