By overview, the message I received from this week's readings is that we have to make the work of our students meaningful to themselves. I love reading, and I have ever since I was in first grade and I was so amazed at the fact that my teacher was telling us a beautiful, funny story about a kid like myself from a thin stack of paper with ink in them. The fact that she was using the same written words of an author from many years ago to take us on an literary adventure made me believe that books are powerful when we welcome them and incorporate them into our lives. That was first grade, and the stories we learned about back then were centered on child characters and animals who had a life we could relate to.
Now, having reached the 15th grade, I've had to read about mythical creatures, kings, wizards, and (I swear this is true) a talking orange and a little farm boy who would go on walks with the orange while still technically being on the branch for the ACT. We all have unique, individual lives and so we have to understand that there will always be more mediums through which we can use in our classrooms to make the material relatable to our students than we can possibly carry out. However, what we as educators can do is make the material as invigorating, educational, and reltable as we can so that they will make cognitive connections that will help make the material stick with them in the long run.
In "Modeling as a
Multidimensional Cultural Space, Lee states "instruction must be based on curricula that capture what is important to know in the subject matter. In particular, curriculum designers and teacher must have detailed knowledge of the subject matter as well as detailed knowledge of the routine practices in which students engage with their families and peers, and insitutional settings outside of school, along with the belief systems inherent in such practices." We may be experts in our fields, but the students will always be the greatest expert in understanding how they work best. We must communicate with them in a way that it allows a more fluid transfer of knowledge and cognitive absobrtion. It is their mind, we are just helping it grow. This can be connected to the idea of teaching our students How to think and not What to think. It is up to them as to how they will feel toward a topic and use it in their lives, and it is our duty to help them understand the facts and different schools of thought on the lesson being taught that day.
The best way of getting any student (or any person for that matter) to perform a task or to learn is to invoke their self-interest. If we tell our students "Read this, do this because it is good for your education, it will build character". Students will not see the bigger picture, and will not understand the benefits of a well-rounded education. Therefore, we must utilize texts and work that is directly in the self-interests of the students to the best of our abilities.
ReplyDeleteOf course, to make individualized assignments is frankly far too much work for most teachers, so it is the job of the teachers to do this within reason. For example, if we have students doing a project on the Vietnam War, perhaps I have the class guitarist research protest songs of the late 60s, or the fashionista research Western culture and fashion as opposed to Vietnamese culture. What is most important is that we "reach out" to students and allow them to learn what they want to learn.
Hi Uriel,
ReplyDeleteStudents are truly the masters of their minds. In this sense they are in fact experts of themselves meanwhile teachers are the disciplinary experts. My question to you would be how do we make the work meaningful to students? For example, you explained to us your love for reading since you were a child. But my question is how did you get to that point? How do we get students to feel the same way you did? I think that getting a better understanding of your students through a short survey at the beginning of the year can help. Also, outside reading may be able to show these students that reading and overall learning is incredible. By showing students that knowledge is cool and can get you far can definitely make a difference.
I definitely agree with you and believe it is crucial to try to reach out to our students in order to understand what their individual interest are and how they learn best. By doing so we can incorporate what interest them into our lessons. I also believe that as educators it is crucial that we adapt the three main principles of Universal Design for Learning. Thus, we must provide multiple means of representation, expression and engagement for our students. By adapting these three principles into our classroom we will be more likely to reach out to all our students and prevent them from falling behind academically.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you and believe it is crucial to try to reach out to our students in order to understand what their individual interest are and how they learn best. By doing so we can incorporate what interest them into our lessons. I also believe that as educators it is crucial that we adapt the three main principles of Universal Design for Learning. Thus, we must provide multiple means of representation, expression and engagement for our students. By adapting these three principles into our classroom we will be more likely to reach out to all our students and prevent them from falling behind academically.
ReplyDeleteHi Uriel,
ReplyDeleteOne of the main ideas that I have taken from this class as well as other education classes I have taken at UIC is that in order to reach students, we as educators must make our teaching as relatable as possible to the student. I really like when you say " students will always be the biggest experts on how they work best." Maintaining communication and getting to know our students as well as possible is necessary in order to build instruction around their interests and culture. As the "Literacies and Ethno - Linguistic Diversity article discussed, Chicago is an extremely diverse place and many of us may more that likely teach in a school where the culture of the students may differ from our own. This poses a serious challenge to us as teachers to immerse ourselves in the areas culture and make sure we can build instruction around each individual students culture and interests. I know in my past education, when teachers related subject matter to my interests I was much more likely to dive into the topic at a greater depth. In science I look forward to making connections between the scientific world and my students culture but also am not sure exactly how I will do that. I do not have a lot of experience teaching yet, but would really like to hear how teachers do this in their own classrooms. Do you have any first hand experience with this?
Uriel,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you on the importance of making students' work meaningful to them. In regard to presenting material as invigorating and relatable, there are so many different ways this can be done successfully, depending on the subject and the students. For me, as a future math teacher, I'd like to incorporate basic financial concepts into my algebra lessons so that students will be able to easily recognize the usefulness of what they're learning, but I'm still trying to come up with truly useful real-world connections to areas of mathematics in which they're not so obvious.
Uri,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point about having to understand the culture and environment our students live in in order to be able to teach them properly. Thats why I think its important for us to live in or around the neighborhood our kids comes from.
I wanted to suggest a book that has a lot to do with that concept. Its called Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. I have not read the whole book, but the part I have read points out that African-American students often don't respond to their white teacher's discipline because the white teacher is too often ignorant about all parts of their lives including how they are disciplined at home. This book is important regardless of what race/class/culture you teach because the over all message is important in all cases: regardless of one's content knowledge, no one can be successful without understanding their students culture.
Uriel,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your post. As future teachers, we should make the work meaningful and in that sense students will be able to know what works for them in their own ways. That way students can see a connection on their own learning. I agree that we all bring different traits to the classroom and that we are all unique such that as you stated material should be relatable. I agree that we may be experts in our fields but then the question that rises is how can we make topics like mathematics relatable?
Uriel,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that incorporating students' interests into a lesson plan can be an effective way in presenting the information. Students have an also automatic response to information when it is something that sparks their interest. Whenever applicable, teachers should always strive to offer this kind of instruction,
But this is not always the case. There are some instances where a certain student's interests do not correlate with the relevant subject matter. Also, as future educators who may have classrooms with 30+ students, how can we accommodate each unique individual?