Part+9


 * Ravitch, Diane. //A Considered Opinion: Diversity, Tragedy, and the Schools//**

Becca: This article focuses on the diversity in American schools systems and how schools should accommodate to these diverse cultures. The article talks about how American schools systems viewed diversity over the course of history. At the same time, Ravitch discusses how at times schools embarrassed diversity while at other times schools encourages a melting pot. I think that this article makes a compelling argument when it states that schools must teach immigrants American history, language and culture while embracing the culture that students come from. This means that while students must learn the American way of life, they must also embrace and practice the traditions of their roots. It is not a salad bowl or a melting pot. Rather American immigrates need to hold tight to their heritage while embracing the American culture and society.

Deanna: This article discusses the problems and issues that arise when teaching (or not teaching) about other cultures. Because America is so culturally diverse and immigration plays such a big role in the daily lives of the people here, we need to be conscious of that and use it to benefit and help our students understand the content better. Personally, I think that having a diverse class (preferably with many different cultures represented) would be more engaging for students and would help lead to better discussions. Students all come from different backgrounds and sometimes different cultures. Therefore, they have had different experiences and have different background knowledge that is unique to them and their culture. By incorporating that into the content (because after all we want to get students to relate to the material), students can share their previous experiences and background knowledge with their classmates and their classmates can then have a better understanding of different cultures. I think that this understanding will help them learn to be more tolerable and accepting of other cultures which will then help reduce racism and hate crimes not just in school, but in the world which the students live. Therefore, I think that teaching about and using material from a multitude of cultures will benefit my students and me, because I plan to learn just as much (if not more) from them as they do from me.

Luke:

The part of this article that I disagree with, probably because it was written in 2002, is the part that deems it necessary for schools to recognize our national spirit and civic unity. While unity can be great, let us not forget that patriotism is the worst evil. It is difficult to figure out whether we are one culture or many, so the answer is yes. We are all. We neither wholly assimilate or diversify, but pick and choose what we need as the situation arises. We need to understand that the word unamerican doesn't make any sense, since we all have different beliefs and values, and I think our states show that we allow uniqueness. We need to have a less defined focus on our country, and a more defined focus on the individual.

Alex: The United States is a unique nation in many ways. We have a developed set of cultural ideals, ideals that emphasize the importance to each individual and their freedom of choice, we believe in a right to education, the right to good health etc. These things are difficult to deliver on because we have so many people in our country. We face the same type of issues when it comes to ethnic diversity. We are a nation composed of so many different cultures of people that it's hard to identify one national culture. Cultures vary greatly from region to region across the U.S. There is a fundamental conundrum, in my opinion, when it comes to acknowledging and respecting diversity in the public institutions--particularly public schools. This conundrum is that many people support a certain national identity, one that the country was founded on (individuality, autonomy, freedom, and the right to well-being and happiness). This is certainly something most people can get on board with. The trouble comes when these things take root at the expense of other cultures. What is the balance between national identity and individual identity? These are the issues this article addresses. I must say that, while we do share many common experiences and common goals as citizens of this nation the majority of our experiences are very different. Our society is stratified, divided hiearchally, and our cultures are unique. My experience is not the experience of a significant percentage of this nation, and things don't affect us all equally. Few things act in the way that 9/11 did. Few things affect us all in such a national way.


 * //Diversity within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society//**

