Gloria Ladson Billings, An Author, Teacher Educator And Former Public School Teacher Essay

In order for teachers to create a learning environment that is culturally responsive to each individual student, a teacher must learn the student’s funds of knowledge. The importance of learning the funds of knowledge of your students is crucial. A teacher can approach learning more about a student’s prior knowledge and culture in a variety of ways, including, instructing personal interviews with questions about their personal life such as what are the most important things in your life. Another way to discover your student’s funds of knowledge is by placing yourself in their shoes and doing a school and community walk through. You can also be provided with more insight into your student’s lives by conducting an adult interview from someone that also lives in the same community. In order for me to create lessons and classroom practices that are culturally responsive is by discovering my student’s funds of knowledge. I am at Blackwell Elementary School, which is located in Marietta and is apart of the Cobb County District. After having the students create heart maps and interviewing them, doing a school and community walkthrough, and talking with an adult, I was greatly impacted by all the new information and perspectives I learned. Without going through this process to obtain the information, I would have no knowledge on my students or the community surrounding Blackwell besides what meets the eye. This experience impacted my own thinking about the school I am working in for

In conclusion, during the Sixties and throughout the Seventies, African Americans, such as Miss Moore, would try to educate the next generation, such as the kids, in hopes to,

Earlier this month, we were very excited to have the opportunity to meet with Sonia Galaviz when she visited our main office. As a 5th grade teacher at Garfield Elementary School here in Boise, Idaho, she’s been steadily making a name for herself in the education world. In 2009, she was named Idaho Woman of the Year by the Idaho Business Review, and in 2011 she was one of five educators nationally chosen to receive Teaching Tolerance’s award of Excellence in Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, and this year, Galaviz’s devotion to her students has once again been recognized.

As minority students increased in urban public schools, they have now become the majority of the school population and have brought difficult topics to the surface; race and ethnicity. In Another Inconvenient Truth: Race and Ethnicity Matter, Hawley and Nieto published their beliefs on how cultural differences are not to be tucked away and hidden in an educational setting, but embraced and celebrated to promote education by the teacher in an academic journal: Educational Leadership. Their appeals and claims provide various instruction to guide professional educators to overcome the achievement gap.

We will house kids who are products of all facets of society. For example, children of immigrants, children who have affluence, children who are loved and cared for greatly and children who may be in a situation of neglect. Teaching is about reaching out to each student, helping them to overcome challenges and be the best that they can be. It seems that an increasing number of these challenges may not be academic in nature. I believe that conquering these challenges actually beings with the little community forming within our classrooms. As teachers we have the obligation to teach our students how to have respect and compassion for one another. How to be on the same team and work together, no matter each person’s background.

As with McIntosh and Tatum, Edmin believes that acknowledgement is key. If educators would acknowledge “that the ways they perceive, group, and diagnose students has a dramatic impact on student outcomes” (Edmin 10) then they could work towards change to create better outcomes for the students. Through this adoption of culturally relevant pedagogy, educations consider the culture of the student and what they bring to the classroom to determine the best way to teach them, similar to John Dewey’s pedagogy. When teachers only acknowledge their culture, they fail to appreciate others and view them as unimportant. This happened in the Carlisle School where its goal was to strip the Indians of their culture and replace it with American culture (Edmin

talks about how blacks and Hispanic are falling in the cracks because of little to no motivation. This chapter tells have teacher have great influences over the student. If the teachers lack the ability to motive, it has an effect on the students. The teachers must build strong bonds with students of different cultures. Most Black and Hispanic begin to think there is not any reason to go to school when there is no motivation; in contrary, turn to the work force or to the street for money. Teacher can identify and build the students strengths, which helps students to recognize and understand easy students recognize and understand and clarify goals to get better. Teachers can help students to overcome

Having read ‘Confessions of a Bad Teacher’ by John Owens, I was amazed at the overall condition of the inner city school Latinate that he taught in many different ways. I never observed or went to an inner city school, and I always heard stories from my mom about how teaching in the city is one of the most difficult jobs a person could have. After reading this book, I now believe this statement even more. Mr. Owens had to manage all of the nuances that make up a traditional classroom ranging from having good lesson structure, having a good classroom environment and management, and having good instructional strategies. In addition to fulfilling these big challenges, Mr. Owens also has to deal with numerous cultural differences in the classroom, many additional instructional demands as imposed by the principal Ms. P, and lack of family and community support from families and members of Latinate.

