Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

• Culturally Relevant Pedagogy left me feeling inspired and validated for the work I do as an educator.  The video expressed the work I do as an educator so eloquently.  I am the cultural translator that bridges the school culture and the home culture by building on students’ prior cultural knowledge.   I help make connections between what is known and what is to be taught and understood.  The ‘cultural filters’ as they were referred to in the video, is when students try to receive the message from school culture and try to adapt just as the school culture should adapt to the students.  It is not or should not be a ‘one size’ fits all model, as in the sink or swim situation I experienced.   Home language should not be silenced in the classroom, but used as a resource to leverage learning. 

• In my classroom this looks like the use of both Spanish and English to keep up with content while learning language.  Students have literacy text in both languages.  Spanish is used to help bridge understanding and make sense of content.  Students are encouraged to use their native language when necessary, either verbally or written.  

• The series of videos made some great points about bilingualism.  First episode Getting Acquainted states that students should not remain silent just because they do not speak the English language. The educator should find a means of being able to reach that student and establish a means of communication through the students linguistic background.  The goal ultimately, is not to silence the student into learning English, but to make them bilingual. 

• The second episode, Advocating for Bilingual Students showed how the teachers in the classroom went above and beyond to welcome the students in the classroom.  I really liked the language and culture portraits that shows how students identified with language.  The use of the multicultural and multilingual touchstone text is an awesome way for students to see themselves in the books.  Finally, I was touched by the teacher’s honesty when she expressed how she had to let go and become a co-learner with her students.  This act of humility can go a long way with students showing them empathy in the process of adaptation to a culture and a language system that is foreign.  

• The third episode, Bilingual Superpowers was very impressive way to have students create text.  Students are so into the graphic novels that having them create their own through the use of their home language is an ideal way to encourage their creativity and keep their interest level.  

• The quote from the fourth episode, Knowing your students, the teacher was quoted the book they were reading in class to Kill a mocking bird, she took a classic and added her own unique spin to it,” you can never understand a person until you consider things from his perspective, climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  She did this by celebrating the small victories in class helping the students feel accomplished.  She provided scaffolds in their language through prompts and visuals even though she did not speak their language. 
• https://youtu.be/t1gcinsjuZE

• The fifth and final episode, Benefits of Bilingual Education inspired me because my Teach Out project is directly related to this concept.  It sparked some new ideas to use with my students in class.  I like the story, My name is Jorge on both sides of the River.  I could read some touch stone and mentor text, and shows some videos to spark the students with ideas of the benefits of being bilingual so they can brainstorm.  

• Good teaching is just that, regardless if you can speak the child’s home language.  Incorporating the use of home language has many benefits, among them is academic success.

Engaged Pedagogy

• From Paulo Freire’s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, although I have not read it, the documentary has given me the impression that he believed in a higher power other than himself.  If this is the case, is that one of the basic elements to achieving social justice?

• Also the documentary claims the importance to label an issue, because through the labeling one can better understand the concept ultimately to be able to dismantle or deconstruct the issue.  This reminds me of ‘intersectionality’, with these multiple invisible and visible identities can we begin to deconstruct the social injustices?  Does language begin to evolve as we give labels to issues in an attempt to understand them better? 

• Also, the article mentioned that Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the teacher as the healer.  What happens when the healer needs healing?  Or the teacher is not able to practice freedom of education because of some absence of empathy or understanding of the human part of students? 

• What if the teacher’s teaching and learning philosophy  is that of the cognitive approach and therefore in tuned to the child’s nature and not how they are nurtured?

• If the practice of teaching as a form of freedom through healing and the healer must reach self-actualization that should be to help the self before helping other, the last ultimate step in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a desire for self-fulfillment namely, the tendency for her the (the individual) to become actualized in what she potentially is, what would this look like if took it more seriously?  

