Saturday, November 5, 2016
Connecting Everyday Knowledge to School-Based Knowledge
The article "Modeling as Multidimensional Cultural Space" brings up many great points. Two of the ideas that Lee discusses are students entering high school unprepared and connecting what students learn in high school to what they know in everyday life. I have seen students enter high school and college alike in a state of mind that they feel like they won't make it. Students feel as though they can't connect to the material being taught and they can't connect to their teachers. I have seen students in high school excel in classes when they felt like they could connect to a teacher culturally or they felt that the teacher understood them beyond just another name on a class roster. Another point that Lee brought up was offering multiple methods of instruction and solving problems for students. These are all great points because they point to the idea that not all students are the same, students don't learn the same, and students don't all engage in the same manner. As teachers we need to help our students connect to the curriculum and model methods and solutions for them to use as individuals rather than as masses. Lee states that "The challenge is to select highly generative cultural data sets and not to trivialize making connections between everyday knowledge and school-based knowledge." (Lee, 35). This tells me that we must select materials for students that broaden their understanding of school subjects and cultures. We must make connections and help students understand texts in a way that goes beyond just skimming for the basic message.
I think students should be better prepared for high school with the foundations of reading and writing. Many students don't know how to properly write a paper or actually talk to a text and make intellectual connections. Students think that school is all about the grades and test scores so they skim materials for the basic idea without going in-depth into the message. Students need to be shown materials that they can connect to because those materials can broaden their understanding and might show students that school does actually connect to life outside of school. Being able to connect everyday life to school is important because it gives students that idea that the two worlds don't have to be separate. School is a place to broaden understanding, bring in different materials showing different cultures, and expanding methods and solutions for problem-solving.
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Hello Bess,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post this week. The article you chose to write about this week was one of my favorite readings from this class. I feel like it contained very relevant information for pre-service teachers and current teachers. Students are entering into high school and even college not feeling prepared to succeed. Some of them are hoping that they will just get by. Students need to be able to connect with the material being taught and the teachers to better succeed in the class. This is one of the reasons why I like mathematical modeling. This is where a real life problem is placed in front of the students and they must figure what information is necessary and solve the problem using mathematics. It is also important to have multiple methods of instruction. Not all students learn and think the same. All students are different and it is our job to help them succeed and accommodate for this in our instruction. We need to select materials that broaden student understandings in and outside the classroom and of cultures. We need to show students that connections can be made in and out of school and that you are not in school just to get good grades. A lot of students need more preparation when it comes to reading and writing because a lot of students just believe that the only way to write an essay is the 5 paragraph essay. Which is not correct at all. Students need materials that they can make connections to and broaden their understanding. If they are able to make these connections, they will see that school connects to their everyday lives. These two worlds do not have to be separate. I completely agree with your last sentence. It sums everything up very nicely. I could not have said it better myself. Great job.
I absolutely agree with you which is why I chose this article. It contains a lot of useful information. Students are definitely unprepared and we need to show them different methods to use in classes. We also need to broaden our use of materials in classrooms in order to broaden student understanding and bring a cultural understanding into the classrooms. And yes absolutely we need to teach students there are multiple ways of writing essays because the 5 paragraph essay is hated by professors. The two worlds should not be separate and thank you! I appreciate your comment!
DeleteBess - thanks for your post. I think you and Elizabeth bring up an important point from the Lee reading about "expecting" to succeed. But I want to use Kirkland's reading to push back on that a little bit. There seems to be a problem underlying the expectation of failure, which stems from students' (like Derrick, in Kirkland's article) who not only expect to fail, but see success as antithetical to the self. As Kirkland demonstrates, texts by "dead white authors" that are presented without any anchor into current contexts are likely to present as irrelevant in the best cases, and as complicit in an education system that, as Derrick puts it, it "trying to change" how urban youth of color perceive themselves. In other words, the very texts that teachers select come to embody the educational system's perceived expectation that youth of color learn to "be white," rather than to be literate.
DeleteSo, the challenge becomes not just selecting the right texts, but finding ways to link the texts to the most relevant context for your students (and also to make the learning experience fun). I think that the pedagogical posture Tatum recommends, where teachers pay attention to reading "the vital signs of readers" that "direct educators’ attention to students’ lived experiences, both in school and outside of school, and are useful for considering ways to improve the human condition" (p159). Reforming literacy education so that readers are able to read their "self" into the content, rather than define themselves in relation to it, is the key to dissolving the "expectation of failure," I think.
