STANDARD L META-REFLECTION—KNOWLEDGE OF LEARNERS AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL CONTEXTS. Devote a paragraph related each of the following four elements. L1: Learner-centered knowledge through a variety of culturally responsive, developmentally, and age appropriate strategies. (Answer how you differentiate instruction to best meet the needs of diverse learners.) L2: Classroom/school centered knowledge through learning, knowledge, and skills connected to classroom and school communities. (Tell how your instruction fosters social wellbeing through cooperative learning and other group activities.) L3: Family/neighborhood centered knowledge through informed by collaboration with families and neighborhoods. (Tell how you utilize family and communityresources, mentors, etc. to facilitate learning.) L4: Contextual community centered learning to promote responsible citizenship for an environmentally sustainable, globally interconnected, and diverse society. (Answer how you relate lessons to community needs and resources in order to teach environmental stewardship and an appreciation for cultural diversity.)
L1: Learner-Centered Knowledge
Although the school where I am interning is not highly diverse racially, the students come from a variety of backgrounds and walk into the classroom with their own set of experiences that make them all individuals. As a teacher, I try to consider each student and his/her skill levels, abilities, and background when I prepare a lesson. I have found that collaborative learning strategies, when the teacher chooses groups intentionally, are beneficial for almost every student in the classroom. Students work well with students of different ability levels and help one another through the learning process. It is important to note that the teacher chooses the group for these learning experiences. For example, in one American Politics and Global Issues (APGI) class, there is a student with Asperger’s Syndrome who must be partnered with select individuals from the class in order to ensure that he will succeed in the group and will have a quality learning experience. Furthermore, collaborative learning is a strategy that works well for many students from different ethnic backgrounds because their heritage revolves around having a strong community and working together. Many students in my classes have weak reading skills. While these students may prefer to abandon reading altogether, I know that they will benefit more if they work on their reading skills and seek to improve. Thus, I allow them to work in reading groups where they can practice reading skills as a group and have a support team as they work through text, whether it is an article, a primary document, or the textbook. Many of my students who have IEPs or 504 plans do not require extensive modifications and accommodations, more time is all that they need in order to complete an assignment; however, I do not want all of those assignments to pile up on them, so I am keep those students in mind when I plan units and the spacing between larger assignments, so as not to overwhelm them. In addition, I try to plan lessons that accommodate the different learning styles and teach in a way that is attentive to the students in order to help them engage with the material. Some students will do the work and succeed by simply reading the textbook and answering questions; however, the majority of students will not retain the information that they read and wrote down from a lesson like this. I try to plan lessons that will appeal to students visually with posters, movie clips, and PowerPoints; audibly with podcasts and audio clips; and kinesthetically through role-playing, demonstrations, and movement.
Artifact from L1: Personal Reflective Paper
L2: Classroom/School Centered Knowledge
Cooperative learning and group activities are very common in my teaching. It is rarely necessary for me to interrupt a group because they are not being respectful of the other group members, but once in a while students need the reminder. Normally, students excel when working in groups, not only in getting the task accomplished, but also in showing that they are community contributors who respect and are considerate of their peers. Due to the lack of ethnic diversity, students will joke about skin color and make associations based on skin color during group work time. When this happens it is normally between friends and is not in a racist context; however, I take this very seriously and make sure that my students know that those jokes are not respectful and are not allowed in our classroom – even if it is just between friends. This is not a big issue and it only arises because of the lack of ethnic diversity in the school, but it has the potential to hurt, even if it is unintended. One thing that my students do well and that I enjoy when groups do presentations during Jigsaws is that the rest of the class “claps them up” as my students call it. The class applauds for the group as it is walking to the front of the room to present the lesson as a way of encouraging one another. They also clap at the end of every presentation and I am no longer the one who initiates the applause. While this may seem simple, every single student receives a source of encouragement during any round of presentations. It is a goal for the Tahoma School District to instill the Habits of Mind in its students, using cooperative learning and small groups allows students to practice these habits. For example, Thinking Interdependently, one of the Habits of Mind, means the student “builds on other people’s thinking; works collaboratively” (Tahoma School District). Students can learn about interdependence on their own, but they cannot practice the skill if they do not work in groups. This is a Habit of Mind that has been modeled in the Humans and the Environment CBA that my APGI classes are currently working through. Students are working together in groups to prepare a lesson to teach some of the fourth grade students in our district to promote sustainability and teach the younger students how they can help improve a sustainability issue here in the community. The APGI students have had to work with one another to determine the issue they want to teach, how to present the lesson in ways that will engage small groups of ten year-olds, and how these ten year-olds can help be part of the solution. Since the students will actually be teaching these lessons to fourth grade students, they want their groups to succeed and really care about being successful in their groups. They behave maturely and put forth their best effort, which helps the entire group throughout the planning process.
