End of course reflection...

I can't believe that this is the last week of our course. I have enjoyed how discussion based the class was, and how much we shared. I also ended up loving the student-centered model of the class with the student facilitations each week. It honestly has inspired me to make some changes in my own classroom, giving my students more opportunities to present information to the class themselves and encouraging them to ask questions about culture or speak up when they don't understand something that they are learning.

I will be honest, this class has not always been easy because every week it seems that I leave class challenged in yet another area, but the uneasy feeling is so worth it because it usually leads to me making necessary changes in my teaching practices. I hope that I continue to find ways to be challenged so that I never become complacent in my teaching and I always find new ways to connect with my students and serve them better!

"Positive" Stereotypes

I think that the most impacting portion of the facilitation on Tuesday was the activity and subsequent discussion we had on positive versus negative stereotypes. First of all, when we posted up all of the stereotypes we wrote down on the post-its, I was honestly sickened by some of the ones that I read. It is crazy to me that our society has created such negative and demeaning images when it comes to some groups of people. In comparison, when someone hears the statement that "All Asians are smart" or "All women can cook," it seems as though these statements are extremely positive ones in comparison to some of the negative stereotypes mentioned before that tear down and demean the overall image of people groups. Our discussion, however, pointed to the fact that whether you are saying that "all white people are racist" or "all black people are great dancers," both stereotypes are negative because they are seeking to place a label on an entire group of people. There is no such thing as a "positive stereotype" because all stereotypes seek to place people groups "in a box," stripping away the individuality of the people within that group. All stereotypes create an expectation of who people should be or how they should act according to the people group that they are a part of; the moment that they do not meet the expectations set by stereotypes, they are made to feel that something is wrong with them, or they are accused of trying to be someone that they are not.
Not only in my classroom, but also in my own personal life, I am going to seek to fight against all of the stereotypes I am inundated with daily. Though I cannot completely eradicate all stereotypes that exist due to media and society, I can work to not let them play a role in the way I look at or interact with other people. Also, though I cannot force my students to do the same in their own lives, I can make my classroom a place where stereotypical comments are not overlooked or permitted. I hope to have honest conversations with my students about what stereotypes mean and the negative effects that they create in order to get them to think about the things they choose to say, and give them a greater understanding of the power of their words.

What do we do?

I usually wait to do my reflections, but tonight I left class burdened, with such a heavy heart. To be completely honest, at the end of class, I had to fight tears. I know that may sound extreme and overly emotional, but I am completely appalled by the state of our education system and the disservice that we are doing to our children...The question remains, however: what do we do?
I was a part of Teach For America whose sole mission was to "close the achievement gap"; we watched Waiting for Superman, which I believe sought to shine light on the problems in our education system and create change; I worked in a charter school that attempted to create change in the lives of students that they believed couldn't be done as effectively in a public school; we watched footage on Michelle Rhee who seemed to have such a passion and fire to see the districts reformed and improved; we saw how excited people were when No Child Left Behind was first signed in because people believed that true change was going to take place in our educational system... I believe that all of these things have been created or done with the best of intentions, but all have fallen short. None have created the change that they promised. So my question remains: what do we do?
There are students not realizing their full potential, and there are schools and teachers and bureaucrats that are directly contributing to that problem instead of making it better. I don't think that all, if any, of these people went into their profession with the wrong heart or the wrong motives...so what happened? What happened along the way that made their goals and their actions so convoluted?
When I see the dire state that our education system is in, I want to become an agent of change. I want to create change and reform that no one has been able to create... but then that fact makes me stop in my tracks. I want to create the change that no one has seemingly been able to create. Why? Why haven't they been able to? Instead of improving schools and creating lasting reform, many of the people who labeled themselves as "agents of change" have been villainized and mocked for their attempts. I truly do not believe that any of those people began their mission or their fight for reform seeing their failure as the end result, but they ended up there somehow...what is to say that if I attempt to do the same that I will not end up like them? So the question remains: what do we do?
I will admit, I am extremely overwhelmed by the thought of trying to ever change or reform our extremely broken educational system...I do not have some inspired thought to completely override this feeling of being utterly overwhelmed, but I will say that I am too driven by a sense of purpose to sit idly by and just accept our education system as it is. I honestly have no idea what exactly this means for me yet, and my sense of purpose and determination will always probably be somewhat cloudy and will sometimes feel rather directionless, but what I will say is that I feel extremely blessed that I have found a vocation that I have this much passion for, and I will try to do my calling justice...whatever that may be, and however that may look.

How many poker chips do you have?

