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CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 5: Trusting Students

A Question about Trust

Nadia is an occasional teacher in GTA mostly teaching primary level; whenever she goes to school ‘A’ she receives a warm welcome from students.

In class,  Nadia tries to follow guidelines provided by the teacher to the best of her abilities. She thinks and sometimes is told by teacher-assistants present in some of her classes that she is doing great job as good as a regular teacher in that class making use of every teachable moment. However, Nadia is concerned, sometimes,  if she is taking too much risk when she allows a certain student in her class to use equipment such as a computer while the rest of the class warns her against doing that, telling her that the student doesn’t have the privilege to use it. At other times she allows the student to be part of groups and she is told by other students that this student is only allowed to sit with the teacher.

After hearing such comments Nadia casually mentions to the class that she has not received any such instructions from their teacher and is sure that the student would not let her down by doing something irresponsible. She says no untoward incident has happened so far in any of her classes. Nadia adds that she has never experienced any discipline issue that she can’t handle during the past year and half since she started supply teaching.

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here is a question to consider interacting with each other and the author (Syeda Rufeeda Bukhari, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:

  1. Is Nadia doing the right thing by including all students in all activities, teaching them to behave responsibly because she trusts them?  She fears sometimes if this may result in an unexpected outcome at other times she feels confident of her abilities to handle situations thinking if it was necessary the teacher would have left instructions in the best interest of the given student.

 

 

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CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 4: Educator’s Dillema

Sexuality [?] and Anti-Homophobia Education in the Early Elementary School

Sam and I have been friends for over 20 years. I am also her MEd advisor, and in her project proposal, she shared the following story from her classroom of six to nine year olds:

One day last fall while the children in my room were cleaning up after a writing workshop, I noticed a child walking around the room with a picture she’d drawn.  She was being very secretive as she showed it to several individual children, and obviously didn’t want me to see what she was doing.  The verbal reactions she was getting went something like this: “ewww!” “gross!”  “yuck!” and “don’t”—as the viewers pushed the picture away.  I was intrigued of course.  When I asked the child to bring me the picture, she looked sheepish as she reluctantly handed it to me. I opened the folded page to find a picture of two female characters kissing, with a heart drawn above where their lips met.

The body language and emotional responses of this child and of those to whom she had shown her picture were very telling.  They confirmed for me that: “sexuality is already present in the lives” of the children in my class and that it is “outdated” to suppose that they are sexually unaware (Hanlon, 2009, p. 35); “children are constantly exposed to sexuality in public and private spaces (through media, family, friends, etc.)” (Hanlon, p. 35); many elementary age children today, like those in my classroom, are also “aware of homosexuality,” but are unfortunately left to “generate their own ideas” about what it means to be gay or lesbian (Hanlon, p. 35).  Understandably, these ideas are most frequently misconceptions.  Left unchecked these misconceptions can lead to denigrating comments in the early grades and to potentially abusive and dangerous situations in middle and high school.  Indeed the price in terms of students’ safety and well-being as a consequence of homophobic and gender-based bullying has been well documented in a recent Egale (LGBTQ human rights organization) national survey conducted by local researchers (Taylor, C. & Peter, T., with McMinn, T.L., Schachter, K., Beldom, S., Ferry, A., Gross, Z., & Paquin, S., 2011).  (Sam, personal communication, March 2013)

As a teacher educator I completely embrace Sam’s anti-oppressive educational commitments.  I too am always trying to learn more about and to teach from a pro-diversity, equity, social justice, and human rights stance.  But, as a professor in early years education, Sam’s use of the word “sexual” in relation to six to nine year olds’ lives set off my “spidey sense”.

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here are some questions to consider interacting with each other and the author (Dr. Wayne Serebrin, from the University of Manitoba) about:

  1. Are my views “outdated”?
  2. Was I worried Sam would be placing the weight of “adult”—or at least older children’s and adolescents’ concerns—on the shoulders of young children, who in my view should be living their childhoods as fully as possible without adult constraints (Dunne, 2011)?
  3. Wouldn’t they, as young children, be just as “repulsed” by a drawing of a female and a male character kissing?  
  4. Or was I really more worried about Sam? Did I fear for her that the highly “school-involved” parents in her community would revolt against her intentions to take risky pedagogical steps that would go further than a critical exploration of gender roles, discourse, and diverse family compositions?  In the context of her early years classroom, what did Sam actually mean by children’s sexual conceptions and misconceptions?
  5. How would you respond to this scenario?

