Double journal entry 6

Double Entry Journal #6

Teaching for Meaningful Learning - Meaningful Learning is learning that sticks. You recognize it when students are able to use what they have learned and apply it to new situations.

Read down to the section titled "Implementation Challenges".

1.Read the Introduction. What "dominant paradigm" is showing signs of wear?

The instructional model of the teacher and the textbook as the primary sources of knowledge, conveyed through lecturing discussion and reading.

2. According to the research, how does Project-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.

  Lets them transfer their learning to new kinds of situations and problems and use knowledge more proficiently in performance situations. Shepherd 1998 showed a increase in critical-thinking and increased confidence in their learning. Boaler 1997 and 1998 showed better gains on conceptual problems presented in the national exam and significantly more students in the project-based curriculum  passed the national exam and had a more flexible useful mathematical knowledge. The challenge 2000 multimedia project  showed students earned higher on content mastery sensitivity to audience and coherent design.

3.  According to the research, how does Problem-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.

Students take an active role in building their knowledge while the teacher’s role is to make thinking visible, guide the group process and participation and to ask questions to solicit reflections.  Studies(Vernon and Blake 1993 and Albanese and Mitchell 1993) show that students enrolled in problem based curricula score higher on clinical problem solving measures and on actual ratings of clinical performance.   Similar case based approaches have been used in business law and teacher education to help students learn to analyze complex multifaceted situations and to develop knowledge to guide decision making (Lundeberg Levin and Harrington, 1999 and Savery and Duffy and Williams 1992)

4.  According to the research, how does Learning by Design support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.

Children learn deeply when they are asked to design and create an artifact that requires understanding and application of knowledge. It is ideal for developing technical and subject matter knowledge.   Hmelo, Holton and Kolodner 2000 found that the design project led to better learning outcomes than the traditional approach to instruction they also noted that the design students learned to view the respiratory system more systemically and understood more about the structures and functions of the system than the comparison group. Perkins 1986 saw that design activities are particularly good for helping students develop understanding of complex systems, noting that the systems can be presented as a united whole whose structure is adapted to specific purposes. Fortus 2004 found that both higher and lower achieving students showed strong evidence of progress in learning the targeted science concepts and that students were able to apply key concept in their design work. They also noted a positive effect on motivation and sense of ownership over designs among both individuals and groups.

5. What are the differences between the three approaches?

The difference is in how the inquiry is presented either in real world situation or a series of problems or to design something .

6. In your opinion, what is the most important benefit to learning that is common across the three types of inquiry-based learning approaches?

The most important thing is that the student builds confidence in their ability to trust their learning ability.  They trust themselves to work out the answers based on what they already know and build on it to get to the solution.

Double Journal 5

"Character education often dogmatically assumes that only a small set—a “laundry list” as Suzanne Rice calls it in her article (Rice and Burbules 2010)—of “conventional,” primarily Protestant work ethic virtues encom- passes ethical experience. Many character education programs are exces- sively self-assured, arrogant, and exclusive of difference and lack reverence."

I chose this quote simply because of the words character education.  While most will argue (and as I a parent I would have to agree) that character education should take place at home,we also have to be realistic and acknowledge that this isn't always the case.  As educators we also have a duty to help instill some basic virtues that can be considered universal such as honesty.  

1. What is reverent listening and how can it support culturally responsive teaching?

Reverence arises from an understanding of human limitation frailty and finitude therefor listening reverently is a key component in teaching it welcomes cultural differences and gathers other virtues it is the recognition of the need for aid an sustenance by others and the good of human relationship and communion.  By listening reverently we are genuinely interested in what the other person is saying and why they feel the way they do. 

2. Give an example from your own schooling experience of what this quote means:

    Reverent listening is not to be confused with humiliation and domination by others who force us to listen and even less so, with the kind of incompetence that wants to be told what to do. 

When I was a child you “listened to the teacher” that didn’t mean you understood the meaning or motivation behind what she had to say it simply meant you did what you were told. I remember being a little girl and we had to make a poster about our family.  Well, my aunt ran several night clubs and I had spent my summer helping my father paint and repair them. I was very proud of this and included pictures from magazines to represent this. My teacher didn’t bother to listen to my story or anything else I had to say all she say was pictures depicting “drunkenness and immoral behavior” and had my poor mother in the office the next day.  Thankfully the principal knew my family and also allowed me to tell him about my poster myself in front of my mother the teacher and principal.  The principal was a reverent listener and simply said “wow you sure worked hard this summer didn’t you” he then apologized to my mother for dragging her into the school and then asked to speak to  my teacher alone.  

3. What is meant by a "laundry list of value ethics"? Give an example from your own schooling experience. And then explain how this     approach to character education can be NON-culturally responsive.

