Portfolio Reflection

Flipped upside-down.  That is the easiest way for me to describe what happened to my viewpoints as this class progressed.  Often as I got to class, I would feel frustrated and confused about what was happening to my views, but then as I continued through the course that frustration and confusion was able to turn into an open heart and mind.

When we started the portfolio assignments, my mindset was completely different from where it is now. As I created my imagined classroom, my biggest goal was to describe a cute environment that others would be impressed with.  I wasn’t thinking about what would make my students the most comfortable or how I could help encompass the culture of my students in the way I set up the classroom and taught.  As the semester progressed, my mindset changed and I realized the importance of others in my classroom over myself.  When it comes to teaching, I’m not going to be comfortable all the time, but my goal is to make sure that my students are.

The personal cultural artifacts portfolio was a struggle for me.  It took me three tries before I really figured out what I was supposed to learn from that portfolio.  When I first created it, I just found 20 or so items that I felt represented myself.  It was completely self focused and didn’t really represent my community or culture.  As I met with Bailey, I was able to understand how the items that represented me could represent things in American and Mormon culture.  It was interesting to see how my culture differed from other people in the class, even though in general, I think we’re pretty much all LDS, similar age, and similar SES.  What we value is very specific to what we know.  It made me ponder on the importance of making sure all the students in my future classroom have something they can connect from their own culture within the classroom.

The experiences we took outside the classroom helped me to expand my perspective.  When I went to the Utah symphony, I got to experience a little taste of what it would feel like to be someone from a lower SES.  Being around people who had so much more than I did was hard.  It made me think of the video we watched with the family who lived in the motel.  The girl who was going to school must have struggled as she sat surrounded by those who had no idea what need even was, while she lived in poverty.

While the “Can I Kiss You” seminar wasn’t similar to the concert at all, it was also eye opening.  One of the things that was talked about that really tied in to our class was the idea of gender roles in society.  I’ve always seen gender rolls very stereotypically. Men are masculine and strong and women are the weaker helpless ones.  As I thought about our lesson on gender rolls and remembered the video we watched on “tough guys,” it made me think about how society forces specific rolls on specific genders.  When we don’t fit into those stereotypes, we are considered outcasts.

This class has expanded my view immensely.  When I began this class, I didn’t have strong opinions on most controversial issues, I just claimed to have the same ideas as the church.  This class pushed my comfort levels and disrupted my viewpoints.  There were many times when I struggled trying to decide if my religious values could coincide with what we were learning.  It would seem like everyone else had accepted a certain idea and I was stuck trying to figure out if it was something I needed/wanted to support.  An example of this is the issues regarding transgender people.  As I watched the video of the girl talking about how she became a girl and the process she went through, I felt bad and wanted her to fit in, but something inside me still holds back when talking about supporting people to change genders.  I feel strongly that gender is an eternal principle, so choosing what gender you want still causes some contention in my mind.  As I tried to figure out what the church’s standpoint was on this issue I came up with almost nothing.  There are a few articles where general authorities are quoted saying to love everyone, but I couldn’t find specific church doctrine.  It was ideas like these where I didn’t have specific church doctrine to back up my opinions, yet my opinions weren’t as open minded as I wanted them to be, where I struggled.  While there are still these area of struggle for me, the change in my views over the course of the semester has been immense.  

Re-Imagined Classroom

http://teacherpop.org/2015/05/how-to-efficiently-pack-up-your-classroom/

I want my classroom to be colorful and interactive.  I knew in my mind what I wanted my future class to look like and then when I saw this image, it was exactly what I was thinking. Different cultures are represented through the ceiling art, and tables split into small groups will help the children to interact with one another. 

http://ckite.blogspot.com/p/art-centers-in-classroom.html

This art shelf is great.  I want to make sure that the children I teach have the opportunity to draw and create.  Some of my favorite memories from elementary school came from art.  It's an easy way to express yourself, no matter your skill level.

http://booksforthebarrios.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/12-Polo-South-library-reading-section1.jpg

