What Lengths Am I Willing to go to in Order to do Right by Every Child?

 

Every day as teachers in the classroom we need to make sure that we are making sure that what we teach to our students is culturally responsive. For some teachers, this term means that they need to tie their lesson content to African American and Latino students' racial backgrounds. In reality, it means mimicking students' cultural learning styles and tools. It means that as teachers we need to know about our students outside the classroom. When they are always playing games to learn things then adapt the lessons to a game that they can play to be inclusive in the learning. Allowing all students to participate in a way that they understand and mimics the way that they live outside the schools. Many teachers have found the platform Blooket.com to be a way that students can learn through games with their peers in the classroom. 

Christopher Edmin, in his TED Talk, about Reality Pedagogy, mentioned that a way to connect with students is through the community. Using names of the street to rename areas of the classroom is one way to make a connection to the students' cultures in the community. Instead of having the students pick up books from the bookshelf they could pick up the books from Main Street. They start to associate the classroom with their community. 

I particularly like when Edmin said, “Belonging and equity are connected”. If a student does not feel like they belong in the classroom and are not getting the services and accommodations needed in order to be successful then there will always be a difficult connection between the student, teachers, and the community. 

So, how far am I willing to go in order to do right for every child? Well, to start off I live in the community I work in. I have built a large base of relational trust with my students. They know that I am aware of the community that we live in and what is going on in many of their lives outside of the classroom. Even on a bad day for the students, they know that they can come into the classroom the next day with a clean slate and that I don’t hold past mistakes against them. Everyone gets a smile and a good morning to start their day. Making sure that students know that they are loved and cared about makes all the difference.

Is School Equitable?

     

     As an educator, schools are not equitable. They are still growing and learning the best practices for instructing the students. Each year new ways of teaching are brought to the forefront of education to help teachers teach with equity. In the meantime, there are quite a few aspects of teaching that still need fixing. I chose this image because equity is not about fairness. It is not about giving each person equal accommodations or teaching only one way. It is about giving each student what they need in order to be successful.

     In the TedTalk, “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, we learn that schools have taught that Africa is full of impoverished, uneducated, overpopulated families. Ms. Adichie described what it was like to attend college in the United States and be treated like she was less than just because she came from Africa. The teachings put an image into the mind of her roommate as to who she was. She wanted to show others that there was more beauty in Africa than what they saw on infomercials and the news. It is the single story that is being told by the education system that is not being fully told from multiple angles.

     I particularly love the video of Rita Pierson telling teachers they need to be a champion for their students. The ones that are hard to like. I can relate so much to this video. I worked in a local middle school where most of the support staff and many teachers did not care for a specific group of kids, an entire grade level to be exact. This group of kids would always push back and refuse to do work in class or make the support staff complain about them. Long story short, these were my “babies.” I fought for them to prove how smart they were and for them to know that someone would always believe in them. Today those rough students are sophomores at our high school. I will often run into them while out and about throughout town and they always come up and tell me what they are doing in school now or that they did get a respectable job. I promised all of them that I would be in the front row at graduation hollering for them so that no one ever had to experience what it was like to not have someone cheering them on.

     School is only equitable if educators learn to respect their students and learn about their cultures, lives, and what makes them so unique. Educators must remember to not be judgmental about the “harder to love” students.