Teachers in urban classrooms face a multitude of challenges on a daily basis that affect their students’ academic success. Standardized test scores reflect lower achievement for students in urban schools that have a high rate of poverty compared to those in schools that are low poverty (Olivares-Cuhat, 2011, p. 1). This is in part due to students coming from a variety of cultures and backgrounds that have different learning needs that are being addressed through a traditional approach to teaching that does not align with the way each child learns best. For urban students, their learning preferences “appear to be in conflict with traditional modes of teaching” (Olivares-Cuhat, 2011, p. 7).

Ladson‐Billings’ article critically comments on how teachers valued “the culture of poverty” (p.105). They tightly connect race and socioeconomic status with low academic behaviors. More importantly, most teachers are unable to acknowledge students’ cultures to recognize the causalities, instead, they blindly make assumptions and predications based on their own cultural perspectives.

Fraser (2005) examines the positives of effective parent-teacher partnerships and points out that collaboration with low socio-economic status and minority families allows for gains that can be exceptionally life enhancing and teachers themselves can learn from this by looking into Moll’s concept of social capital, the ‘funds of knowledge’ approach. The funds-of-knowledge approach allows teachers to “view families with positive, strengths-based perspective that respects cultural values and practices and affirms that teachers can learn as much from families as children can learn from their schools” (Grant & Ray, 2010, p. 85). The funds-of-knowledge approach aims to revoke the problem-solving or deficit perspective teachers may have of minority cultures

In discussion of pre-teacher training the second critical issue has been the absence of professional development geared towards teaching African American male students. On the other hand, researchers Closson, Bowna and Merriweather contend there is no Black pedagogy to teach African American students. The investigation of pedagogy is explored by all three authors, presenting the fact there is not a Black pedagogy to teach Black students. Closson, Bowman, and Merrimweather collaborate in their study attesting Black faculty struggle to develop pedagogy for teaching. All three authors articulate very strongly teaching children about race, exposes risk revealing their genuine self, as well as position. This literature points out, “Black professors are often not given respect,” they must present themselves accordingly “to expectations often unrealistic,” artificial “of the student” (Closson, Bowman, and Merrimweather 85). This study claims the plight of the mixture of literature combined in a class setting is a touchy subject, the instructors “face consequences, such as racial battle fatigue,” centered upon the experiences of race, yet it is highly based on “White students report experiencing cognitive dissonance where students interpret the course material as threatening, experiencing feelings of shame and may consequently engage in resistance” (Closson, Bowman, and Merrimweather 83).

Global awareness and culturally responsive teachers are necessary for student achievement. Successful teachers need to understand how cultural differences effect student academic growth. In my own school, a young teacher was frustrated with her kindergarten student, a first-generation, Vietnamese-American, who refused to look at her and speak up. Unknown to this teacher was the fact that within this child’s culture, it is considered rude for children to look directly at adults, or even to speak to them when unsure of answers. This lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of the teacher created tension in the classroom and underscored an area for professional development for that teacher, specifically, and perhaps others as well.

Differences in outcomes of student achievement raise the questions about why we have these differences and how can we eliminate these differences. This course has opened up the discussion about just how important the culture of the school shapes its effectiveness. When the culture is left to define itself there’s no predicting of the outcomes. The culture dictates how teachers interact with each other, students, and parent, as well as determines how the community perceives the school. The impacts of these interactions can make or break the success of a school. When

Teachers, who expect to be responsible for educating students, soon find that their responsibilities go far beyond the curriculum. Children bring their outside experiences with them to school each day. These experiences have shaped who they are and foreshadow their futures (Ladson- Billings, 2009). Teachers are expected to overcome all of these obstacles, yet have not been adequately educated to understand how these life circumstances affect the families they serve. Working in low-income, urban schools proves to be more challenging than many teachers expected and is often far different from their own experiences with schooling. The teachers are a part of this system that they often do not fully understand. As a result, educators are likely to engage in behaviors that contribute to the