I thought that the facilitation was wonderful this week because there were so many interactive, concrete strategies that really helped bring the reading to life! The part that stuck with me the most was the idea of giving students "poker chips." It was heartbreaking to think of how little "poker chips" our students with special needs have, and I was reminded of the importance of building confidence in the students and teaching from a strengths-based perspective, finding ways to build them up and find the things that they are good at and can be praised for. All this week, I thought about everything I did in terms of "poker chips"...when I reprimanded a student for their behavior, I realized that I was taking away some of their poker chips, so I needed to find another way later on to give them poker chips by finding something they had done well. I tried to remember that taking some chips is sometimes necessary, but it is okay as long as I build them back up.
I also loved the part of the evening where we "dined" on new knowledge based on different cases of students with special needs. I think that it is very important to put a "face" to each and every student with special needs instead of placing a blanket label over them. I loved that many of the articles were written from the perspective of the students with the special needs because I think that we often get caught up in the bureaucracy of issues in the schools and we forget to bring it back to the level of our students. I was reminded of how very special each and every student is, and the fact that each and every student brings something uique and important to the class that needs to be discovered and appreciated!

Teaching and Society

I think that this week's facilitation was great!! I loved that we looked at the link between society and education and discussed how the two are inextricably linked. There is no way to teach "in a vacuum," so everything that is going on in the "outside world" or "the real world" is going to directly affect our students, and therefore, it should directly affect our teaching. I think that this week there was a great balance between seeing some of the negative aspects of our society and the subsequent effects on our schools and the obstacles we as teachers have to face, but also striving to see the positive rays of light that can be found in specific students or simply in what other teachers are striving to do to help the education system one student at a time.
I believe that the most important focus of this week went back to what we have talked about from week one in this course, and that is the importance of finding a true connection with our students; that is done through seeking to get to know our students on a deeper level as well as being genuine about our own lives and our own journey toward knowledge and understanding, that even we as teachers are continually working toward. I think that the key word in all of this is genuineness. We must be genuine with our students... Genuine about wanting to get to know them as human beings as well as genuine about who we truly are as their teachers. This is definitely not easy to do, but it is necessary in order to help our students navigate our society, which can be quite a daunting task.
We tackled some difficult issues this week, such as the difficult place adolescents hold in our society, the pressures and ostracism of some students in the LGBTQ community, and the prevalence of eating disorders and body image issues in our schools. I think that the common theme with all of these issues is the importance of being open and honest with our students about these topics and actually working to incorporate them organically into our curriculum. I already mentioned (in the facilitation questions last week) that I would like to incorporate the idea of body image and culture into my Spanish class, bringing up that fact that many Spanish speaking nations seek after a few "extra curves" and that they do not have the preoccupation with "being skinny" that many people in the United States do. I would also love to look at different coming-of-age customs throughout the Spanish-speaking world in order to bring in the aspect of adolescents in our society and celebrate where they are in their lives, as opposed to ignoring it or even looking down on their particular stage in our society. I believe the last issue we discussed in class-- that of students in the LGBTQ community-- would be the most difficult for me as a foreign language teacher to organically incorporate into my curriculum, but I was thinking that perhaps we could look at LGBTQ issues from a global perspective, and see the cultural differences of how this community is accepted (or ostracized) not just in the United States, but also in Spanish-speaking countries.
This week again reminded me of the great responsibility we have as educators to bring "the real world" into our classrooms as well as getting to know the "real world" our students carry with them into our classrooms daily.

Complicated Conversation...

So, the title of this week was "Anti-Intellectualism and Complicated Conversation," and to be completely honest I feel like I have stayed in the state of "complicated conversation." There were so many different topics that were touched on...the privatization and feminization of education and their negative effects; education becoming a business model and being destroyed because of that; teachers who start out committed, yet end up losing their focus; the somewhat negative idea of teachers starting families; the difficult implications of teaching morals to students; and the societal shift of seeing intellectuals more negatively as eccentric. Usually, I leave class feeling inspired to do something or change something in my actual classroom on a daily level, but this week I left feeling a little directionless. The issues discussed were so big and over-arching, and sometimes I question my ability as one single teacher to truly change anything in a monumental sense. I know that all of the things that we discussed are extremely important to discuss, but I felt that some of the discussion was a little more negatively focused than usual. To be completely honest, I believe that some issues were overly generalized, which led me to remove myself a bit from the conversation because I do not deal well with confrontation.
As I reflect, while I do not have some great revelation this week that will change the way I teach forever, I do feel that I have gained a greater understanding of myself as a student. I have to be willing to stand up and speak my mind and disagree in a respectful, forthright manner. If I cannot become comfortable to do that myself as a student, then how can I expect to cultivate that as a teacher in my own students?
I am still processing my thoughts from this past week, so this reflection may not be as rich or refined or complete as I would like it to be, but that is where I currently am, and I cannot become good at reflection unless I am honest about where I am in the process...

