Thursday, October 21, 2010
The Social Classroom-An Interview with the guys over at The Tightwad Tech
Monday, October 18, 2010
The (Mis/Over)Use of Technology in my Classroom
"The only thing I'm not sure how I feel about is how technological the class is. It's nice to be more modern but when your computer decides to not work for a night you're screwed. And it's difficult to remember to turn something in online that you already turned in in class. Which reminds me I need to go do that..." |
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Online Learning
The primary issue in this paper is becoming aware of how moving courses online or using other technologies to hybridize courses, with a focus at the community college-level, can affect culturally responsive pedagogy. This topic was especially interesting to me because in addition for my own love of technology, my husband just finished a thesis on teaching composition online and how we must examine the ways technology is influencing our pedagogies so that we are still sticking to teaching the way we believe we should.
Smith and Ayers focus on ways that nonwestern learners may be inhibited by the use of technology in community college classes. By pointing out some fundamental dimensions of nonwestern versus western world views (see Table 1) and cognitive styles (see Table 2), we start to see how coming from background that emphasizes community over the individual can impact the way a learner approaches online learning.
They encourage remembering the following constructivist learning theory principles:
- Learning is contextualized in action and played out in everyday situations.
- True knowledge is acquired through active participation.
- Learning is a process of social action and engagement rooted in distinctive ways of thinking, acting, and communicating.
- Learning can be assisted by experts and solidified through apprenticeship.
- Learning is an important means of participating in a social environment.
Mostly, they propose being varied in activities and methods to be as fair as possible to all types of learners. I think it’s really important to remember that if you are designing online or hybrid classes, that not only has your classroom “location” changed, but so has the “environment.” It’s important to be aware of your own teaching philosophy and be sure you are really handling this new environment appropriately.
Smith, D., & Ayers, D. (2006). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Online Learning: Implications for the Globalized Community College. Community College Journal of Research & Practice, 30(5/6), 401-415. doi:10.1080/10668920500442125.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Looking Out Her Window: A reflection on Esperanza’s worldview
Sandra Cisnero’s book The House on Mango Street is a novel that is best described as poetry in prose. Each chapter, described as vignettes, or “short, impressionistic scenes,” contains a snapshot of the life of Esperanza, a young girl coming-of-age in a Chicano barrio in Chicago. The basic plot of the book is that Esperanza’s family has just moved to a house on Mango Street that they bought. It is the first house they have lived in that they did not rent, but it is not necessarily the house they always dreamed of. As Esperanza grows up, she learns lots of life lessons that could not have been learned anywhere else and gives us a unique perspective on life in this barrio. Each little vignette, while not always connected to the one before or after, gives a little picture of her life and some value or insight she learned.
I chose this book because I teach Spanish but am a nonnative speaker with limited exposure to Hispanic culture. This book gave me an intimate insight into this culture of Hispanics living in the US. I was moved by, and unfortunately could identify with, one passage titled, “Those Who Don’t.” Here is a short excerpt:
Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. The think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake…All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.
There is a lot written by and about Hispanic culture that explores this idea of “otherness” and how it affects the way we perceive each other. It is a bit chilling to see this through the eyes of a young girl and realize we are all being very silly and ignorant.
One of my favorite vignettes is called “A Smart Cookie” and is one in which Esperanza tells about her mom reminiscing that she “could’ve been somebody” but didn’t because she didn’t have nice clothes. This really reflects some of the cultural norms that some of us overlook. I come from a low socioeconomic background and my clothes were mostly secondhand growing up. I can remember being picked on school for not having name-brand clothing but I don’t think I would have ever thought of it as an impediment of that magnitude. I think that the culture norm engrained in me of not caring what others think, kept this from affecting me the way it did Esperanza’s mom.
My absolute favorite is the chapter called “My Name,” probably because it focuses on the way the language barrier effects how Esperanza thinks about herself and it is the language and the sounds it makes that most interests me. The majority of this passage is also quoted at the very beginning of the book.
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters…At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish is made out of softer something…But I am always Esperanza.
She identifies as just herself even though she recognizes that she isn’t seen the same way by different people.