 

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CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 3: Occasional Teacher Isolation

Yearning to Belong to the Teaching Community

Nadia is an occasional teacher in GTA mostly teaching primary level; whenever she goes to school ‘A’ she receives a warm welcome from students, whether it is her first time in that class or if she is returning the third time. Majority of the students in that school belong to the same ethnic background as hers. Some students identifying with her ethnic background would ask her if she was from India and hearing her answer in affirmation would remark, “My mother is from India too”, “or I was born in India”. Some others identifying her being a Muslim would ask, “Can I say ‘salaam’ to you?”

In short Nadia feels welcome in that school by the students; however, mingling with teachers is another story.  Although, some might occasionally involve in some small talk, such as “oh how was your day today?” or “which grade were you supply teaching today”, she mostly feels invisible in the staffroom. Her greetings were returned with cold replies and the teachers sitting next to her would engage in conversation with colleagues across the table. Nadia wanted to connect; she wanted to learn from their experiences.  This is one of the three schools that she visits often and now recognizes many faces; but she fails to see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes in exchange. Nadia feels so unwelcome in the staffroom that she now prefers sitting in her car during lunchtime.

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here are some questions to consider interacting with each other and the author (Syeda Rufeeda Bukhari, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:

  1. What should Nadia do in order satisfy her yearning to belong to the teaching community?
  2. What is she doing wrong?
  3. How can she correct it?

 

 

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CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 2: Dear Santa…

Teachers as gatekeepers: Validating diversity in the classroom

During my practice teaching block, my associate teacher introduced letter writing to her grade 1 and 2 class. Every year in December, this teacher introduced parts of a letter and then her students wrote and mailed letters to Santa Claus. She said her students loved this yearly tradition because they were always excited to receive letters from Santa right before the winter break. However, this made me feel uneasy as I knew my associate teacher was aware that many of the kids in her class did not celebrate Christmas, or if they did, many did not believe Santa was real. Nevertheless, she insisted this was a harmless activity, it’s a great way to introduce letter writing and it “worked” every year.  As I walked around the class asking students what they’re thinking to write, many did not know where to begin – they did not celebrate Christmas, they didn’t have a Christmas tree or a chimney in their home. Despite this, many students pretended to celebrate Christmas and wrote their entire letter based on what they commonly observed in the media. This year, a grade 2 student named Steven (pseudonym) refused to write a letter because he did not celebrate Christmas. Steven was also was known for his behavioural disorder, so to avoid an unwanted situation, my teacher gave him an alternate task while the rest of the class continued to write their letters. My teacher was annoyed with the situation, as she believed this was an innocent act of writing a letter to a fictional character – what’s the harm?

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here are some questions to consider interacting with each other and the author (Sama Hamid, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:

  1. If you were my associate teacher, how would you respond/address this issue?
  2. Do you think this teacher appropriately accommodated the cultural/religious diversity of her class?
  3. Given the various constraints educators face – such as limited time, resources, a vast curriculum, etc. – how can we balance our responsibilities as educators and still give our students a broader knowledge of human diversity that is representative of their class and their communities?
  4. How can teachers create a balanced multicultural environment?

 

 

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CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 1: Responding to Conflict

Teenage Anglo boys and Images of a Girl Wearing a Hijab in a
Canadian Catholic High School

You are a teacher candidate in a practicum placement in a Catholic high school in a large urban area. The majority of the students in school are of Catholic faith, but there are also students of other religions. One thing that you have been witnessing is that Muslim girls who wear a hijab are being teased by other students in the school. One day, as you walk down the hall during a break you notice a male student teasing a female student who is wearing a hijab. Her brother runs to her rescue, and a fight starts between the two boys. The female student starts to cry. Other students gather around, and you are the only one in the hall; no other teacher or school personnel are present.

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here are some questions to consider interacting with each other and the author (Victorina Baxan, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:

  1. What would you do?
  2. Who do you think the “teaser” is?
  3. What reason is there for him to have this kind of behavior?
  4. Why do you think the female student started to cry: as it because of the boys fighting or because of the teasing? Why do you think that way?
  5. What kind of questions do you think she gets about the hijab?
  6. How could you tell if teasing has gotten out of hand?
  7. How might you help someone who is being teased?

 

 

 

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