The laundry list is what the “WASP” community would consider traditional moral values.  We all value hard work and honesty.  In school I was blessed in that I didn’t have to try too hard to achieve good grades and I think I often got looked down on by many teachers and students.  They assumed that I was cheating or otherwise being dishonest simply because I was able to achieve good marks with little effort.  I remember one teacher who would mark my math papers wrong if I left steps out even if I got the answer right.  He told me he knew I was cheating and since he couldn’t prove it he was going to mark it anyway if I left out anything.  I had to make sure to write down each and every step so he had no excuse to mark it wrong.   There are many reasons this is not culturally responsive.  One main reason is that many cultures value different traits.  In America we value ambition whereas in Asian cultures they value humility.  Another example is the different value placed on age and family different cultures have.  

4. Have you ever had a teacher that at one time or another exhibited the traits of a reverent teacher? What did they do? How did they make you feel?

I have had many great teachers who would be considered reverent.  I had a Spanish teacher in high school who encouraged me to write and even helped me get published in a few local literary magazines.  She knew I had a love for writing autobiographical stories and even though my stories weren’t “neat and tidy” or pretty with a happy ending she always encouraged me to write and pushed to have them included in the schools literary contributions.  It made me feel like a valid member of the school and of society.  My life and experiences weren’t like everyone else’s but that didn’t make them any less pertinent or real.  I felt validated and included and accepted.

5. What factors contribute to a "toxic" school culture?

The break down or dying of the ideal positive school culture where reverence and its attendant action, listening have escaped from the scene.  It is also the deflated irreverent school culture where listening no longer occurs or where only test scores are important.

6. Find a quote in this article that you would like to incorporate into your own philosophy of education and explain how it fits or changes your philosophy of education. “ A lack of reverent listening by school leaders is abetted by many factors in the larger culture, such as the “commercialization” of schools”  I see this in my sons school and many others.  Students shuttled from one class to another no talking no personality just teaching to the test and creating little robots.  It is not the way our students need to educated.  We need to foster lifelong learners not these mindless little drones currently occupying our hallways.  

7. MINDFULLNESS AND TEACHING

culturally responsive teaching

Many educators will hear an Appalachian accent and automatically write off that student as unintelligent and un-teachable.  This only serves to perpetuate the image of the uneducated and ignorant mountain people.  Our poor isolated school systems already make things more difficult without saddling our students with this unfair cultural deficit perspective.  When we do this, students feel inadequate, insecure and perform poorly overall.  It is essential for teachers in Appalachia to understand the dialect and its nuances not as incorrect or as a cultural deficit but as simply a cultural difference.  By having the cultural difference perspective and understanding that their students way of speech is simply a different way to say the same things they will not only be able to communicate better with their students but they will encourage the students to be more comfortable and active in the classroom.  If we reach them young and let them know that having an accent or speaking with an Appalachian dialect does not mean you are slow or dim witted.  It is simply a sign of your culture and where you come from. “children come to school with different experiences.   The experiences they have as young children are culturally driven.   Within this, I see literacy use as cultural practice.  It is cultural practice because reading and writing are woven into the everyday experiences of people , and these everyday activities, attitudes, and beliefs help to define and distinguish among cultural groups”(Purcell-Gates 2002).
The best and easiest way to overcome the cultural deficit perspective is to simply see things as differences not in a right or wrong perspective.  If a teacher understands their student’s differences and how and where they originate, they can work with them and actually use them to their advantage.   When a teacher pulls in resources from the community and family this can not only make the student feel better about their culture but can reinforce the lesson being taught.  After all before children start school everything they learn comes from these rich funds of knowledge.  The “demonstration of the funds of knowledge available will help educators and psychologists gain a more positive view of these able, but misjudged youngsters”  (Moll 1992).
In many ways teachers are to blame for student’s not learning generation after generation.  When a teacher makes a judgment based on where a student grew up or who their parents were and decides that this particular student is un-teachable this teacher is perpetuating the cultural deficit perspective.  Essentially saying that the student’s cultural is making it impossible for them to learn.   This is nonsense, as proven day after day by thousands of students and teachers across the country.  How do these examples happen when so many others prove the point?  They follow the cultural difference theory.   As stated earlier, simply seeing elements of culture as different and not as a negative or wrong element at all.  These teachers and students find an understanding of culture and use it to encourage more active learning rather than seeing it as a hurdle to be overcome.  “ In this way, Cultural Difference Theorists are more focused on the `micro' elements of people's lives and communities.  As Erickson points out this theory "provided a way of seeing classroom troubles as inadvertent misunderstanding--teachers and students playing into each other's cultural blind spots"” (Bolima, n.d.).
A good way to improve literacy instruction for non-standard English speakers is to have them write and give a  small explanation about themselves and where they come from much in the same way we did with our where I am from videos.  By writing it they improve their “proper English” but by giving a presentation in whatever means they have the ability to get their thoughts across in their own words and own ability.   This not only allows them to pull from their funds of knowledge  and shows them that you place value on where they come from, it encourages them to feel pride in who they are and their cultural capital.  Their family and the knowledge they instilled in them before we as teachers got ahold of them can in many cases be of more value in the long run and we need to acknowledge that.    By encouraging them to do projects like the where I am from written and spoken project you are employing several strategies for culturally responsive teaching.   Our own videos are excellent examples of this.    Our videos built bridges of meaningfulness between home and school not only by giving the instructor insight into our personal lives by allowing the other students to view them we were able to find things in common we otherwise might not have known.  Many students lives are full of important or interesting facts or events that would beneficial to the class and by sharing them it acknowledges the legitimacy of their cultural heritage as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum. And of course by allowing us to view each other’s work  we were able to praise and know each other’s heritages.
In my social studies classroom I plan on implementing many strategies for a culturally responsive classroom.  I especially like having students interview older family members about life when they were teenagers even having student s do family trees.  Many times the students find out things they never would have imagined and that can lead to in class discussions.  When students interview family, they will then have to research a detail out of the information to expand on.  For instance, if a student’s grandfather was a coal miner he may have to research the changes in coal mining over the years then put together a presentation to show how the tools have changed.  They could do the usual research methods, images or even local museums, so long as the end product is easy to follow and covers all the important details.

