Multicultural Education 2014

I would like to investigate first generation college students for my inquiry project. I’m considering narrowing the topic to first generation college students who are 2nd generation immigrants because there are a lot of reasons why someone would be considered a “first generation” student. This was the first problem I encountered with my topic; how to define first generation. Some first generation college students are first generation because their parents never had the money for college. Some might be the first because their parents “didn’t work hard” in school when they were in high school. Some are first generation because their parents never had the opportunity (in the case of immigrant families). Each of these cases are unique and lend to individual experiences that are not shared with other first generation college student. I’ve also run into the issue of whether I’m including first generation college students who attend community college, 2 year colleges, or 4 year colleges. I believe this distinction might be important in the long run, but I’m still trying to think if it is important now. I’m most definitely sure that I will focus on the bridge between high school and college because to me, this has been the most challenging experience.

I originally made this quilt for an art class while abroad. The theme of the class exhibition was mapping, and I decided to make that very personal and map my body. I chose the medium of quilting because my grandmother and great-grandmother both quilted and because of it's association with traditionally feminine crafting techniques. I wanted to disrupt and question traditional assumptions about feminitity – leaving the edges rough and patches unfinished.

The body on the quilt is a cut-out of my own body, and the red crosses embroidered into it mark some of my visible and invisible scars. I wanted to make visible my vulnerabilities and "flawed" spots, aspects of myself that tend to remain covered up, hidden, or silenced. 

I want to look at bilingual literacy programs in early education (preschool and kindergarten). I’ve seen a number of approaches to literacy in early classrooms, from majority play to majority structured work on letter sounds and reading, so I’m interested in looking at the differences in programs, and especially how the programs in bilingual schools relate to the students’ and their families home practices and experiences with language. I’m interested in looking at how and which languages are privileged (or not) in these classrooms, and how this may vary depending on the teacher, the students, and the larger community. I think I would like to interview my placement teacher, who teaches at a preschool literacy program for mostly Spanish speaking kids, as well as some of the preschool and kindergarten teachers at the bilingual school I was working at last semester in Costa Rica. While I will mostly want to look at educational research from classrooms, there is also a fair amount of psychological research about the process of bilingual language development, and I’m thinking about incorporating some of that as well. 

I've always been really interested in how education can work in "different" environments (and I use different to mean deviating from the norm in some way, or having some special quality that is greatly linked to the way one would perceive/pursue an education there) and spending these last few weeks at my placement has really heightened that interest. There are many factors that need to be considered when working in a place that isn't a "typical" school environment, especially when the students/learners/people receiving the education are also not typical. (Some pop-culture examples I'm thinking of are the movie "Freedom Writers," in which a teacher starts a job at a school that has been recently racially "integrated" and is faced with the challenge of creating a cohesive class made up of students of many different (and often rivalling) backgrounds, and the movie "Precious," in which the main character is sent to an "alternative" school because of the way she struggles in her classes and is met with a tough but clearly social-justice-motivated teacher who supports her.) I'd like to focus specifically on the environment in my placement and how that affects the way one might educate in that space; how does one choose their methods, what does one need to keep in mind about one's own place in the larger structure of society when approaching learners in these "different" environments, what are the goals/aims one might have for these learners, how does one integrate the personal experiences of the learners without having it overshadow one's own educational purposes, etc.

I would like to investigate methods to get underrepresented groups intersted in pursuing exclusive fields such as the STEM fields. By using my observations from my praxis placement at Adelante, I would be able to look into current practices in outreach to Hispanic middle school students in Norristown Pennsylvania. Some questions I will keep in mind are: what are the benefits of starting college preparation in middle school vs. waiting until high school?, How can we teach science in a way that is more accesible to a broader range of students?. From this information that I gather from my observations and outside research I will write a reasearch paper or ciriculum.

For my inquiry project, I want to research how teachers are using teacher practitioner research to further explore multiculturalism in their classrooms and to promote multicultural, social justice oriented values. My curiosity in teacher practitioner researc has been developing more broadly for many months now. For a long time, I was extremely passionate about applied education research. I love qualitative research and education but I was more interested in exploring these interests in a non-profit policy-level setting, as opposed to in the classroom. This past school year, particularly after taking the "Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar," which is the teaching methods course, I developed a much more serious interest in being a classroom teacher. I believe that that teacher practitioner research wonderfully fuses these interests of mine in research, education, and teaching. 

In particular, I am interested in reading books and articles about teachers who are using teacher practitioner research to promote multicultural teaching. I want to learn 1) How people are doing/using this research; 2) What they are finding; and 3) Why this matters/how this method is useful for promoting multicultural work. 

My first praxis meeting was this past Friday the 28th. Every Monday me and the other co-facilitators meet to create a lesson plan for the students and on Fridays we go and lead the after school program. My praxis is located just on the outside of Philadelphia. We, the facilitators and I, first went to one of the classrooms to try to rally up the students who normally attend this program. The conversation we walked in on between the students and the teacher was a conversation on why white people think that their hair is better than black people. From this first impression, I already got the sense that there are racialized tensions in the school I was coming into.

During the program, we had 7 students attend: 2 boys and 5 girls. Our main activity for the day was about how we make assumptions about people based on their appearance. We gave them printed picture of people from all walks of life and called out statements like “choose the person you are most likely to hire”. The question that left me most uneasy was the response we got for “choose the person you believe is a part of the LGBT community”. One of the students, Judith, said that the male she picked was displaying feminine qualities. One of the facilitators questioned her asking “well are they feminine qualities or are these just attributes that society believes are feminine”, hinting at the social construction of femininity. Judith was adamant about that the qualities that the person she picked were in fact feminine, missing the point completely.

As a tour guide now, part of my general introduction is stating where I’m from. If the people on my tour have never been to California or have very little knowledge of the state, I tell them I was born in Pomona—which is true—to which they jump and say, “oh, Scripts College? Harvey Mudd?” and I say “sure”.

            Though most college towns are similar, the people on my tour never take into consideration that I could have been born and grew up in the part of Pomona that wasn’t the picture of middle class suburbia they think of. I grew up on the side of Pomona with the indoor swap meet, family own car washes, and graffiti tagged on the walls of grocery stores. I currently live in the neighboring city of Ontario where the population is predominately Mexican/Latino along with pockets of Vietnamese and Black families. You might even consider us working class or below that.

            My mother is Colombian (emigrated at age 16) and my father is Mexican (emigrated at age 15). They met in high school, fell in love, had me, fell out of love, and I’ve had a rocky relationship with my father ever since. Despite the fact that both my parents are Latino, speak fluent Spanish, and understand Mexican and Colombian culture from the “motherland”, I am pale, speak very mediocre Spanish, and understand little of my heritage.

I was fortunate enough to continue my Praxis placement at Leaf Middle School* this semester. I was placed in this class as part of my English Language Learners class that I was taking last semester. I was sitting in on a 7th grade beginning language and 8th grade beginning language ESL class with my supervising teacher Mrs. C.* Leaf Middle School is located in the Upper Darby school district. After traveling to the school, I was welcomed by beautiful grounds and welcoming signs within the school. The security at the front door remembered my name and quickly signed me in.

I walked up the stairs to the classroom and was welcomed by the students in the hallway. "Hey Ms. Lopez!" students said to me as I was walking to Mrs. C's room. The students were in the process of changing classes and the hallways were booming with life. I found Mrs.C.’s classroom and walked inside. She currently was in the middle of a planning period, so we were able to catch up and talk about what was to come.