"I have to do me"

"We have known for a long time that as long as human beings are capable of creativity, human conduct cannot be predicted" (Pinar, p. 107).
I would love for teaching to come with a checklist. As I have stated before, I am a product of detailed syllabi, hours-long test preps, and formulaic thinking. That is what many of my classes consisted of as I grew up, and it is definitely my comfort zone. I like to be given clear directions and guidelines, and I can follow those directions to the exact specifications of whoever is giving them to me... Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately) that is not at all how teaching works! As Pinar states in  What is Curriculum Theory?, as long as our students are capable of creativity, we as educators cannot predict how their minds will work or what knowledge will be considered most important to them.
I was challenged yet again this week. As I said in class, I feel as though I leave class every Tuesday night convinced that I need to change absolutely everything about my teaching in order to be that inspirational teacher I so desire to be. I want to be innovative and creative and thought provoking and interesting and challenging and caring and organized and passionate and inspiring... and all of these things that it is honestly impossible to be all at once, especially in my first few years of teaching. Yet here I sit, the girl who could always follow a checklist, and I am trying to fulfill what I think the "perfect teacher" checklist entails.
I so appreciated the discussion we had in class because I think that it finally put to rest some of the haunting thoughts I leave class with every week that I am not good enough and that I will never be "that teacher." The conversation centered around "Just doing you." I don't have to be the overly dramatized "Freedom Writers" teacher or the veteran teacher who seems to have it all together or the artistic teacher who is busting at the seams with creative ideas. I just have to be me. Every teacher who spoke in our class this week inspired me because I have looked at each and every teacher in our class as someone who I would like to teach like; however, all of them said the same thing..."I have to do me." I have to stop trying to figure out the "how to teach well formula" because it does not exist. Just as I have to allow my students to be themselves and to explore that which interests them, I have to allow myself to do the same. I have to stop feeling like I have to fit a certain mold or teach a certain way in order for my students to learn. I simply have to be willing to be myself, pour every ounce of passion I have for education into my job, and invite my students along for the adventure that is teaching and learning.
I want to show my students that I am learning alongside them and I am committed to change and challenge just as I would like them to be. I am excited this week because I am starting to make changes to my curriculum that I think will be beneficial to my students and will help them learn more than they have been learning. To be completely honest, I feel like I have no idea what I am doing, but I know that if I continue to shift things little by little, I will begin to feel like I have a better grasp on this thing called teaching. And as I make these little changes, I am slowly putting my stamp on the curriculum, and I am slowly but surely learning how to "do me."

Curriculum and Student Interest

I really enjoyed the connection made this week between curriculum and the importance of getting to know our students. Many times, I think that it is tempting to keep the two very separate in our minds because curriculum sometimes seems so sterile and one-dimensional, while getting to know our students can seem so multifaceted and "non-academic." The activity where we had to directly connect our content area curriculum to the different ways students would like to be known/ understood was helpful with making that connection. It showed in a concrete way that presenting the curriculum and getting to know our students are not two entities that are to be kept separate. It is quite the opposite; we need to link the two together in order to truly invest our students in what we are teaching and to have them truly connect to the material. I was also reminded that for each lesson, I must think to myself "Why will this matter to my students? What will make this lesson interesting to them?" As educators, we must constantly assess our mindsets going into the classroom, and we must ensure that we are making every possible effort to keep the atmosphere positive, interesting, and motivating for our students.

The facilitation this week was very effective due to the various activities that kept interest and interaction high, which I think did a wonderful job of mirroring what the facilitator was saying we should do in our own classrooms. The various video clips were interesting, and I think that they presented the material being shared in a more fun and interesting light. Also, I appreciated being able to break into groups based on our content areas and create lessons. The most important part of that activity was the fact that we were required to explain our reasoning for the lesson and why we thought it would be interesting to our students, reminding me of the necessity of taking into account students' interests and personal motivations when planning lessons. I also appreciated the acrostic poem that we got to create around the one word that we thought was central to teaching. As the facilitator stated, this caused us to think critically and to "think outside of the box," which is what we should be having our students do in class.

This facilitation inspired me to go into my classroom the next day and use more multimedia sources to support what I was teaching. The videos I found really interested the students and got them excited about what we were learning. The videos also gave them a new and different perspective other than just my explanation. I will definitely continue to increase the use of videos and media in my classroom!