Purcell-Gates, V. (2002). “...As soon as she opened her mouth!” In L. Delpit & J.K. Dowdy (Eds.), The skin that we speak: An anthology of essays on language, culture and power.

 Bolimia, D. (n.d.). Context for understanding for Educational Learning Theories  Retrieved October 5, 2012:  http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm

Moll, L. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to
connect homes and classrooms. (1992). Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-41.

i am from video

Double Journal Entry 4

1. I learned that students who speak with these dialects often see themselves in a negative view. That it adversely effects their writing and learning and that if teachers can or already do understand the dialect and move back and forth between the dialect and proper English students have a better overall understanding.

2. They build bridges of meaningfulness by having the students listen to themselves and family members to hear the different ways they all use the dialects.

    They teach students to know and praise their own cultural heritages by not telling them their dialect is wrong but by showing them how to understand their dialect in relation to proper English.

3. When I was younger we had to interview a family member about what life was like when they were young.  I taped it and then wrote it exactly as they said it using quotation marks.  Of course it contained many instances of improper English and "hillbilly" talk.  My teacher gave me a poor grade because of it saying I didn't correct my grammar.  But I felt it was a direct quote and that how my grandfather said things was as important as what he said.

DIALECT AWARENESS EDUCATION: THE IMPORTANCE 

OF WATCHING OUR WORDS

I chose this paper because of the first paragraph :  

 "I observed a high school English class for a few hours each week and was surprised that in a class of twenty-two English speaking students, two students also spoke Russian, three spoke Spanish, some spoke in a heavy Southern dialect, and some spoke in an African-American 

dialect. This led me to question how I could successfully teach Standard English to such a linguistically diverse class. It was through Dr. Marlow’s teaching that I began to view language differences not in terms of right or wrong, but just in terms of difference."

Epstein, P., & Herring-Harris, L. (2011, Sept. 15).Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard english. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655

Marlow, D., & Rowland, J. (2010). Dialect awareness education:the importance of watching our words. Informally published manuscript, Upstate Undergraduate Research Journal, University of South Carolina, Retrieved from http://www.uscupstate.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Undergraduate_Research/Reseach_Journal/2010_001_ARTICLE_ROWLAND_MARLOW.pdf

poem

I am from a deep long holler, from Harley Davidson and four wheeler rides.

I am from the third to last house on the left, clay dirt and sulfur creeks, loud pipes and louder laughter.

I am from the Queen Ann’s lace, the black eyed susans.

I am from “sit a spell” and “tellin tales” and a little bit of ornery, from Archie Glen and Lizzy Beth and Lipscomb .

I am from the mavericks and pioneers.

From be still and know and a real man(or woman) has calloused hands.

I am from thanking God for all I have even when it wasn’t much. From reaching out to help others no matter how little you had.  

I'm from a coal company house and Irish kings, from maize and haggis.

From a run-away rail car, the turn of the century boarding house, a motorcycle gang in California and the muddy fields of Woodstock.

I am from the hearts, minds and eyes; I am from the unbelievable, the scarred and the survivors. I am from love and loss, from obstacles and amazing grace