Multicultural Education 2014

My placement is at a public K-8 school in Philadelphia, and I have been there twice already. The first day of my placement was one of the most overwhelming mornings of my life. The school is in a nice location and I had a lovely walk from Suburban Station to the school. The school looks like any other school from the outside, but inside it is rundown and institutional-looking.The school is predominately African-American, and many of the students are low-income.

I am in a third-grade classroom. The class only has 18 students, and I was surprised at how small the class was. However, its small size does not mean that this is an easy class. Several of the students have behavioral issues and some have learning disabilities. The students that act out distract the other students from their work, and the teacher has no productive way of dealing with these kids other than yelling at them and sending them out of the room. The students who are behind in learning cannot keep up with the rest of the class, and the students who are advanced do not get any challenges or any extra attention from the teacher because she is so busy trying to help kids who are behind. Because of the PSSA and the extreme pressure on the school to raise test scores, the teacher is forced to teach to the test and teach them how to answer the specific questions instead of focusing on more general skills or creative thinking. The test has things like plot structure and poetry on it, which is way too challenging for some of the kids who are reading on about a first grade level. 

Last week I had my first praxis placement at a public middle school in Philadelphia. My role is to participate in a weekly enrichment session for around a dozen students from fifth through eighth grade classes. I basically received the program/role from another Haverford student who has been developing and growing it over the past two years. Their focus has been, roughly, on discussing issues like civics and politics while working on building argumentation skills. My working goal for the semester in general is to work with this group of students who have already spent a lot of time learning about "leadership" and politics to think about how to build power and organize toward something as a group.

Originally, I was supposed to come and observe the class while another person led them in some kind of lesson/activity. It turned out that the person who was supposed to come couldn't make it and five minutes to ten I was told I'd be leading the class. "Oy," I thought to myself. I didn't have a lesson plan or any plan really. I had been excited to observe the students and the adult in the room to get a sense of how they functioned together, what the group dynamics were like, what kinds of things they were interested in. But I had to improvise--and it ended up being fine.

Besides the fact that I really enjoyed reading the dialogue that Shor and Freire had, I felt that the idea of implementing a ‘Dialogical Method’ of teaching is an effective way to show students that they’re indeed at the center of their own education. Freire explains that dialogue is essential for development. Humans, are different than other intelligent organisms because we have the ability to communicate and assure each other and ourselves in our knowledge; “we are able to know that we know.” (99). A theme in the reading that really stuck out to me was the idea of empowerment and who is the center of knowledge. In lecture-based environment’s, teachers are seen as the center of knowledge where the educator is to teach the educatee. In a dialogue based pedagogy, though the teacher is knowledgeable about the subject that they’re teaching and engaging their student with, they actively engage with their students and “relearn” the subject while studying it again with their students. The teacher is able to always find out new things and rediscover the material they’re already familiar with through working with their students closely; this turns learning into a JOINT act, rather than a solitary act.  By allowing their students to “exercise their own powers of reconstruction,” the teacher allows their students to practice personal responsibility and expression.

A theme among the two readings that has resonated with me is empowerment.

Freire makes the argument that empowerment is not an individual feeling but a social act, and that “if you are not able to use your recent freedom to help others to be free by transforming the totality of society, then you are exercising only an individualist attitude towards empowerment or freedom”. My peers and I constantly throw around the word empowerment as more of an individualist feeling than an actual social act, especially in terms of online videos like the ones on Upworthy. One of the downsides of Upworthy videos is that they can make you feel extremely inspired, empowered, hope for change, and make you feel really good, and then you can just walk away from the video and continue on with your day without doing anything with those feelings... or just waiting until the next Upworthy video shows up on the dashboard. Upworthy can most definitely be a tool for Freire's definition of empowerment as it can spread messages virally. How can we get all these people who have been inspired to come together and act for change?

