La Cultura De La Clase

Hello! Since last week, I have been busy teaching all of the Spanish II classes and helping with the one period of Spanish I. I have also continued to enjoy my time at Lincoln Hall and have been able to get involved in some of their extracurricular activities. Before I start my reflection on this week, however, I would like to review my goals from last week and set a couple new goals for the upcoming week.

Last week, my goals were to finish learning all of my students’ names and to get my action research project going and iron out all the kinks. I am very close to knowing all of my students’ names, but am still have trouble with the names of some of the really quiet students. I aim to continue working on this and making a specific effort to learn the last few names of my students this week.  As for my action research project, I started some research and looked to start doing ePals with them, but found that the site was really particular. I also realized that with using ePals, I would have to rely on the other school to be as serious about participating as well, which, if it didn’t work out, would be a disaster. So, I decided to do my project at my next placement and have already emailed my teacher to explain the project and ask her if she already knew something in particular the students have been struggling with that I could work on with them.

My goals for next week are to get started on my video project and to learn a lot from the Institute day we have on Friday. I would also like to invite the principal to one of my lessons this week.

The word I think that best describes my experience this week is fun. Middle schoolers are just plain fun. I have been able to see a lot of my students’ personalities throughout this week in many different situations, which has been great. I’ve been able to interact with them in class, as a whole and individually, after school, at a student leadership program meeting, and at a school dance. It has been great to see how unique each student is and the different levels they are at developmentally and in maturity.

I continue to learn how important it is for student to access their prior knowledge in as we continue to review concepts from last year. They seem to be recalling a lot of information in a short amount of time, which will help them as they add on to what they’re remembering in new concepts later on in the year.

This week, I have realized how much students’ language, culture and family impacts learning as well as I interacted with students. While talking with some students after school one day, I was telling them that I love how so many different students at the school spoke different languages. Then, one girl explained that her language, Romanian, is also a romance language, so it is similar to Spanish in some ways. Because of this, she sometimes gets what she’s learning in Spanish mixed up with what she already knows in Romanian. Knowing this is important, because I am then able to recognize that some of the mistakes she makes in Spanish might not be because of her misunderstanding of the material, but rather, a switch between Romanian and Spanish. (She also taught me how to say “how are you?”: “Ce mai faci?”.) I also think it’s important for me to remember that for most of the students in my classes, Spanish isn’t only the second language their learning, but their third!

I also learned more about the Muslim culture through a few of my students and my cooperating teacher. My cooperating teacher explained to me when girls started to wear their burka.

One thing that has been helpful in accepting and embracing cultural differences is understanding my own self culturally. In the multicultural education course at Trinity, we learned about how understanding our own cultural identity and the role it plays in our life is essential, because we can then understand how the different cultures in our classrooms can affect them and their learning. As a teacher, I aim to have no cultural biases, but rather to support and appreciate each student for who they are.

I’m not sure I can recall a specific time this week in which I used cultural diversity to teach and enrich instruction other than teaching a language that belongs to many different cultures. Where possible, too, I like to add in different cultural customs from Spanish speaking countries so that students realize how many different places Spanish is spoken and can become familiar with different countries customs. In order to help students understand as I speak, I usually use my hands as well to help different students. When possible, I give visuals or have them act it out as well.

It wasn’t in the past week that this happened, but during Ramadan, my cooperating teacher and I ate our lunch in the Literacy Center (which hadn’t started up yet) with the students who were fasting. I thought this was a good way to show that she respected their culture, even though it’s different from hers.

She also asked her homeroom about the different languages they speak at home. In our class of fifteen, there are fourteen different languages spoken! I was shocked at this. It was really cool to see my cooperating teacher show that she valued them and their culture though. Often times, this can make their affective filters go down and make them more willing to share and participate in class.

My cooperating teacher and I are getting along really well! We discuss lesson plans together and run copies for the week each Friday. She also has invited me to be involved in other school events, such as STAR (a student leadership team) and the school dance, which happened this past Friday. I was able to attend both this past week, which was a great experience. (It was also pretty funny to see some of the middle schoolers dance J)

In our reading of the Schmidt book this week, my understanding of culture was enhanced as I read about the culturally responsive teaching strategies. It was really interesting to hear how most people are used to teaching in the United States and how ineffective it can be when dealing with students from other cultures. We tend to think they don’t understand what is going on because of their response to what is being taught, but, in actuality, it’s the way the lesson was taught. Some of the strategies listed that I thought were the most interesting, were: being extremely vigilant about including all students in discussion, not just the talkative, eager, or ambitious ones; encouraging peer turoring so students can share culturally diverse strategies for learning and all students can be seen as learners and teachers; and encouraging flexible grouping that allows students to interact with students from other culture and realize that the way we do things in other cultures may be unique and very effective. (p. 84-84) 

Including cultural awareness in the curriculum was another section of this chapter that I found to be helpful, as it applied directly to using it in the classroom. Among the ten different examples of activities to incorporate in the classroom, I thought cultural awareness through music was a really good idea. As the book explains, music can often serve as a universal language. Students can listen to the sounds and understand part of the culture. I think this could be a really moving thing to do in the classroom. I also liked the Venn Diagram idea, where a circle is made for each cultural group with in the classroom, all overlapping in the center. Using words and pictures, students will realize that each culture is unique, yet they can find that they all have something in common as well.

This chapter was really helpful and has some good ideas in which to create a classroom the respects and embraces diversity.