Chapter 2 of the book Educating Everybody’s Children, edited by Robert W. Cole, is a rich resource offering research based strategies to meet the needs of diverse students toward closing the achievement gap. Teachers make a difference and strengthen their practices by understanding the context and needs of all their students and addressing those needs by incorporating these practices in their classrooms. Directly facing our personal stereotypes begins to allow us to change our thinking and see our students from a different light, one that values them and chooses to build on what they know and bring to the classroom. The entire chapter is available for free here. While each focus is important, my favorite strategies are 2.5, 2.6, 2.10 and 2.17. What are your favorites?
New book on Teaching in Diverse, Standards-Based Classrooms
Connecting Teachers, Students, and Standards
Introduction: Teaching in Diverse, Standards-Based Classrooms
Today’s schools are becoming increasingly diverse. Many teachers find that their classrooms are populated by English language learners, gifted students, students with disabilities, and students who are culturally diverse. Nearly half of all students in U.S. public schools (42 percent) are students of color, approximately 20 percent of students speak a language other than English at home, and approximately 14 percent of students have an identified disability (U.S. Department of Education, 2007a). Approximately half of the students who have an identified disability spend 80 percent of their school day in general education classrooms (U.S. Department of Education, 2007b). To add to this diversity, approximately 12 percent of students in public schools are labeled as gifted and talented (Friend, 2007). Like their peers with disabilities, gifted and talented students also are integrated into general education classrooms. All of these differences make teaching more interesting and exciting as well as more complex.
For more information and options to order the book click here.
CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 10: Cultural Knowledge
Incorporating diverse learners’ cultural knowledge in the classroom
Culture is far deeper than the externally obvious components of celebrations and festivals, food, clothing and language. Culture is how we see, understand and interpret the world around us. Our background knowledge is based on our cultural worldview. Learners often bring knowledge to the classroom that is very different from that represented in the textbook.
For example, you are teaching a unit on modes of transportation in a metropolitan area of North America. Your class is made up of 40% immigrants and 60% locally born students of various ethnicities including mother tongue speakers of English. In preparing the unit on modes of transportation you want to build on the background knowledge of all the learners in the classroom rather than limiting the lesson to the textbook representation of bicycles, motorcycles, cars, buses, trucks, trains, boats, ships and airplanes. Your predominantly Asian learners are also aware of other modes of transportation such as jeepneys, bullock carts, calesas (horse drawn carts), rickshaws, kuligligs (rototiller–turned-tractor with trailer used for transporting people, animals and produce), tantalaks (homemade gravity propelled carts), bangkas (a boat larger than a canoe with outriggers) etc. as well as various animals used for transportation.
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 (Diane Dekker, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:
- How could you activate the learners’ prior knowledge, build on background knowledge, and support identity development in this particular unit?
CSSE Intersection Scenarios Symposium Preview 6: Poverty and Schooling
Leading and Teaching Against Storied Assumptions
Poverty is not just a statistic, and statistics do not get to the poverty phenomenon in ways that illustrate how it plays out in school milieus. Take this storied snippet as an example:
Peters Street School has been in existence from the historical time of the Irish Famine of the 1840’s. Famine ships from Ireland brought immigrants in the thousands and, in under one year, the city of Toronto during that time rose from a population of 20,000 to 60, 000. The culture and tradition was to care for the sick and dying, especially the children. Fast forward to present day and Peter Street School is described by Principal Bradley as a school that has continuity from its historical past: a neighbourhood that has been quite Irish until the mid 20th century still gives back. Principal Bradley explains, “When you think about it, for a lot of kids, they fit into what’s happened before. They came to escape poverty, they don’t speak English, their parents came here to give them a new life, and so it’s like the tradition continues, except now we have kids from all over the world. So the Irish organization raised money and bought tin whistles for all our students at Peters Street School. I remember I was riding my bike through the park and one day I heard a tin whistle. It was Shelley up in her balcony! She was playing the polka and I thought, ‘Okay, this is a good program because these kids feel good about themselves.’ So it’s influencing the whole neighbourhood. There’s music in the neighbourhood – it’s alive with music. The metaphor is a lovely one.”
Principal Bradley leads with a philosophy that builds on the strength of tradition and on success in the historical context. The tradition of care and collaboration exists at a high poverty school such as Peter Street. In contrast, there are many schools whose climate and attitude about children and families living in poverty is to focus only on what is missing in these diverse contexts. For example, consider these statements that have been shared by educators in high poverty schools:
- Those kinds of kids will never learn how to read anyway, what’s the use?”
- “We’re parenting parents, and they’re losers. That’s why their kids are losers too.”
Principal Bradley and the teachers at Peter Street School respond to such comments by teaching and leading against storied assumptions.
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. Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker, from Brock University) about:
- How would you respond to this scenario?
- How do you lead against storied assumptions of children and families affected by poverty?
- As an educator, how might you respond to educators in your place of work that say:
- “Those kinds of kids will never learn how to read anyway, what’s the use?”
- “We’re parenting parents, and they’re losers. That’s why their kids are losers too.”
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:
- 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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