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Before we meet F2F on Sept. 3, this is your introductory assignment into our diversity course:
Before we meet F2F on Sept. 3, this is your introductory assignment into our diversity course:
GO TO Critical Issue: Educating Teachers for Diversity
(http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe300.htm)
1. Explore the webpage
2. Read through the 12 Elements of Effective teacher education for diversity:
IMPLICATIONS FOR ACTION: In a comprehensive review of the literature, Zeichner (1993) identifies 16 key elements of effective teacher education for diversity. Twelve of these elements provide the organizational framework for "Educating Teachers for Diversity." Each element is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle of multicultural teacher education. Just as a puzzle must be completed in order to see the big picture, the education of teachers for diversity must be addressed in a holistic manner. The 12 elements are as follows:
Element 1: Preservice education students are helped to develop a clearer sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
Elements 2 and 3: Preservice education students are helped to examine their attitudes toward other ethnocultural groups. They are taught about the dynamics of prejudice and racism and how to deal with them in the classroom.
Element 4: Preservice education students are taught about the dynamics of privilege and economic oppression and about school practices that contribute to the reproduction of societal inequalities.
Element 5: The teacher education curriculum addresses the histories and contributions of various ethnocultural groups.
Element 6: Preservice education students are given information about the characteristics and learning styles of various groups and individuals. They are taught about the limitations of this information.
Element 7: The teacher education curriculum gives much attention to sociocultural research knowledge about the relationships among language, culture, and learning.
Element 8: Preservice education students are taught various procedures by which they can gain information about the communities represented in their classrooms.
Elements 9 and 10: Preservice education students are taught how to assess the relationships between the methods they use in the classroom and the preferred learning and interaction styles in their students' homes and communities. They are taught how to use various instructional strategies and assessment procedures sensitive to cultural and linguistic variations, and how to adapt classroom instruction and assessment to accommodate the cultural resources that their students bring to school.
Element 11: Preservice education students are exposed to examples of the successful teaching of ethnic- and language-minority students.
Element 12: Instruction is embedded in a group setting that provides both intellectual challenge and social support.
3. Choose one element link, read through the description and respond with your own reflection of what this means to you, personally and professionally, as a teacher or someone in the workforce. Please bring these reflections (typed) with you on Sept. 3 to share.
Follow 3-2-1 Reflection response:
a. restate three points from what you read
b. two questions that come to mind as you read and think
c. One AHA! that you never thought about before, new concept, idea, WOW! moment for you
(I am more concerned about your thinking and reflectiveness, rather than the number of pages it has to be.)
B. LASTLY:
Read my Philosophy of Education (below) for this will help you better understand my expectations of your ownership and authenticity of learning and in creating a respectful place to think and learn together this semester.
Contact me if you have any questions: fvitali@unm.edu
Instructor's Reflection of Element 4
I focused on Element 4: Educating Teachers for Diversity (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe3lk8.htm)
Issues of power and privilege are reenacted daily within the system and institution of schooling. As a microcosm of society, schools perpetuate dominate society’s values, beliefs, and language. Delpit (1988) emphasizes that “issue of power are enacted in classrooms” (p.282) within the curriculum and instruction. As educators of diverse students who do not share the same cultural background and experiences as us, how do we make sense of this, recognize it, challenge it, and enact changes in our teaching? Power, as intrinsic, is the ability to get what you want and that is different for each person. Privilege, as extrinsic, is a special advantage or right one acquires throughout their lifetime. Privilege often gives a person or group power over others.
In my philosophy of education, as reconceptualists, we do not take everything we teach for granted but become discerning educators who recognize bias, censorship, racial proclivities; inequalities in the curriculum we teach; disparity in the system of education and the policy makers who establish the rules which govern our profession. As culturally relevant teachers we become activists and advocates for our students challenging the system in the best interests of our students. In our UNM College of Education Conceptual Framework, professional understandings, practices and identities are recognized in the importance of culture and language, being culturally responsive teachers, and acting as advocates for social justice.
My question is how not to alienate anyone with concepts of White Privilege, critical pedagogy, power and privilege that we unpack during our learning. As teachers, we have more of a responsibility to be aware of the complexity of diversity and to begin to explore it, and delve into the challenging curiosity of seeing in ways we have never understood or perceived before. As Anais Nin said: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
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