Corey Mondello
Book Review
3/28/16
Reaching and Teaching Diverse Learner
White Teacher The author of White Teacher is Vivian Gussin Paley. The book is about her experience of teaching her kindergarten class. She shares her experiences of teaching in a school with integrated classes in a time when racism was a major part of society in the outside world. Mrs. Paley’s main focus was to be the best teacher she could be to all of her students, but was not sure how to go about dealing with the racial differences in her classroom. She was told she should ignore the subject of race in the classroom and pay more attention to the behavior and success of her students. Mrs. Paley quickly realized that this was not the solution and that ignoring this subject did not help the students. It conveyed the wrong message to all of the students, even the white ones. Mrs. Paley started to bring the subject to her students and this also helped with her own struggles with racial stereotypes in and outside of the classroom environment. This book gives an inside look of the struggles that teachers face when trying to address the issues of race and it gives some insight on some of the solutions teachers can use to effectively deal with this very fragile subject. Mrs. Paley went to school in the south so her first teaching experiences were in the south which may play a big role in the way she looked at things. When she moved to the Midwest where she grew up she was put in a classroom where she
“Start Where You Are But Don’t Stay There” by Richard Milner is a book about dealing with diversity in the classroom in today’s day and age. It holds a focus on allowing all students to be successful academically and throughout their lives. Milner talks about several different case studies in which teachers must help students who are struggling. It goes through scenarios with Mr. Hall, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Jackson, and Ms. Shaw, who are all struggling with diversity in different ways. This book holds an importance in expressing ideas and concerns of equality in schools, and I believe it would be beneficial for all aspiring educators to read it.
Teachers need to get through students on order to teach a student. Some students might not show up or care about the class. Teachers of elementary schools have the hardest because the kids just want to play, goof around and don’t listen. Elementary teachers have hard time teaching young uneducated students just like Miss Moore with her uneducated children from the neighborhood, in the story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara. Miss Moore teaches the students how to take the first step toward a better education just like elementary teachers, her teaching method were to show how the upper class lived in comparison to the children but she could have though them differently by giving rewards for something they did educationally.
Given the changing racial demographics of our nation’s schools (with the white population increasingly becoming the minority) and that the main role of our teachers, most of whom are white, is shaping the education of our students, the question is: How can white teachers effectively teach students of color? Although little is known about the effectiveness of white teachers and achievement in students of color, there definitely is an underlying philosophy of multicultural education that students benefit from being taught by someone of similar race and cultural background. That being said and understood, the question remains: With the majority of teachers (those already teaching and those in college to become teachers) being white, how can
The White Teacher is a book about the authors experience with mixed racial classroom settings. She is a kindergarten teacher in a diverse Kindergarten classroom, in which shares the difficulties she faced with integration in the classroom in such a time period where tensions were very high among blacks and whites. White Teacher is a fair, coordinate take a gander at the battle educators look in their endeavors to address these confounded issues and offers her answers and in addition the practices and states of mind she keeps on battling with. What she goes through intrigues me because it continues to happen in today’s society. This is something I am not looking forward to facing when I start my teaching career.
Poverty is a serious issue which our society and children faces every day. It is a constant struggle that shouldn’t be ignored. UNICEF states “The study of OECD countries in 2007, over fourteen percent of Australian children under the age of eighteen are currently living in households who are defined as poor or with incomes less than half of the median national income”. The increase in the number and percentage of children living in poverty within our society has contributed to making today's classrooms more diverse than ever it has been. This highlights and makes both teaching and learning more challenging. Diversity exists in the students who are living in poverty and the education assistant and teachers must provide the concept of diversity
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a great piece of literature. It explores problems in society that still occur today. It is fascinating to see how the Puritans punished adultery then and the lack of punishment of adultery in our society now. It shows how all the characters affect Hester and what everyone does in the community. It shows that no one is exempt from any type of crime in that town. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, he analyzes the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl.
The article, Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners in FCS Classrooms, describes the changes in the ethnical make-up of today’s classroom and the challenges teachers face as they aim to teach children from different cultures. In addition, the article points out the different needs of multicultural learners in the classroom. Finally, the article also describes research based strategies and techniques teachers can use that prove to be effective for the diverse learner.