I would have loved to learn more practical ideas on how to adjust curriculum to make it more personal and applicable to students and their interests. I loved the ideas that I did hear from the other teachers on how to connect with students and create more interest, so I would have loved to have had more time to share and explore different ideas in more depth. I usually heartily agree with the things we discuss theoretically, but sometimes I find it difficult to practically apply everything we talk about because I need more concrete examples.

Avoiding Pre-Packaged Curriculum

I went into this week very nervous because it was my and Shae's turn for facilitation. As I stated in class, when we started planning for this past week, I wanted to have a definite, exact plan. For our activity where people shared quotes from the book and wrote down their reflections, I wanted to have all of the quotes chosen and typed out so we could distribute them to the class, ensuring that all of the main points we wanted to talk about would be covered through the discussion. As we were talking, however, we realized that if we chose each quote and told everyone what they were to reflect on, we were "pre-digesting" and "pre-packaging" the curriculum just as Ayers warns against in the text. We ended up having all of our colleagues choose their own quotes to reflect upon and then share with the class, and that ended up creating a much richer and more diverse dialogue than we could have ever tried concocting on our own. The same thing occurred when we tried thinking of an overall theme for the week. We realized that we were again attempting to be the leaders with all of the answers that we could then feed to the people that we were leading. We wanted to be able to find and tell the class what the theme was, but we came to the conclusion that we should take a note from Ayers and instead find the theme with the class as our discussion progressed and developed. We were able to have groups of three people do graffiti posters where they wrote down single words or drew pictures that they thought encapsulated the theme as individuals, and then they came together to summarize the theme as a group. When everyone shared their group themes with the whole class, I was so impressed by the creativity and deep thinking that went into each one. And I was yet again reminded that through the discussion and reflection that took place in the class, the themes that everyone came up with were much deeper and far-reaching than anything Shae and I could have developed before the class. This week was great for me because I feel that by leading the facilitation, I was able to try and put into practice a lot of what Ayers talks about in his book as far as being on an educational journey with your students and making sure to help interest and guide rather than dictate what exactly must be learned.

Week 1 Reflection- Self- Regulated Learning

This past week, I left class very encouraged, but at the same time slightly overwhelmed. I want to give my students worthwhile experiences, and I want to become a learner and an explorer alongside them, but—as we discussed in class—I did not grow up in a school system that encouraged that kind of critical thought or open-ended learning. I have to be an exploratory learner as far as exploratory learning is concerned because it is not something that I have had my own personal experiences with. I feel most comfortable giving my students guidelines and parameters because that is always how I thrived in school, and I personally did not feel comfortable when my teachers left projects or questions open-ended. However, I am realizing that though I did well on standardized tests under that type of instruction, all of the guidelines and parameters ended up being a detriment to my critical thinking and my ability to think and explore freely. I would like to now learn how to change my mindset… to move away from the comfort and safety of textbook curriculum and standardized test preparation and into the unknown of my students’ own self regulated learning.

What really helped me come to this conclusion this past week was how open the facilitation was. The ability we had as students to read the Web 2.0 tools article on self-regulated learning and then reflect and share what we thought about others reflections helped me to start off the class knowing that my personal thoughts and the thoughts of my fellow classmates would be central to our learning. Also, the open discussion we had at the end of class was what I honestly learned the most from. As I got the opportunity to hear other teachers talk about their struggles working in a system driven by standards and norm-referenced tests, I was encouraged to continue to move outside of that box. I was also inspired as I got to hear more veteran “rebel” educators share how they were able to work around such restrictions and give their students a challenging education.

I think that the facilitation format and subsequent discussion were so wonderful because I felt inspired to go into my class the next day and challenge my students to critically think more than I had the day before. I gave my students an assignment to work on where I wanted them to depict the verb conjugations visually, and while many students wanted me to give them exact guidelines or tell them exactly what to draw, I told them that I wanted them to push themselves to think outside of the box and think critically instead of depending on me to directly give them the answers. It was very exciting when the students started to take it on and realize that they were capable of creating and thinking outside of the box!

One thing I would have liked to learn more of the other night in class is how specifically other teachers moved away from their textbooks and curriculum and more into student-directed learning. Again, I am one who thrives on guidelines, and while I am slowly moving away from that thinking, I feel that I still need some help to figure out how I can proactively make my classroom student-centered. I would have loved if we had more time for the veteran teachers to discuss different ideas and mindsets they went into their classrooms with in order to bring the students’ critical thinking and creativity to the forefront.