While the set up of this picture is interesting, mostly I love the book shelves.  Having options different books to read in the classroom is important to me.  Having basically grown up in a library, I know how much knowledge can be gained simply by instilling the desire to read in the hearts of children.  I want to make sure I have books of different levels and in different languages.  I’ll avoid books with strong themes that might cause conflict in the classroom.

https://wilnjen.wordpress.com/classroom-rules/

I've always liked the idea of having simple class rules posted in the class room. That way the kids can have a simple reminder about what we do and don't do in the classroom.  I want the kids to come up with the rules themselves at the beginning of the school year, that way they feel more accountable to follow the rules.

http://lambandblonde.blogspot.com/2012/11/room-love-blackboard-walls.html

I've always thought it would be really cool to have a chalkboard wall in a classroom.  If it couldn't be a whole wall, at least a really giant chalkboard that isn't the same as the one I use to teach on.  I loved being able to write on the chalkboard when I was growing up, and that way the kids could write or draw on it whenever they wanted.  This would also be a good way to get the kid’s personal artwork into the classroom.

My classroom will be light and happy.  Studies show that increased light improves moods and productivity.  I want to have bright colors that emphasize the light and mood of the classroom.

We will have a word wall with vocabulary words we are learning each month.  I want to have these words listed not only in English, but in common languages like French, Spanish, German, and any other languages that students in my class may speak. 

 I love having lots of colors and activities.  I like the idea of having a big mat on the floor that kids can sit on instead of being at their desks for some of the lessons.  I want to do the reading type activities on the mat.  I remember in kindergarten we would sit on the mat and our teacher would write words up on the whiteboard and we would practice saying them.  We would also be able to sit and listen as the teacher read to us.  It was fun to know that every day for our reading lessons we would be able to leave our desks.  Desks are great for doing individual work, but I feel like especially when working with younger kids, it's important to be able to move around.  The desks will be better for projects and written assignments.  I want to have different shelves that the students can always access that hold different resources like blocks, paper, books, etc.  During the lessons, I want to have visuals and hopefully incorporate the different resources into what I'm teaching.

For writing and math lessons, I hope to be able to start with the class listening to me and then be able to break apart and work in small groups.  Within their groups, I want to frequently mix up who they’re working with.  Sometimes I want those who understand the concept to teach it to those who aren’t understanding until they’re all on the same page.  Other times, I think it would be beneficial to put the kids who are ahead together and those who are struggling at a different table.  That way I can spend extra time with those who are struggling. 

I want to teach younger elementary children, and at this point in their lives, they are open to learning and those who have difficulties in their lives might be more open to talking to me about it.  Because of this, I feel that the way I interact with them can have a huge influence on their future.

In my class, we don't speak bad about one another.  That is one of the more important rules.  We also don't cheat or take things that don't belong to us.  Instead of punishment, I like the idea of just not rewarding kids who misbehave.  Like if everyone got extra time outside, if kids were misbehaving, they wouldn't get to go out and instead would stay inside to keep working (this as an example, I'm not sure how it would work exactly).  Each week I want to assign homework, but give them the entire week to finish it.  I realize this means that most of the kids will finish it on Thursday night, but as elementary kids, I want them to spend more time outside exploring then doing homework.  This way they do have a homework packet to finish but it won't take all their time.

A typical lesson in my classes will have instruction, then some type of activity to help us learn the topic, then applying it on their own with individual help available to those who need it. I feel that the topics will mostly come from required things that the state education department requires, but the speed and amount of focus placed on each item will be determined by what the kids need help with at the time.  For example if the kids in my class are struggling with subtraction, I won't worry about moving forward until the majority have it down.  The specifics of how I will teach it are unknown to me for the time being, seeing as I haven't studied that yet, but I will teach with love and patience.  During the lessons, I want the kids to know that the subject is important, but not as important as knowing that I'm there to help them if they need it.