Artifact from L2: Classroom Management Plan
L3: Family/Neighborhood Centered Knowledge
One of the things that is often neglected and that I would like to change at the high school level is the amount of family involvement in a student’s learning. My mentor teachers forward any emails from parents to me and allow me to handle those emails since I am now the one running the classroom, and I welcome that interaction with parents. Most of these emails that come in are simply questions about grades and how to pull a student’s grade up in my class. As my APGI class was working through the editing process of their research papers, parents were the ones that did the editing for their students, instead of friends. There were some rare exceptions that had to be made because some parents of students do not speak English. I chose for the parents to edit these papers because they will often take this process more seriously than other students and because it helps them become involved in the learning process and for them to see what their students are learning and producing. It is easier for their to be parental involvement at the younger level, but it is just as important for those communications lines to remain open and continue into the secondary level.
In an upcoming unit for APGI we will be modeling a whole unit around The Game of Life. This will be done at a level that is appropriate for a class or high school seniors and will focus on different topics that they will need to know about as adults. This unit will revolve around involvement from other members of the community. For example, some people who teach a course on finances to other adults will be coming in and during one class. Some local landlords will come in and explain how the process of renting a house or an apartment works and what these students can do to be good tenants, All of these are skills that students need to have; there is not a better way for them to learn about these things than from experts from the community.
Artifact for L3: Diversity
L4: Contextual Community Centered Learning
The community is more than just the local neighborhood. Recently, oil and American dependence on it has been a large topic in my APGI classes because we were discussing American Foreign Policy. During this time we discussed America’s need for oil and why we continue to get involved in Middle Eastern conflicts. Although it is not the only reason that America remains involved in the Middle East, our need for that specific resource is a critical part of our foreign policy. Both my American Studies and APGI classes have been involved in environmental and sustainability CBAs during my internship. These CBAs model that students understand the need to be good stewards of our resources and to live in ways that are more sustainable. The American Studies class made blogs that discussed different industries and how the industry is making progress toward being more sustainable in addition to providing action plans for people to help make this industry more sustainable. Students in APGI are in the middle of a CBA in which they are taking their knowledge of sustainability, adding to that knowledge through research, and teaching that knowledge to fourth grade students from our district. These students are not only providing the fourth grade students with knowledge, but they are also providing activities for the students to participate in to help be more sustainable. For example, some students will be given seeds to plant trees when they go home, others will be starting small vegetable gardens to take home, and some will go around to the storm drains at the elementary school to discourage dumping and contaminating the water.
It is important for students to be appreciative of diversity and different cultures so they do not miss out on any new and unique experiences. While most students say they appreciate diversity, lessons that have been sensitive to this topic have proven beneficial. During the unit on the Middle East in APGI, students learned about Islam and the Islamic jihad. One of the goals of this unit was for my students to understand that Muslim people are real people too, who are trying to live their lives just like we are. Some students made comments about Muslims being terrorists to their neighbors when this unit first started. I was quick to tell the entire class that comments like those are completely unacceptable and not true. We talked about how why some Muslims believe in jihad and where it comes from in their holy texts, giving students the chance to see why people continue to fight. We compared Islam to other religious beliefs so the students were able to make connections with the unfamiliar to the familiar. During a lesson on Women in Islam, students read a magazine article about a Muslim woman in France who was denied citizenship because she wore her veil for religious purposes. This spurred some anxiety in the students who believed that the woman should be able to wear her veil if she wanted to, a comment that some students would not have made at the beginning of the unit. Throughout this unit, students were not only learning about the Middle East, they were developing an appreciation for cultural diversity and showed empathy toward people from different cultures.
Artifact from L4: American Education