Intersectionality

This idea of intersectionality is a living breathing concept that grows and evolves as one’s understanding and the many shades of meaning expressed as individualistic as each person.  Kimberlé Crenshaw has coined this term back in 1989 to envelop the multiple identities that intersect to make us who we are socially, economically and politically in which systems of oppression and privilege overlap and reinforce each other.   An example of intersectionality in my life would be that I am Black, Latina, woman, educated, bilingual, working professional and able-bodied.  Even though I enjoy privileges of being educated, bilingual, and able-bodied there are traits of being Black and Latina, a minority within the minority are challenges I am faced with daily.  It is an oppressive trait I experience among other Latinos who are colorist, and it is a challenge I am confronted with as people see my race which is visible and not my other positive traits which are invisible.  It is hard to get to know some one’s invisible identities unless you take the time to get to know that person.  
As an educator how does this play out in the classroom? What biases, stereotypes or assumptions do I make about my students if I do not take the time to get to know them individually outside from school to understand how their personal lives may inadvertently affect them academically?  For instance, I have two students in class who tend to demand one on one teacher attention more so than most of the class.  These two students share a commonality at home.  Even though one has a stay at home mom and the other has a working parent, both have a baby sibling who has ‘dethroned’ them.  My role in the classroom as an educator, tends to take the back seat to attending to their social emotional needs first.  At times I find myself in a crossroad where my biases cloud their struggles and oppressions.  In one case, a student has chronic absences.  I have reached out to the attendance team to meet with the parents to understand the home situation.  I have spoken with previous teacher to gain an understanding as well.  But I have yet to sit down and have a one on one talk with the student to remove any biases and get to the root of her problem.   I am not aware of her invisible oppressive traits that I am contributing to instead of helping her find a resolve.  

Attached is a cute video with kids explaining their thoughts on intersectionality. 

https://youtu.be/WzbADY-CmTs

In the Shadow of Brown Special Education and Overrepresentation of Students of Color written by Beth A. Ferri and David J. Connor  assert key points in the after math of the court decisions.  Sixty-four years later, after the decision  that segregation is to be deemed as harmful, schools remain to be as segregated as they ever were.  These are the unfulfilled promises of both landmark cases.  In Spanish we have a saying that describes this well, “el que hace la ley, hace la trampa.” 
The article continues to purport the problem of overrepresentation of minority students in special education classes.  The authors draw attention to the inappropriate placement and labeling of racial and linguistic minority students based on their performance on IQ test and other standardized test, criticizing them as biased.  Culturally and linguistic biased, and there fore these test are not valid.  Rather it is seen as a form of institutionalized racism. The report explains how the initial referral process begins with the teacher, who is most public schools are 90% White; whereas, 40% of the student population is of a racial minority.  
The Staff at my school consists of teachers, teacher assistants, principal, vice-principal, school psychologist, speech therapist, secretaries and nurse combined equals 50 people.  There is a fairly equal split of staff regarding teachers of color and White teachers. 
Consequently, because of the problem with overrepresentation of minority students in special education programs, there has been an increased effort not to identify as many students.  The number of students receiving services in the co-teach classrooms has been slowly dwindling over the last few years.  Does this mean students academic performance is increasing? No, our school is still labeled a ‘focus’ school due to low achievement on standardized testing known as PARCC.  This simply means the staff is finding creative ways for  working with the English language learners in program as well as out of program.  Also, there has been an attempt to redesign the standardized test, such as the interim assessment to be less culturally biased.  The characters in the story and the plot mimic some of the struggles students and their families share.  In other words, some students can see themselves reflected in the story line.   However, the wording of the questions are difficult and too ambiguous, so students still have a hard time answering the questions correctly.  
A suggestion the authors make that I find shocking is about the data on Hispanic students.  In the article, the authors impress that the data for Hispanics is complicated because on one hand they are underrepresented in elementary schools, but then overrepresented in high school.  They further suggest that they are more likely to be placed in self-contained, bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) classes and that these classes are overly restrictive and limit a student’s ability to gain access to the general education curriculum or to keep up with their grade-level peers.  First of all I do not agree with this statement.  In my understanding as an educator of Bilingual Education classes and as a former English language learner myself, students whose first language is not English versus their mono-lingual English counterparts is no comparison.  To begin, the bilingual or ESL classroom if properly run, using such techniques as “translanguaging” or allowing students to use their first language to make sense of acquiring the second language creates for a rich language environment full of learning opportunities.  Additionally, students access to knowledge is not being limited to only English.  That is limiting. The goal is to make input comprehensible using  their native language and the target language.  Studies have shown the many benefits to having a bilingual brain that operates with two or more language systems.  Placement in a bilingual or ESL classroom is neither overly restrictive or limits students.  It serves to enrich students and validate who and what they bring to the classroom.  
The article concluded by saying that we must learn from the history of Brown versus Board of Education and consider how certain practices serve to exclude students and that we should try to create a more inclusive future.  The practices of exclusion is due in part to the student population of Providence School District. For instance, currently, school-wide data taken from infoworks.ride.ri.gov shows a student population for 2016-2017 based on 88% of the students receive subsidized lunch, 43% receive ESL/Bilingual services, 12% receive special education services.  The student characteristics based on racial/ethnic background is as follows: 8% African-American, 1% Asian, 83% Hispanic, 2% Multi-cultural, 1% Native American, and 6% White.  With a combined population of African-American and Hispanic at 91% it is safe to assume that the majority of the students receiving special education services at the school are minority children.  Looking at the city-wide data it shows a student population of: 17% African-American, 5% Asian, 64% Hispanic, 4% Multiracial 1% Native American, and 9% White.  The state-wide data shows a student population of: 8% African-American, 3% Asian, 25% Hispanic. 4% multiracial, 1% Native American, and 59% White.  In my findings, the data shows that the majority of African-American and Hispanic students are highly concentrated in the Providence School District.  So unless there is going to be busing of students across city-limits, I do not see desegregation of Providence Schools as is stated in the Brown vs Board of Education.  https://youtu.be/nRz-l5nInvs