The literature review explores three specific bodies of literature. The first is research about the opportunity gap between Black and White students. Then the second topic reviewed refers to research on teachers’ Whiteness and how that affects their perceptions of their Black students. The literature review concludes with a discussion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Theory and how it informs the present study.
Pedagogues play highly important roles in the fostering of speech and language for young children, particularly for those who may have a disability in this area of processing and cognition. Teachers actually serve a multitude of purposes in this respect. They act as models of proper language and speech, helping children to see and listen to how people talk and how the children themselves should one day speak. They also serve as coaches, and utilize a variety of methods to coax understanding of language and of speech from children themselves. Additionally, they function as facilitators who provide a variety of different mechanisms and means to initiate understanding in children, both of what it is the child wants and a comprehension of what the teachers expect for the children to do as a result.
The topic of “race”, is one that Americans have to confront every single day, whether we choose to consciously acknowledge it or not. As an aspiring educator, I am aware that I will encounter many situations regarding as race and be on the frontlines of the issue. It is important to know that there are credible and reliable resources out there to gain insight, and guidance, on something that is so crucial to youth of Americans. I say this because educators are on the front lines of this issue. While many parents are working eight hours a day, their children are not just learning how to properly, add or subtract, read and write, or the history of the human race; they are learning how to “fit” into society, what makes them unique and special,
I completely agree with you, Rhea. In order to meet the needs of diverse learners, classrooms should offer multiple choices. In order to reach students of different abilities and backgrounds, teachers should incorporate both traditional methods of instruction, such as paper and pencil, as well as interactive stations that allow students to take control of their own learning. I enjoyed my AFX more than the IFX because, while there were chances for students to control their learning, students were given multiple outlets to control their learning. They used ipads, the smartboard, they had multiple centres (for math and English), they drew pictures and used papers and
The early church had lots of characteristics. According to Acts 2:42-47, the church was teaching, worshipping, communal, selfless, and growing. This empowered people to join the apostles in their spiritual journey. The modern church still is all these things, but also an institution, a herald, a sacrament, body of christ, servant, and community of disciples. All of these characteristics are important to the church as a whole.
Williams (2008) posed a serious question. “What does it mean to be a good teacher, especially in a classroom where the student body is predominantly Black and the teacher is a White female novice teacher?” (Williams, 2008, p. 5). Although many educators are aware of White privilege, it is not something that is discussed or worked on within classrooms in America (Abent, 2014). As a result, many White females in education have never been asked about their sense of what it means to be culturally competent or what experiences they have had working with Black students despite the fact that they come to the classroom with a whole different set of experiences and beliefs (Williams, 2008). Educators across the United States, need to understand that “White privilege impacts nearly every decision that is made, whether it is realized or not” (Abent, 2014, p. 4). The notion of Whiteness is significant in education for a couple of reasons, one being that 82% of the teaching force in the United States is White middle–class females (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). Secondly, White female novice teachers bring their own cultural beliefs and Whiteness into the classrooms (Michael, 2012). This only further highlights the considerable differences between White female novice teachers and their Black students (Cook 2015). This is highlighted by Cook (2015) as the research explicates that more than 60 years after Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) school
This source was very helpful in validating my point about ignorance. Women struggle everyday against discrimination: color, gender, violence, and lack of equal opportunities. Celie is an example of an African-American woman exerting her right of self-defining. She represents any black woman’s experience, her voice stands for a whole community but, at the same time, she also claims her right of speaking as an individual voice. Therefore, Celie, is an individual searching for her place in society. In the same way, Alice Walker is also female Afro-American but most of all, a writer searching for her place in literature. This source helps better relate to my topic of racism and injustice towards African-Americans in the society. This source is
Within the core of many educational institutions, diversity is a commercial tacit. While every institution cannot offer the same kind of diversity, the endorsement of such exists through various definitions. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges define diversity through the various classes: race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, disability, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and age (“Statement on Diversity”)