Reflection on FNED 546

 

    There have been many meaningful moments throughout the semester in FNED 546. Many lessons and class discussions will always stick with me, but seeing how accepting the class was as a whole really stuck with me. The space that was created was such a safe, comforting space that it was never a burden to go to class. The class was a community in which we could all bounce ideas off each other. Our group presentations and games really helped to bring everyone together.

    When it comes to the articles that we read and the lessons taught, ethnic studies, teaching students with disabilities, and racism in schools stood out to me the most. All of the movies we watched will definitely stick with me -- "Precious Knowledge," especially, which was about ethnic studies. It was such a heart wrenching movie about students fighting for their own rights to ethnic studies, and being turned down. It was inspiring to see students who want to learn and heartbreaking to watch adults in the community fight with them and win. These students weren't doing anything wrong but because they were learning about their culture, they were marked as "anti-American." Along with "Precious Knowledge", "Teach Us All" really stuck with me. This was a movie on the social injustice and the inequality of schooling in America. It highlighted how schools have become as segregated as they were before the civil rights movement. The issues in this movie really highlighted the flaws in schooling in America. "This Is Not About Me" was also a really moving film about a non-verbal autistic women who faced significant barriers within the education system. She fought for the rights to education for the neurodivergent community. Her own story was of such a success that she became a public spokesperson for others like her. The movie explored themes of communication access, neurodiversity, and educational reform. 

    All of these movies highlighted areas in which schools need change and it made me motived to make a change. A lot of what we accomplished in class was highlighting wrong-doings in schools and discussing how we can make school a better experience for everyone involved. I really enjoyed this class and hope that we can all make a difference, together! 

Transgender Equality

Reflection: 

    This week's readings and video were all about the ways in which teachers and people are supposed to be inclusive to all people. This includes transgender and non-binary students as well. The RI Guidelines depicted a world where everyone was equal and allowed to use the restroom or play on the team that coincides with their gender identity. The "Querying Our Schools" reading really emphasized the importance of teaching transgender and nonbinary equality in schools, instead of hate. The video was a great example of how teachers can introduce this topic to their classes to show them that everybody is different and to embrace these differences. 

    The article, "Querying Our Schools," really stood out to me because it showed the power of community. In this article, a child lights a girl's skirt on fire on the bus, just because she was different. The girl suffered burns and the child was tried as an adult. The community was outraged and marched in support of the girl, wearing shirts to support the cause. What really stood out to me was that the girl, Sasha, and her family, insisted on trying the child as a child instead of an adult, and instead, reforming schools so this kind of thing doesn't happen again. This made me think about how important it is to teach children about transgender and non-binary people from a young age. 

    A lot of the times, children aren't taught about the LGBTQ+ community until they hear something on the new or from their parents. This doesn't give them much opportunity to truly learn about these people and how differences should be uplifted. If they learn about the LGBTQ+ community from parents or relatives who dislike and disapprove of this community, then they will only know enough to know that they don't like these people either. 

    This is dangerous because it teaches kids how to hate each other based on differences. This paves the way for hate crimes and even irreversible deaths in some cases. Teaching students to love and uplift one another despite any and all differences should be part of the school curriculum. This article is an insightful look at why not teaching students about the LGBTQ+ community is a dangerous thing. 

    Overall, I really enjoyed these readings and this video as it opened up the discussion to transgender rights. In class, I would like to focus on what everyone else thinks about teaching transgender rights in schools. At what age would you suggest starting? How long should the curriculum be? 

On Neurodiversity

Reflection: 

    This article was very informative on the neurodiversity movement and it made me think a lot about how autism and other diagnoses classified under neurodivergence used to be viewed versus how they are viewed today. The author explains that Judy Singer launched the neurodivergent movement as a social justice movement to promote equality. 

    Children with autism used to be viewed as incapable and would be neglected or excluded from schools. Teachers didn't know or believe that there was anything they could do to help these children. As more and more research went into autism and the neurodiversity movement began, children with autism and other diagnoses were treated with care, respect, and teachers believed in their abilities to advance. This article explains how teaching students with autism has evolved in public schools. 

    Singer explained that these diagnoses that makes children different should not be viewed as deficits, but rather as normal and possibly valuable variation on the way the brain works. The neurodiversity movement changed the way society views these neurological differences. If children are having a hard time in schools, they are beginning to ask their parents to take them to see if they are neurodivergent. This is something that I found really inspiring because it shows how children are steering away from treating neurodiversity with shame and towards treating it with respect. 