The Boler Chapters were interesting to think about. The role of emotion in the classroom has always been an interesting subject for me. I’ve always found that the classes that that had more emotional tension, classes I’ve been upset about the discussion or felt like I spoke from the heart very often have been the most rewarding and I was never really sure why that was. In the chapter 7 reading, the idea of empathy and testimonial readings as more than passive, but as an active was to both identify emotions in the classroom and recognizing that “I am not you, and that empathy is possible only by virtue of this distinction”. Boler makes a strong distinction between pity and empathy saying that pity is about your own vulnerabilities, not about the other person, which makes it seem useful that empathy be brought in the classroom for education. Often I feel like when I speak with my feelings in class that the only person who benefits is myself, almost therapeutically, but if students practice empathy then we can grow together in acknowledging emotions. Empathy explores beyond just what emotions are being expressed but also asks why they are being expressed.

If feel like this chapter made an important distinction for me about why empathy and active emotions are vital for a class, not only to understand each other, but also to understand power relationships that cause those emotions and that not all experienced are experienced the same.

 Shor and Freire’s piece on dialogical method of teaching was a very different format than what I am used to reading. They were having a dialogue about dialogue! I enjoyed the unpacking of their conversation though. There were three points that were made that stood out to me the most. Two of those points, I found slightly controversial and I had to read and understand to clear my way of thinking up. The last point I totally agreed with.

            First, Ira states, “the right to have a small discussion begins as a class privilege.” At first, I found this point troubling. I thought, “Just because someone is in a lower class does not mean that he or she does not have the right to engage in a small discussion.” However, as I continued to read, I understood Ira to mean that the higher the status, the more likely they are to enroll their child in school with an intimate environment because they can afford to do so. In contrast, lower status people enroll their child in bigger schools, with more people in the classroom. As a result, it is harder for these teachers to gain control of the crowded classrooms, so they are more likely to resort to “monologue or teacher talk, in the transfer of knowledge approach” because it would be harder for the teacher to engage every single student in dialogue.

At a general, my-personal-values level, I think that I believe in Levinson’s point that the “civic empowerment gap” is a big issue. In a country where we put democracy on a pedestal and where the structures, policies, etc. of our country are decided by a so-called democratic process, it really doesn’t work if huge groups of people simply aren’t being heard.

In light of the Boler chapter on teaching socio-emotional skills and subsequent class discussion about the problems with teaching “universal” values and skills, however, I found this chapter more troubling and confusing. I think that there is a lot of potential for undermining the lived experiences of students, for undermining the action that they do take in their lives, and teaching them to incorporate themselves and work within a structure that is actually really detrimental to them (and is, in fact, a reason why they are less civically engaged).

I am a customs person and we have just welcomed several new members onto our hall this past week. One of these students is an international student from another dorm and my first years have been very sweet and accommodating to her and I was very touched by their actions. Most international students go by an English name for comfort’s sake and it cuts down on confusion when names are called out during class or when interacting with people. I too go by an English name because my name is constantly mispronounced/misspelled and the mispronunciation of my name is actually another Korean name and so I would never know if someone was calling me or another person and would cause A LOT of confusion. My Korean name is a very big part of my identity and I value what my name stands for because it shows my heritage and the history of my family (most Korean names have unique Chinese roots and belong to certain regions of the country and so lineages can be easily traced). I feel as if we lose a bit of our identity when we decide to go by an English name because most students pick a name that they have read in a book, heard on tv or in a movie or was given to them by friends or strangers. What really touched me was that my first years really made an effort to learn our newcomer’s real name and other international students’ names on our hall. Being called by our real names brings, at least to me, comfort and I feel little bit more ‘whole’. 

I woke up last Monday to an email saying classes were canceled due to snow and all non-essential staff were asked to stay home. So I was surprised to stroll into the bathroom and see my hall's housekeeper wiping down the sink countertop. I wasn't expecting anyone to be there, but particularly not any college staff. "Wait, don't you get the day off?" I asked. She explained that no – she and the rest of the housekeeping staff are considered essential and have to report into the college regardless of the weather conditions. She then expressed concern that the weather would make it difficult for her to pick up her daughter on time. I wished her luck, and left feeling shocked, helpless, and a little bit guilty. I was surprised the college would require housekeeping staff to report when faculty don't have to – especially because, as 18-22 year olds, I feel we should be pretty capable of restocking toilet paper or keeping our spaces clean, at the very least for a couple of days. I felt helpless because I didn't know what I could do to ease the situation, and wasn't sure what my responsibility was. And I felt guilty because she was forced to risk her own safety to come in to take care of our mess and our spaces.