Deanna: The authors bring up some interesting and true points in this article about the way we have been teaching about diversity. They also talk about teaching our history and other histories. One interesting point was that we seem to; for the most part; only teach from the perspective of the “winners” instead of viewing both sides and both experiences. I’m not saying this is always true because I have had some classes in which we have examined things from both parties. However, I have found that, especially when giving just a brief overview of what happened, we only tend to focus on the outcome and give the overview according to those victorious. I definitely think that students should hear both sides of the story and should learn about things from the perspectives of all involved in order to really understand what happened. I also liked the section on developing relationships and learning valuable social skills. All too often students are told to sit in the classroom and listen to a lecture for an hour and take notes silently, then they leave and in some cases they have not said more than a couple words to anyone. I do not think that this is an effective way to learn. I really buy in to the idea that education and knowledge is socially constructed. Let’s face it – kids want to talk to each other and they are more concerned with interacting with one another than what they are learning in most cases. Therefore, why not cater to their interests and get them to learn while interacting with one another. Studies show they learn more this way anyways because you are more likely to remember something if you are accountable and have to explain it to someone else. Furthermore, we need to teach students the appropriate social skills needed to interact with one another in order for this to be successful.


 * Charles, Glenn. //The Challenge of Diversity and Choice//**

Deanna: The author writes about school choice and the arguments for and against being able to choose schools. I understand both sides of the argument and agree with some of the points made on each side which make it very hard for me to take a stand on this issue. On one side, I agree that education is a right and that people should have a right to a better education if they feel they are not being given a quality education. In that case, I do agree that students and parents should be able to change schools and choose what school would better fit their needs. Furthermore, every student learns differently and if a school does not meet the student’s needs in order to help them succeed, I again agree that choice should be allowed. On the other hand, giving people the choice of school could very well help create segregation and schools based on race, social or economic class or other factors. This is not what we want and I therefore see that side of the argument against school choice. What gets me is that I see more and more students choosing to go to a different school solely based on athletics. This is not okay in my eyes. Education is the main purpose of schools, not athletics.

Luke:

I was a school of choice student that transferred to the far away inner city school to experience diversity. While I can honestly say I experienced it, I did not really live it. Truth be told, at my VERY diverse school, each SES hung out with its group, and little mixing happened. Even in classes where there had to be groupwork (this was only my fresh year as I was in the “white” classes after that) you just chalked it up as bad luck and did more of the work if you were placed in a diverse group. Choice can really hurt diversity, yes, but I think the Root issue here is that we place an emphasis on diversity without really knowing what it is. Is diversity simply a race and gender? I think it has more to do with culture and experience, which is why in my oppinion my supposedly diverse school, which was losing more students to school of choice than gaining, was not losing a whole lot of diversity, even though it was experiencing white flight. Diversity comes in the shape of every unique child at a school with different pasts and presents. We need to learn how to use the deeper than skin diversity to teach in our classes.

Alex:

This is another tough issue. When reading through the advocates' points concerning school of choice I couldn't help by agree. When reading through the arguments of the opposition I couldn't help but agree. Both sides, perhaps the opposition even more so, have powerful points. The question is not whether parents having say in where and in what environments there children are educated (I feel that this is almost a given), but how to provide this choice equally to all people. This country, no matter how much we like to pretend it isn't, is divided by class. Our ideal is that every person, regardless of SES, ethnicity, or education level should have equal opportunity to exceptional schooling. Glenn's list of musts are profound. Certainly, discrimination must be eliminated, those with lesser opportunities must be informed as to their options, geography/housing should not affect, resources must be available to all etc. But the question, still, is how? This is most definitely a question of education, but I think it goes well beyond. It is a fundamental question of class and equity. The education system is just one manifestation of it.


 * Kauffman, James M. McGee, Kathleen, Brigham, Michele. //Enabling or Disabling? Observations on Changes in Special Education//**

Deanna: This article was especially intriguing to me because I have many (seven) special education students in my third hour language arts class. We also have a special education aide come in during that hour to “assist” them. I put the word “assist” in quotation marks because this entire semester I have not really seen her help them. She just sits in the back of class and when the students have time to work in groups or individually on projects/assignments, she just walks around and talks to them and other students she knows in the class about everyday occurrences. The only time I have seen her “help” the students who are deemed special needs is when they do poorly on an assignment. For instance, the students had an open book quiz over a story we read as a class and when one of the students got five out of twenty right, she asked my CT if the student could take it again with her. My CT allowed it, even though she did not want to at first, and surprising enough the student got eighteen out of twenty right the second time. It’s hard to think that the aide is just helping her according to her IEP and not giving her, or helping her find the right answer when such a drastic change is present. I want my students to succeed more than anything but they have to learn to do their own work and not have things handed to them. If things are just handed to them and they get all these second chances why are they going to try the first time?


