Curriculum

Monday

Project Based Learning and its Implications in a Multicultural Mathematics Classroom

When I was a junior in high school, I was placed into AP Calculus. On the first day of classes, I came to that particular class to find that my favorite math teacher, Mr. Best[i], was the instructor for this years AP class. He began the class explaining that we will be preparing for the AP examination in June, as well as preparing a final exit project. He went on to explain that we would be having two assessments: a midterm and a final, as well as this project. Our grade would consist of the two exam grades as well as the project grade, attendance, participation and homework completeness. He began to give us examples of projects that students completed in the past, and told us that literally anything is “fair game” as long as you’re able to describe it using mathematics.

            Racism is defined by Tara Yosso in her study, “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth”, as “a system of ignorance, exploitation and power used to oppress African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Americas, American Indians, and other people on the basis of ethnicity, culture, mannerisms, and color” (72). In history, we tend to see racism within the “black/white dichotomy”, but this two-way understanding of racism does not allow for the multiplicity of oppression that is experienced by many others. I believe this is a fitting place to start as I hope to analyze just some of the research surrounding how students of color, particularly 2nd generation immigrants of various countries fair in the education system as well as how they might experience college as a 1st generation college student.

            In David Nurenberg’s article “What Does Injustice Have to do With Me? A Pedagogy of the Privileged” the educator discusses his experience being raised in the upper middle class, while being knowledgeable about the hardships his Jewish family members encountered. He discusses his own accounts of harassment growing up, and brings readers into his struggle of teaching suburban white privileged students multicultural education and social justice education. “I specifically wanted to work with a suburban population, with the young people who would grow up into the college roommates and friends I had known and who had frustrated me… I felt I could act as some sort of bridge between the worlds to which my parents had exposed me to, and the one that produced the CEO’s and policy makers who I believed unwittingly perpetuated this unfair system.” (Nurenberg 53) This paper will act as spokes around this quote and highlight other figures who share this ideology and act as ‘bridges’ in the context of white consumers of Hip Hop industry, and what multicultural education can do for the white, privileged, and impressionable.

Christine Newville

Inquiry Project

Multicultural Education

4/18/2014

                                                I’m Not a Math Person

I struggled to motivate myself to write the problem analysis paper for our education class. This didn’t seem to be for lack of ideas/ problems to analyze, but rather, essay writing itself didn’t feel like the most productive mode for me to express my ideas. When I met with Jody, we determined that instead of writing about a problem, I would address an immediate issue within our 360; in doing so I would be attempting to work oriented toward problem solving and not problem analysis. The “problem” I identified was in a lack of Serendip dialogue. This has been a personal issue for me as well, as I have not been utilizing Serendip in the way that I would like to use it. So in the place of a formal essay and in an effort to “feed our Serendip ecosystem” I have begun responding to our classes problem analysis papers. I will be post links to these comments here so that they are easy to find if you are interested in reading or responding. I have not finished responding, so there are only a few links currently below, but I will update as soon as I post!

Here are the responses I have so far:

Agatha

Kelsey

Teaching in Prison: Challenging Preconceived Notions

Overview:

This curriculum is designed for a pre-kindergarten classroom (ages 3-5 years old) with a student population of 23 students. A bilingual literacy curriculum will be designed for immigrants or children of immigrants from Mexico. The students speak predominately Spanish. The parents of these students speak very little English, so the students cannot use their parents as a resource to learn English. The class meets five times per week for five hours. This is the second semester of the school year. By the time the students’ progress to kindergarten, the students will be expected to understand English because in kindergarten, only English will be spoken. In this curriculum, in addition to learning the basics of reading and math, there will be activities that will incorporate two main goals: To have the students understand English without losing their identity and to incorporate culture into the student’s learning.

            In semester one, the teacher spoke both English and Spanish. However, in this semester, there will be a bigger focus on English, since this is the only language that will be spoken in kindergarten.  The average length of a school year is 180 days, so these three units will take place for 30 days during the semester two.

Reading/Literacy

Objective:

- Learn the letters of the alphabet

- Begin to recognize their sounds

Hello all!

I found a short booklet in Canaday earlier this week (on that table in the atrium where there are free books) that you all might find interesting. It is called "Speak Up at School: How to Respond to Everyday Prejudice, Bias, and Stereotypes." This booklet was published by Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The website has the following blurb to explain why this was published:

This guide is for the adults in the school. It offers advice about how to respond
to remarks made by students and by other adults and gives guidance for helping
students learn to speak up as well. We believe that modeling the kind of behavior
we want from students is one of the most effective ways of teaching it.

I think it is really interesting, and could be a good resource for educators. If you want to read the booklet, you can find the PDF here: http://www.tolerance.org/publication/speak-school

I have also found some more interesting publications for educators by Teaching Tolerance, including "Anti-bias Framework" and "Creating an LGBT-Inclusive School Climate" that you can explore here: http://www.tolerance.org/publications

Enjoy!