There are so many cultural experiences that are totally foreign to me in this book, like visiting a fortune teller and playing Double Dutch, but there are some that ring very true as well, like reflections on being smart instead of pretty and the sometimes fickle nature of friendship. This book has helped me see that no matter how different we are, we all have something in common and we all have something to teach each other. Although she is a fictional character, by the end of the book I feel like I’ve made a new friend in little Esperanza and I’m glad to have gotten to see out her little window on the world.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to catch a new perspective on the world. Whether your interest is Hispanic culture in particular or not, the book is a wonderful insight on our neighbors here in the US. This would be a great text to use in the classroom in a variety of ways. The short length of each vignette makes it perfect for any assignment. You could have students read the entire book, which is only about 110 pages or only one or two short passages. The level of depth and research on any one piece could be adjusted based on your learners and the time you have. Another interesting aspect to this text is the multiple ways to approach it. It could be approached from most any discipline. There is the “coming-of-age” piece that might be relevant to young high school students. It could be used for reading comprehension or literature analysis. As I mentioned above, it takes a very insider look on the idea of “otherness” that could be explored from a literary, political, cultural, or historical perspective. There is so much depth in this little novel. I imagine it could be useful to most teachers in some way, even if it is only as a personal reading to expand your own perspective on a culture that, in all likelihood, some of your own students share. Take a look out of Esperanza’s window too and you will not be disappointed at the richness you find there.
Given as presentation for a course:
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Motivating Students with Authentic Assessments
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Who We Are--Thinking About Culture
from the Oxford English Dictionary | from the Cambridge American Dictionary | from Urban Dictionary, an online user created wiki |
"Refinement of mind, taste, and manners; artistic and intellectual development. Hence: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively." | "The way of life of a particular people, esp. as shown in their ordinary behavior and habits, their attitudes toward each other, and their moral and religious beliefs." | "A term invoked by people who feel pride in accomplishments of others. A justification for all kinds of human rights violation. An outcome of evolutionary beneficial group thinking, and thus a racist generalisation. Also used in conjunction with 'history' for more pride and group thinking." |
Sunday, September 12, 2010
It Is Always About Continual Improvement: A Reaction to the Teacher’s Guide to Diversity
The interrelationship between human development, culture, and learning described in The Teacher’s Guide to Diversity: Building a Knowledge Base is multifaceted and almost overwhelmingly complex. Having always subscribed to the idea that development and learning are not finite processes but continual, never ending paths, I find my mind becoming overwhelmed attempting to focus on the scope that cultural differences play on these processes. The definitions and schools of thought employed in this text force the reader to become aware of the multitude of perspectives that contribute to how our students learn. “Development is plastic,” and therefore constantly susceptible to change from internal and external factors. Those factors influence development and learning and are based from, or are themselves influenced by, cultural factors. Basically, everything is in constant motion. Students develop and learn by, for, and because of the culture in which they exist and perceive themselves, as well as those they come in contact with.
This basic idea: that students learn and develop based on their own culture and other cultures they experience, feeds well into the ideas of social constructivism. The theory of constructivism is defined in the text as, “the cognitive theory that posits that learners actively develop new knowledge based on prior knowledge and new data,” and social constructivism as that which, “emphasizes that this construction of knowledge is accomplished within a social and cultural context, using particular cultural tools.” Social constructivism is more evident today than ever before with the advent of social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. It is easy to get a clear visual depiction of the way learning can take place by following a #hashtag on Twitter or reading the comments on a blog or news article. A very dynamic and democratic learning scheme can be seen because of the ability to link additional resources or search for meaning and the ability of anyone to be involved in the conversation.
This has led me to wonder how the theory of information processing, “the cognitive theory that claims that individuals actively take in and organize information for storage and retrieval by coding it in particular ways, using interpretive and memory strategies,” will be affected by these newer means of learning. While in previous generations, information was very linear and limited by formally written and published texts, now information is dynamic and linked together in multiple ways. Will the way students code and retrieve information and knowledge change significantly because of the ways they now receive that information and knowledge? For example, if “language is the key to critical aspects of cognitive change,” and “learning a single new word results in some reorganization of a learner’s mental lexicon,” then how will using world-wide social media change the way our students understand and learn? The Toronto Star has released several articles discussing the transfer of idiomatic expressions to non-native regions based on their use on sites like Twitter that transcend cultural barriers. (See my blog post on the Sociolinguistics of Twitter for further information.)
This all really breaks down to awareness. As teachers we must be aware of the way personal development of individual students along their individual learning paths are influenced and formed by their own cultural contexts. It comes down to trying to get to know our students and ways they believe to be effective modes of learning so we can be efficient facilitators and guides. Students will come to us with their own goals and reasons for needing to learn what we teach based on who they are and where they are on their own individual learning and developmental paths. To keep up with them appropriately, we must keep our eyes open and use the information we learn about them to be the best guides we can be. As we continue down our own educational paths, the experiences of our students feed back into who we are and what we can continue to do to help future students. As I continue down my own personal educational path, I find that every thread worth pursuing always falls back to continual improvement, of our programs, our schools, our students, our curriculum but mostly of ourselves.