 * Vila, Richard A. and Thousand, Jacqueline S. //Making Inclusive Education Work//**

Deanna: This article discussed inclusion and how to make it work. The authors list five things needed to make inclusion successful: connection with best practices, visionary leadership, redefined roles, collaboration, and adult support. The thing I found most interesting was the adult support section and the five models of support they listed. Consultation is when the supporting professional aide the teacher in ways that help her teach the entire class. Parallel teaching is when both the teacher and the support staff are rotating between groups of students that have both special needs students and general education students. Supportive teaching is what I think is found most often and is when the teacher teaches the class and the support staff rotates between students to help out where needed. Complementary teaching is when the support staff does something to assist the classroom teacher or to restate somehow what the teacher just taught. Finally, coteaching is when both teachers are teaching alongside one another to teach all students. As I stated above, I feel that the supportive teaching model is the one that happens most often but I would really like to see the other models in practice to see how they really work.

Alex: I have some experience with inclusive education after having worked at Lowell. My 3rd hour is a "inclusion" class that is team taught with a special education specialist. From what I can observe, this works very well. I agree with the essay that the roles of teachers must be redefined if inclusion is going to work they way we want it to. Teachers must take on more collective and collaborative responsibility, not only for the content they are teaching, but for the students they have. We must get rid of that "my kids, their kids" mentality. Secondly, I think they adult support piece is very important. Consultations, supportive teaching, team teaching, and parallel teaching are all important. The more resources a student has the better he or she will perform and the more he or she will learn. This is true regardless of their aptitude. Finally, it is encouraging to the see the things we are being taught about and putting into practice discussed here as goals for successful teaching and examples of best practice. Differentiation, multiple intelligences, collaboration, project-based and service-based learning. These are the things I am already trying to do. It's nice to know these are still the things the research says are important.

Becca: This essay discusses gender and its relationship to achievement in the classroom. I found this article very interesting because if it's claim that boys are not accommodated to in the classroom. Instead, when compared to their female classmates boys are much more likely to fail, act up, become distracted, and not turn in homework. On the contrary, the achievement gap between boys and girls in math and science barley exist anymore. This is because schools accommodated to the needs of their female students by integrating more language in the cirriculum. While this was going on, boys began falling behind in reading and writing and schools failed to pay attention to this. This article was very eye opening because I always thought the female students were at a disadvantage in the classroom. Instead, schools and teachers need to understand that boys and girls learn differently and accommodate to these needs.
 * Gurian, Michael and Stevens, Kathy. //With Boys and Girls in Mind//**

Deanna: This article was very interesting to me and it made a lot of sense. The authors listed some pretty interesting characteristics of both boys’ and girls’ minds. One characteristic I found interesting about the minds of girls was that the hippocampus is larger in girls compared to boys which increases girls’ learning advantage. Even more interesting, is that the article said this is especially true for language arts. I have always found language arts easier than other subjects in school (although perhaps it’s because it interests me more than statistics) but I know for my brother it is challenging and that he excels in math and science whereas I do not. A characteristic of the male brain that I found intriguing was that “the male brain is set to renew, recharge, and reorient itself by entering what neurologists call a //rest state//.” The article went on to further state that males are usually the ones you catch falling asleep or zoning out which I have found true this semester. The authors also give a pretty logical solution and that is to use more visually pleasing and stimulating ways to present the material in order to keep their attention. I think it is important to be aware of these differences in male and female brains and try to use the knowledge to develop effective ways to teach to both genders.