Crippling School Curricula

• In the article Cripping School Curricula the author David Connor states that a child with a disability who is mainstreamed in the least restrictive environment, that the disability is associated with shame and stigmatized by a model casting the disability as a deficit in need of examination, diagnosis and treatment.  In recent years, I have taught in an inclusion then a co-teach model where students with varying degrees of learning disability were mainstreamed with regular students who were not identified.  In both types of programs, inclusion and co-teach the treatment of the students was basically the same.  I, the regular education teacher would be responsible for teaching the whole class, and planning the lessons.  The inclusion or co-teach would pull a small group and give modifications or make accommodations based on their disability, or as otherwise stated in the individual education plans.  This model is known as alternative teaching where one teacher takes responsibility for the larger group while the others work with a smaller group.  In these smaller groups the inclusion or co-teach teacher uses remediation.  With the support of the administrator, he instated common planning time for all of the co-teach teachers to be able to plan lessons together.  The initiative for this was to afford time to plan a lesson that met the needs of the students, but most importantly to try a different co-teaching approach. 
• This was helpful because it opened up lines of communication between my co-teach teacher and I to be on the same page.  I was able to use the time productively to express how the students should be supported and what that should look like.  We were able to reach an understanding and compromise a little.  I offered to open up and allow her the space to teach in the way she was most comfortable with and I in turn could feel supported in the classroom.  Co-teaching is challenging for several reasons.  As a generalist, I do not have the special training to work with the students individual needs.  I felt overwhelmed to make accommodations for such a wide range of abilities with the limited supports of only having the co-teach teacher for a fraction of the day, and with little time to plan made it a daunting task.  After the administrator had left, the new administrator did not see the benefit for common planning time for co-teach classrooms, and it was removed.  This luxury of common planning was short lived and only lasted about two semesters.  
• The other types of co-teaching approaches are one teach, one observe, station teaching, parallel teaching, teaming and one teach, one assist. In the one teach, one observe just as it sounds one teacher teaches while the other observes with a specific purpose that is decided on by both teachers.  Then together the data from the observation is analyzed and used to inform instruction.  The teachers take turn with the different roles of teaching and data gathering. In the station teaching both teachers divide the classroom evenly to teach the content to one group and subsequently repeat the instruction for the other group.  The teachers could be creative here adding a third station for independent work.  The parallel teaching model is where both teachers are teaching the same content simultaneously at different levels. Teaming is when both teachers share delivery of the same instruction to a whole group. Finally, one teach and one assist is when one teacher has the primary responsibility for teaching while the other professional circulated through the room providing unobtrusive assistance to students as needed. 
• Some of the co-teaching approaches mentioned above can lend itself to create more labels in the classroom when certain students are pulled away from the whole group to be given special instruction.  I can see how this type of treatment can stigmatize a child and give a sense of shame.  What type of model is conducive to the teaching and learning environment of students with a disability?