    One of my cousins has autism and when we were younger, he was shy. He never wanted to talk and only wanted to play his video games. With the support of his family and the help from his teachers, he was able to learn and come out of his shell a lot. He graduated from college with an engineering degree, and even gave a speech at his older brother's wedding. He is very smart and I can't help but think what his life could have looked like if we still treated neurodiversity as a deficit instead of a difference. 

    In class, I would like to focus on how everyone found this article. I thought it was inspiring and would love to hear other thoughts!

Troublemakers pt. 2

I already began writing about this on my blog, but one of the students in the classroom that I am helping in, is what Shalaby would describe as a "troublemaker." He speaks out when he shouldn't be, he raises a hand to ask questions and then doesn't answer the question, and instead changes the topic. He is a mixed student and his parents are divorced. I've heard that his father lets him stay home from school on Fridays, as well. He is constantly distracting the class and the teacher does her best to rein him in. 

I've seen the teacher sit by him during lessons, write him encouraging notes, talk to him about what kind of day he was going to have before and after class. She supports him when he is having a good day, as well as a bad day. Although he recently got his seat moved, the teacher really tried to prevent moving him. Now that he is at the student teacher's desk, it feels like his behavior has gotten worse. He is constantly talking to the student teacher and he is never doing his assignment. In a way, his new seat position allows him to act out without distracting the students he was sitting near. 

Despite him being a "troublemaker," the teacher doesn't talk poorly of him. She always tries to work with him. He loves participating in class, such as reading out loud, and he is good at it. The teacher tries to encourage him to engage in the class by asking him to read. 

I wrote about this in my blog, as well, but I believe a lot of his troublemaking stems from his home-life situation. He is a smart kid and he is engaged in the work, but he also yells across the classroom and goofs off. 

Shalaby: Troublemakers

 Reflection: 

    I found Shalaby's Introduction and Preface to Troublemakers to be intriguing and very insightful. Where most teachers think of the "troublemaker" kids as the problem, Shalaby looks at them as a warning cry to the problems within schools. I think her comparison of these troublemakers to canaries that were used in the mines to warn miners of carbon monoxide, was extremely interesting. Her perspective made me think a lot about the students that I work with in the Claiborne Pell Elementary School. 

    There are a few children in the classroom who act out or are constantly raising their hand to "answer a question" and then say something entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. The teacher tries her best to work with these children, sitting near them while the student teacher teaches them math, or writing them encouraging notes, but it is still not always enough. This past week, when I went into the school on Friday, the student who I have seen making the most "trouble" had his desk next to the student teacher, so his back was to the rest of the class. I'm not sure exactly what he did to get there, as I didn't ask, but he was still speaking out from his new position. 

    That being said, Shalaby explains that there are daily harms in schools that make these children act out, such as, "the requirement to sit still for hours on end, the frustration of boring, disconnected, and irrelevant academic tasks, shockingly little time for free play, and few opportunities to build meaningful relationships in community with other children and loving adults." When I reflected this to my classroom, I couldn't entirely justify this child's behaviors based on these harms. Yes, there are times when the children need to sit still and learn math, but that is only for one hour in the beginning of the day. Then, they either do writing, where they are free to move around the room and read their personal narratives to their friends, or they have their special. After that, they go to recess and lunch. I'm not entirely sure what happens after lunch, other than that the students are back in the classroom for an hour and a half at the end of the day. So, basically, the teacher has them for an hour or two in the morning, and an hour and a half in the afternoon, before they are dismissed for the day. She allows them to work with ea
ch other and collaborate whenever possible, so why is this child still acting out? 

    From what I can gather, there is a lot going on in his personal life. I've heard the teacher say that he stays at his dad's sometimes, and his dad allows him to stay home from school on Fridays. Maybe his home life is a factor of why he has a hard time in school. Here is an interesting article on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how they relate to education. Or maybe, it is what Shalaby says, and it's because he doesn't want to sit still at all, maybe he is bored, disconnected, and wants more free time. They were playing with playodough and I heard him say "I need more playodough time" when he was putting it away. 

    My question for the class is, do you think the troublemakers always act out for reasons that Shalaby says, or do you think there could sometimes be another reason, like some hardships in their personal lives? 

