Month: April 2017

As we are coming to the end or our education foundations block here at UW-Whitewater, I have started to think more and more about how I want to teach when I do become an educator. In our educational psychology class the other day, we were talking about different ways in which we could design our lesson plans of our future students. The main way we discussed about in class, is the concept of Backward design.Basically, how backward design works, is that teachers make long term goals for their students ahead or time, and then they decide on what best ways would motivate the students to attain these goals, as well as what sorts of ways a teacher could assess if these goals have been attained or not.

I really liked the example that Grant Wiggins gave to help show how Backward Design should work. He mentioned how many schools value creative and critical thinking, and have it listed in their education plans. However, he says that most all schools in america do not do a good job at teaching students how to think creatively and critically. The reasoning that he gives for this, is because the way education is set up right now, students can get A’s in every single one of there classes, but yet still not have these skills that we want them to have, such as creative and critical thinking skills.Wiggins says that, in order to teach the student what we really want them to learn, we need to: set up long term goals for our students, make the material engaging to the students, and to assess whether or not our students attained the the goals that we wanted them to attain.Going off of what Wiggins is talking about, I would like to give a run-through of an example lesson plan that I could possibly use in the future for my students.

Mock Lesson Plan

Attached above is a rough draft of a lesson plan that I could conduct with my student in the future. Thinking through what sorts of things I wanted to integrate into my lesson plan, really helped me think through ways in which I want to conduct my classroom when I do eventually become an educator. the main goals that I am going to have for my students during each school year, is for them to develop better knowledge of mathematical principles, and how to apply them into the real world. For ways in which I conduct my lesson in class, I was thinking of possibly integrating a flipped classroom method. A good example of this would be a really good math resource that I have used in the past: Patrickjmt.

All of Patrickjmt’s videos are setup like this, and I have found many of his videos to be helpful in dealing with difficult mathematical concepts that I have been learning in my classes. How I am thinking of integrating this into my classroom, is by having my students watch supplemental videos of me going through a lesson, and then we can take the time in class to discuss the material addressed in the videos, as well as answer any questions about the material. I feel that flipped classrooms really make the learning more engaging for students, allows them a bit more freedom to go trough the material at a pace that they want to, and these videos give students something to refer back to if they forgot how to do something, as well as if they want to study a bit more for a test or something like that. Now as far as assessing the goals that I have for my students, there are many ways in which I was thinking of doing this. I could have my students do some sort of project that helps them apply the principles that we have been learning in class, which will then show me if they have attained this goal that I have for my students. I could have a simulation, or some sort of game that I conduct throughout a semester with my students to assess where they are. Lastly I could just go the traditional route of having my students take summative assessments also.

As I think about it, there are so many ways in which I could teach my classroom in the future. I feel that it is very good that we, as future educators, are thinking through ways in which we want to conduct our classrooms in the future, so that when we do eventually become an educator, we will be able to help our students attain these goals that we set for our students.

Diversity in learning is such an interesting and important topic in the field of education. In order for us to become good educators one day, we need to be able to reach people from every kind of cultural/racial background. Sadly, however, the topic of diversity and race in schools, is something that our education system has done a poor job at addressing. So today I would like to talk about the evidence we see that proves there are still problems involving diversity in schools, as well as ways in which I plan on addressing this problem when I become an educator.

As we see from this video, many black students do not feel integrated into their school systems. Instead they feel singled-out and stereotyped before anyone gets a chance to know them. In the doll experiment in the video, we also see a majority of  very young black children recognizing the white doll as the “good” doll, because they are white and not black. These children have already made the connection that they are singled out, and that they are not as “good” as white people. How are black students supposed to go to school to get an education, when they feel put down because of all of these negative stereotypes? This is not even including the achievement gap between black students and white students, but that is a whole different topic to be discussed. The point that I am trying to make is, is that no matter how much people say that, “racism is no longer a problem in our country”, this is simply not true. I have heard so many stories about stereotypes and racial remarks in schools, like the ones in this video, that prove that there are still problems with race and diversity in schools, which needs to be addressed.

Now that we have seen this problem of race and diversity in schools, I would like to talk about some practical resolutions to this problem. We see from what Jane Elliot talks about in her videos, that people are taught how to be racist. It is therefore our job as educators to bring light into this topic, and to teach students that everybody is different, and we therefore cannot judge people on something as arbitrary as their skin color. In the book, Everyday Antiracism, I feel that Heather M. Pleasants really illustrates how I would want to help tackle this issue in my classroom. “My proposed antiracist move involves teachers’ individual out-of-school identities with students, which facilitates the formation of authentic relationships between teachers and students in which both parties see each other as complex and rich human beings.”(Pleasants 2008) As we can see, Pleasants is trying to break down the boundary that has been generated between white and black people over the past two centuries. In order for educators to achieve this, there needs to be a genuine relationship between the teacher and the student. Just like many other parts of the role, the teacher is the person that needs to be proactive with this area, because often times students are not going to be the ones to initiate this sort of conversation with their teachers. This is something that I am therefore going to try and integrate into my classroom one day, to help tackle this issue of race in the classroom. I hope to be someone that a student can have a genuine relationship with, and see that they are a unique individual that should not be judged on something so simple as their skin color.

Race and diversity in the classroom is such an important topic, which poses many problems in our education system. It is therefore vital that we as future educators be cognisant of this problem, work to establish healthy relationships with students of different color to break down this racial barrier, and to be constantly educated on this topic so that we can most effectively educate students of any sort of racial/cultural background in the future.

Sources that I referenced: