Chapter 3 Reading

Chapter 3 Reading: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Diverse Classrooms

            As I began to read this text, I had the precursor in my mind of how I am confident that I will embrace diversity in my classroom. However, it is difficult to understand how to do this, or what this looks like. I also hadn’t fully understood what types of obstacles exist, which would prevent me from doing this. This chapter begins by presenting how a variety of languages and cultures are gifts in the classroom, with a variety of perspectives and ideas to create a rich and vibrant classroom environment. However, many of these students struggle with literacy and learning, and as a result, they are placed in low ability groups and are limited because of this obstacle. Then the strengths that can come from instructional situations with diverse learners never occur because of the restrictions placed on them. Thus, my purpose for this reading was to find several practices that I want to implement in my own secondary mathematics classroom in order to embrace diversity and help bring down barriers.

            The example of how a science teacher embraces diversity in his classroom gave numerous examples how he provides the learning environment for ELL students to be successful, and for students of all cultures to be embraced and add interest to the class. I thoroughly enjoyed this example and aspire to have a classroom like Tim Fitzpatrick’s. First of all, I enjoyed the activity that he used at the beginning of the year to develop a learning community that fosters discussion, and not regurgitation of facts. The activity was for students to create autobiographic sketches and share aspects of their life stories to one another. This is something I want to use with my diverse classroom that I will be teaching at Breakthrough Saint Paul this summer. I believe this will be a good activity for the first day. Students can be creative, and then describe themselves through pictures and words. Many teachers believe that these types of activities take too much time, however, they can create a learning environment that fosters beneficial classroom discussions that may not have occurred otherwise.

To provide aid to ELL students, he labels all of the tools. If there are ELL students in my classes, and this appears to be beneficial, I believe that labeling items around the room and integrating a second or third language into the class at various times is a feasible step for me to take. I have a minor in Spanish, and very much enjoy learning parts of other languages. This could be crucial in the comprehension of key concepts in a class. A student can entirely miss an objective because of a language barrier; thus, I will take steps to avoiding this.

            Another way in which, Tim Fitzpatrick, the High School Science Teacher embraces cultural diversity is to undergo studying scientific problems occurring around the world. Relating this to mathematics, I was thinking about how students could dip into statistics from other countries, and then develop mathematical understandings of topics regarding countries around the world. This could be a statistics project that allows students to use the transitive approach, which would allow the students to do statistical analysis (think critically) and then generate conclusions and opinions. I also would like to have posters of mathematicians from around the world, hanging in my classroom, as well as infrastructures with beautiful geometries. I believe that classroom decorations can also provide a wonderful opportunity to passively display how important fresh ideas of all cultures can be in a classroom.

            Mr. Fitzpatrick also is selective on the passages that he assigns students to read. It may only be a couple paragraphs, and he will even rewrite material for more clarity, and assure that the key concepts are dissectible. He states that he likes to keep it real. He places emphasis on portraying key concepts in the most simplistic ways possible. I think that it is important to be precise. If there is a key concept that you want to assure it portrayed in math or science, it isn’t beneficial to assign an enormous amount of text that may have a lot of additional fluff and difficult vocabulary. Clear and precise text is important for ELL students, and all students.

            I also believe that the idea of getting family or community members into the classroom to discuss their professions is an awesome idea. Activities like this can be memorable, and help students apply the material they are learning in class to the real world, and what they may want to do in the future. The idea presented in the text is to bring in a carpenter to discuss trigonometry, and possibly have them create a small frame. It would also be a good activity for students to devise the questions to ask the community or family member. Having those formulated ahead of time can assure good questions will be presented, and creating these can be an activity in itself involving research. Then there is reading, writing, speaking, and viewing all involved is learning. I really enjoy this example because it gives a clear example of how I can involve families, as these relationships are important.

            What sticks out as most concerning for me, is the amount of ELL students that are placed in lower-track classrooms. As many people may have seen the popular movie staring Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side, I have heard the same story from one of my current Mathematics Pedagogy Professors. Some students are unable to read the assessments set before them, and as they fail to have success, it may appear that they do not understand the material. However, once the assessment is read to them, they are able to describe their understanding. Thus, I will do my best to have numerous types of assessments, projects, and activities that will allow all types of students to display their understandings. It can be so easy to look past the idea that the student may still understand the concept even if they do not do well on the test, as we rely so heavily on students’ ability to read successfully. It is so important to have relationships with all ones’ students, and understand their learning, and what needs to be done to assure the best learning experience possible.