Finn: from "Literacy with an Attitude"

 Reflection: 

Finn's "Literacy with an Attitude" provided an insightful look into how schools in communities of varying wealth teach their students and how students are treated in schools. Despite knowing that it varied strongly prior to reading this article, based on what we have learned in class up to this point, I was still surprised to see just how everything varied. In the working-class, students were taught to follow directions which reflected the low-paying work they were expected to do in society, while middle-class students were learning to follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society running, and upper-class students were learning to create, and find rewards in work, and how to negotiate from a powerful position with those in power. Basically, these school systems were teaching students that they were only as smart as their parents' net income. 

At one point, Finn discussed how in the working class children were taught science. The copied instructions on how to do an experiment from the book, then they watched the teacher do the experiment while the students wrote and copied a list of things they found. This reminded me of when I was in school and learning science. It was always my least favorite subject, until high school when I had a great chemistry teacher. After reading this, I realized that the reason why I was so against science was because this is how I was taught for most of my childhood. 

Most of the time, when setting up for an experiment, we would get the prompt of what we were trying to test. Each of us would write our own hypothesis on what we thought the outcome would be. Then we would watch the teacher do the experiment, and as a class, we would answer questions related to the experiment. Then we would go home and write a report on our findings. I don't remember a single experiment that we did in learning this way, but I do remember when my favorite eighth grade science teacher brought in dry ice and left one at each group to play with (explicitly telling us why we can't touch it) as we learned about solids, liquids, and gasses. This was a fun experiment because we were engaged with the materials and we were allowed to have fun with the experiment. 

This greatly varied to the Gizmos that we would do from time to time. These were like experiments done on the computer in a simulation. Looking back, I can see how these are helpful to learning about certain things in science, but I always hated them. They weren't that engaging because you could only click on the buttons that the program allowed, and it always felt more like busy work. 

Although the Gizmo was a good example of certain aspects of science, we were never given enough time to finish the assignment, and it didn't show us anything new. I imagine this is how students in the working-class schools felt about all of their assignments. They were being told what they could learn and what they were capable of learning, much like the Gizmo. If I wanted to click a certain button, I wasn't allowed to unless other requirement had been met first. The program should have allowed me to click what I wanted so I could see the consequences of that action. 

Overall, I thought this reading was really insightful into how schools treat their students based on familial wealth. Reading about the working-class teachers talk about their students in derogatory ways before ever giving them a chance to improve their skills really bothered me. Has anyone seen an example of this in their schools?

Alfie Kohn: What to Look for in a Classroom & Classroom Tour Video

 Reflection: 

I found Kohn's article/chart to be really interesting. The things that he listed as "possible reasons to worry" really reminded me of when I was a student in school. I think that today, there are a lot more teachers that are trying to make their classrooms stand apart from the "traditional" classrooms. 

Growing up in schools, I can remember that the chairs and desks were mostly in rows and lines, there were either no posters or a lot of commercial posters and some students' works, I was usually bored, normally everyone was working on the same thing, and more. I was always interested in the decor of rooms. I remember all the posters and things that were hanging and the vast majority of the time, they were commercial posters or work done by "the best" students. One example of this that I can remember was in my art classroom. The teacher would display artworks but only a select few. I never thought anything of it when I was at school, but looking back, I can see how that could be insensitive. 

Kohn's article made me think about how different it is today than when I was growing up. The classroom that I am currently teaching in is decorated as much as it could be. There is student work all over the walls, even though the answers are sometimes wrong. The students sit in groups, as well, allowing them to interact with each other. They are always eager to engage and learn and they never complain about a task. The teacher is kind, respectful, and genuine. The students are extremely welcoming to all guests. The classroom that I am in has a teacher, a student teacher, another teacher, and myself so it is a very busy classroom, but the students were extremely welcoming to me right away. They also had a K9 come to visit the classroom recently and they were eager to hear about his duties. They were respectful to the police officer as he told them what the dog does and how to correctly pet him. There are also great classroom discussions and many group activities. I haven't seen too much of the school but from what I did see, I thought it was a great environment for students. 

Although there were some teachers growing up who had engaging classrooms, the older we got, the more classrooms were decidedly a space only for learning and not for creativity. I hope that as these 4th grade students I am working with get older, they will be able to enjoy creativity and engaging classrooms throughout their entire schooling. I think the changes are being made to make school a more welcoming environment and it brings me joy in knowing this.

I think these classroom design templates could be a good start for decorating classrooms at the beginning of the year and adding student work to the room throughout the year would really engage students. 

One thing I would like to focus on in class is how everyone else remembers their childhood classrooms. Were they inviting or kind of boring? How do you think that impacted your learning?