During the lesson, I'll start by having the students line up by some topic (birthday, height, number of siblings, etc) and number them off to get them into random groups.  In a simple geometry lesson, I would start by giving each table a huge pile of geometry pattern blocks and ask them to cover the whole table without any gaps.  All the tables would end up with different patterns, so then we could walk around and see the differences between our patterns and those of others.  After that, each table could talk about which shapes fit together nicely and which ones don’t.  Then we could come back together as a group and talk about angles and hopefully through our discussions, they can discover why some angles fit together and others don’t.

Hopefully my students are actively engaged in the lesson.  I picture some paying close attention, some squirming in their seats, because that's what elementary kids do, and probably a few not paying attention at all.  If I can pick out who struggles to pay attention in the beginning, then hopefully when I give them individual assignments later, I can go check on those students and make sure they understand and give them one on one attention.

I love pretests and post-tests.  That way I can see clearly how much the students have learned.  If I test them at the beginning and end of units, I'll be able to see how much they know before and then focus my teaching to the things that they don't understand.  Then if I give them a similar post-test, I'll be able to see how far they've come.

Book Review: Honky

(1)   Your points of disruption--places in the book that cause you to feel uncomfortable or angry or curious.

This book was full of disruptions for me.  One of the first came from the fact that I was so fascinated by the idea of a family in the 1960’s where no one worried about color or sexual orientation.  They were so open, and the fact that I thought of that as unusual was a disruption.  Why is it that having a family where a white mom will go out and protest for the black people, and where she commonly found herself on dates with homosexual men because she didn’t see them any different, seems so rare to me? Or where a little girl at a birthday party who gets upset because the other girls are talking bad about “niggers” seemed surprising to me.  I thought it was so cool that they could see blacks as equals, where that should be a normal, everyday thing, not a rarity.

I also began to be bothered by the fact that Dalton was discriminated against for being the only white kid in the neighborhood.  When the boy at the baseball field took his glove, I was mad and realized that I blamed part of the theft on the fact that he was black.  It wasn’t until just now as I thought about that instance that I realized that I had been racial profiling. I pictured all these black kids, ganging up on the white kid and that makes me much more upset than the idea of a bunch of white kids picking on the black kid.   The more I think about it and study racial discrimination, the more I realize that I’m not past it, that I still have a sense of superiority to those of other ethnicities, and that realization is a huge disruption.  Just as much so, is the realization that I’m not sure what I can do about it.

(2)   Descriptions of the stories from the book clarify or provide examples of the ideas we have been discussing in class.

An obvious example of an idea we’ve been discussing in class would be the topic of discrimination.  Dalton was treated differently throughout the whole book because he was a white kid in a minority neighborhood.  Institutional racism and discrimination were particularly prominent as he changed from school to school.  At elementary school, he was not necessarily favored, but he was treated better because of his color.  If the teacher would have hit him like she did the rest of the students, there would have been more danger of being turned in and taken to court.  This pattern continued as he moved from school to school, always being treated better than the minority students he hung out with.

Another idea that we talked about that was I read the book was the idea of privilege.  When he was with his friend and caught the house on fire, he talked about how if he had been in a different neighborhood or if his skin was a different color, he would have been in more trouble, but because of where he was and who he was, there was no punishment. 

One thing that I found interesting was his lack of materials at home.  In class, we talked about how often, kids who come from lower income backgrounds will have lower testing levels because of lack of exposure. This was something I recognized when he stole the comic books from the store. Granted they were comic books and it is possible that they had other books in the home, but from what we learned, he had to steal in order to bring literature into his home.

(3) How the stories from the book will influence your thinking about your future work as a teacher.

One of the hardest parts of the book for me to read was when he was in school and the teachers were so prejudice against the black kids.  Dalton was treated so different from his black friends.  When they were in the lunch room and his friend got hit in the head by the supervisor, I was frustrated for him, not only because no child should ever be hurt in school, but because the racism was happening without any punishment towards the supervisor.  As I read this, I realized the importance of making my classroom a safe place for all students.  I never want a student to be afraid, either of me or of the other students.  I want them to feel comfortable and open and not have fears.  When Dalton was afraid to go to the bathroom as a young child, my heart was broken.  No child should ever have to suffer while at school, and I need to make it my goal as a teacher to make sure nothing like that ever happens.