It's Not Just The Words: English-Speaking Teachers & Spanish-Speaking Parents
COMMUNICATION The language barrier is not strictly a matter of school personnel’s and parents’ understanding the vocabulary and syntax of each other’s language. Often communication problems lie below the surface, at the level of invisible cultural expectations. Teachers’ and parents’ values are expressed in the topics they introduce in conversations with each other, in the priorities they assign to these topics, and in their approaches to setting goals for children (Greenfield, Quiroz, & Raeff, 2000).22 Cross-cultural communication problems have been shown to affect schools’ relationships with families from non-dominant cultural groups (Greenfield, Quiroz, & Raeff, 2000; McCaleb, 1997; Valdés, 1996). In many cultures, personal communication is valued over impersonal communication, such as written notices or letters, and families want personal interchanges that are not always formal (Diaz, 2000; Finders & Lewis, 1994; Levine & Trickett, 2000; McCaleb, 1997; Morris, 2002; Trumbull et al., 2001; Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, & Hernandez, 2003). Schools, however, rely on written communication to convey many important messages to parents, a mode of communication that oral cultures may not be used to or find appropriate. Personal, impromptu interactions that may be the norm in some groups are not favored in schools: In many schools parents need an appointment to visit a classroom or talk with a teacher or principal. In Valdés’s 1996 ethnographic study of 10 Mexican American families in Southern California, she recounts several instances of communication breakdown between parents (mainly mothers) and schools. In one case, a mother relayed a message to her younger son’s teacher via his 8-yearold brother to the effect that the younger son was not to eat the fish whenever it was provided at lunchtime because he was allergic to it. It is not clear whether the teacher discounted the message because it was verbal and from another child or whether the message was not properly delivered. However, the upshot was that the child continued to eat meals that made him miss days of school from time to time because he was sick. Not realizing that a message from a child might not be taken seriously in the way that a note from a parent would, the mother concluded that the school did not care about her son. Other communication issues arise when the sociolinguistic norms of the dominant culture and those of a non-dominant culture conflict. This topic is dealt with in the language volume, largely in relation to difficulties students may encounter when the communication expectations of school differ from those of home. However, adult-adult communication can, obviously, suffer from similar discrepancies in rules of conversation and other forms of communication. Dominant-culture communication tends to be direct but not confrontational, whereas the communication of many cultures (e.g., Latinos and Asians of many ethnicities) tends to be indirect (Azuma, Hess, Kashigawa, & Conroy, 1980, cited in Clancy, 1986; Trumbull et al., 2001). In some cultures, such as Japanese and Arab, saying “no” to any question is avoided (Clancy, 1986; Moosa, Karabenick, & Adams, 2001). Needless to say, this conversational rule can be extremely disconcerting to a cultural outsider. Expressions of emotion are considered by many African Americans a natural part of argumentation, and they may feel that European Americans are being disingenuous when they contain their emotions during an argument (Kochman, 1990). European Americans may be put off by the emotional elements of argumentation, believing that they interfere with logic and reason. These are just a few of the many cultural differences in communication style, differences that are rooted in the values and beliefs of cultures and—like most deep cultural patterns—invisible to people except in a sense of discomfort they may feel when their patterns are not observed by those with whom they are speaking. With some awareness of possible sources of communication breakdowns, teachers can contribute to more successful cross-cultural communication with parents. Although it is impossible to be an expert on every culture’s style (and, of course, people within cultures vary considerably), being attuned to how parents and families seem to prefer to communicate can alert teachers to ways they can make communication more successful. 22 This observation is not intended to minimize the value of teachers’ learning a language other than English in order to communicate with families. In addition, second-language learning can be a source of cultural learning as well. |
As teachers, it is vital that we remain aware of who we are teaching. Language is only one of so many barriers. Too rarely do we think of our students as being culturally different than ourselves. Just because we share a skin tone or a regional background doesn't mean we are the same. We all hear and communicate differently based on our unique perspectives and experiences. This awareness makes our job as teachers more difficult but can also make it more rewarding if we take the time to learn from those we teach.
Okay, enough of my grandstanding! What do you think? Have you had experiences dealing with students of other cultures? What about students that you assumed were part of your own culture but as time went on you realized they were different too? What have you learned?
The Sociolinguistics of Twitter
Can signing replace language in the cognitive development of younger children?
- Is there any research on this in relation to babies taught to sign?
- Can signing replace language in this way and cause these effects at younger ages?
- Of course, even if they can, would this be something measurable before a child has spoken language?