We are definitely on the same page! I agree completely with what you are saying. Students do need to connect more with what they are leaning and connect to us as teachers. I feel that it is very important to get them more involved and incorporating things that the students can relate to in our teachings. The students also need to be better prepared to read and write at a high school level when entering into high school. I think they can be better prepared if they felt more engaged in topics of the curriculum that the teacher brings to the classroom. I would definitely like to see the students and the teachers interact more with each other and become more involved in the studies together.
ReplyDeleteHey guys, I enjoyed all of your insight thus far. To further build off of your comments, I think that the study Tatum presents us with also speaks to the idea of students engagement when he brings up his student's stance on how non-African American teachers perceive their African American teachers. The student he worked with didn't feel that his teachers knew how to react to him, that the teachers didn't know how to deal with African American students, which he perceived as the teachers easily giving up instead of pushing them. As teachers we need to make it a priority to connect to our students on a more profound level and learn from them; to build relationships and trust and to truly invest ourselves in providing students with the learning experience they deserve. I think that only when we build this solid base with our students will they become more willing to believe in our methods and work along with us.
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ReplyDeleteI agree that many students enter high school and college feeling that they won’t make it, or they are not prepared. Many of them feel like that they can’t connect to the materials or to their teachers. I had been through the same experience since I had my high school diploma out of the US and primarily in Arabic. When I came to the US, I entered the college as an English language learner, and I felt that cultural disconnection with the material, the teachers, and the students. However, I was able to get by the first year. From this experience, I realized the importance of creating such connection. As future teachers, we have to integrate students’ culture in our lessons and make the materials culturally relevant to students’ lives. Integration of student’s culture would motivate them and create an environment where students learn to accept and respect each other’s differences. As future teachers, we need to think deeply about how to meet the needs of diverse learners in our classrooms using different teaching methods and formats not only for instruction but also for student’s demonstration of knowledge. We also need to choose the materials for our lessons which help students make connection between everyday knowledge and school knowledge.
ReplyDeleteHello Bess,
ReplyDeleteLiving in such a cultural melting pot, it is a challenge for teachers to teach literacy to students based on diverse cultural backgrounds and "make connections between everyday knowledge and school-based knowledge". When the author took the example of math case, I have the similar feeling that different countries have different instructions on the same topic and each person comes up with his or her own solutions to the problem. Therefore, when I get close to see the Common Core Standards as I arrived here, I feel that it takes time for students to solve a question and the fact that students should follow the steps shown in the Common Core Standards is surprising me even though it does help to assess the students' logic thinking. I think, as a math teacher, we should show different ways to solve the problem as many as we can, and also help students build up the foundation of knowledge and get them prepared before they enter into the college. Also, the diverse teaching strategies help all students facilitate the understanding of the contents to satisfy all students' learning needs.
Bess:
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head, and so did other people posting responses to your blog entry. I have noticed that many of my students feel like they won't succeed. In more than twenty years, I'm always trying to find ways of connecting my world history material to something going on in their lives today. For example, when I taught ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian history, I talked about money (economics), then had a discussion with them about credit, loans, taxes, and money management. The students were quite interested since they handle money and were interested in learning how to manage money better. I decided to extend this lesson and draw it out over the rest of the semester, incorporating it in a Mel-Con essay assignment as well, since they would be writing on a topic that interests them. So I went from some aspect from ancient society to something that is going on today in their lives to make the connection.
Now how can I do this with all of the other material and lessons that I teach throughout the semester? That's the problem. Sometimes I get my students engaged, sometimes only part of them, and sometimes not at all (and then it is back to the drawing board for me). The readings gave me a lot to think about, but how to make it so that everything I teach reaches my students is quite the problem. How can we as educators get it right all of the time?
Hello Bess!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post very much because i related to the students who did not think they would make it through college. Since a majority of my family did not attend college it was hard to make connections to being successful in it. That being said i found it incredibly helpful that i had teachers who i was able to connect with to help me see the bigger connections that their lessons implemented.
Looking into today's education system we do see a lot of teachers who try to teach to the test and forget that students need connections to what they are learning and that without them it makes it harder for them to keep interest in learning. I feel like with such great diversity that there is in CPS students it should be used to our advantage because we can draw upon a lot of cultural backgrounds that would connect with the students. Or how Chris talked about including money in his lesson. Integrating things that students actually experience and do and will need in the future is sure to get them more interested in what we have to say. And hopefully they will leave our classrooms having learned something and have the desire to learn more about it on their own.