EDTC 6431 - Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness (ISTE 2)

ISTE 2 - Communication & Collaboration: "Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.”

My Module 2 Trigger Question: "What are the best online resources to introduce global awareness and facilitate community and dialogue between my students and their international peers?"

This week offered an exploration of some exciting resources that will provide the basis for substantial declarative knowledge-building where global perspectives and awareness are concerned. And, additionally, I found some powerful resources for collaboration and community on an international scale for my students to experience just how small and interconnected their world is.

On the declarative knowledge and global perspectives front...As I began to do my investigation, I encountered a resource and organization that played a major role in my online media literacy course in DC: the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their mission so closely parallels my pursuit of journalism and history helping to give a "voice to the voiceless." They have dedicated resources to teaching journalism, global perspectives and driving experiential learning by bringing in journalists to classrooms all over the United States. Across the 3 years I worked with them in DC, we had on average 3 journalist presenters a semester that came into present and have workshops with my students or my US Government mentor teacher's classes. Our student loved the immediacy and purpose of the detailed and embedded journalism of the Pulitzer Center's journalists.

Also a substantial resource they provide are the CCSS-aligned lesson plans found on their website and the long-form narrative multimedia journalism that their grantees have created. I have used many of these multimedia projects in my class that investigate deep and off the beaten path issues that include: the millennials who live underground in China, the millions of people will live and work in the defunct garbage dump in Dandora, Kenya and the First Nation Residential Schools of Canada. Each of these topics in more in depth journalism and personal narrative storytelling that most students and adults are frankly familiar with. I have often described their work to people as Vice News with heart. Their work will continue to be a stellar resource for powerful global perspective and informing on issues that few people are paying attention to.

I am also intrigued by the focus on global perspective-taking using the resources and lessons produced by National Geographic which explores: The Debate Over Globalization. The National Geographic incorporates its compelling visual media and powerful storytelling to create this focused one hour lesson plan and materials geared toward middle and high school students to investigate the perspectives and arguments with substantial evidence

Lastly, the resource I am most excited about is one completely new to me that the US Department of Education created. They have compiled a list of international lesson plans and collaborative projects with teachers all across the work. Two that really caught my eye and I can already think of important connection to my courses are: "Helping Hands "- about student research to inform and advocate on behalf of homeless and hungry children. Also, the "Learning Democracy through International Collaboration" where students from multiple countries share a collaborative online classroom to teach each other about little known issues of fighting for democracy in their respective home country. This is a resource I am excited to spend some time digging into and developing some connection with international colleagues committed to this work.

My conclusions are that my simultaneous interest in student declarative knowledge about global awareness and perspective can unfold simultaneously with the resources (apps and projects) that enable international student collaboration.


Resources
Hunter, N (2016). National Geographic: Education. The Debate Over Globalization: What are the pros and cons? Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/the-debate-over-globalization/ 

Pulitzer Center (2017). Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder. [Community] & [Model Lessons] Retrieved from: http://pulitzercenter.org/builder/dashboard/0

US Department of Education (2009). Teachers Improve Student Performance: Teacher's Guided to International Collaboration on the Internet - Social Studies Project Examples. Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/guide_pg9.html#social

ASD & Executive Functioning Accommodations - EDU 6644

This lesson begins with a student-centered discovery and inference activity. It relies on inference making as well as student-generated criteria to evaluate which documents reveal a cohesive truth about an historical event. As such, I considered the cognitive demands that such a student-centered activity would have on my students who struggle with executive functioning. I was intentional about the accommodations that I passed out at the start of the lesson (e.g. the prescribed group member roles as well as the timeline agenda). These provide a framework for these students to prioritize their role and content at hand and lessen their focus on the structure or stresses they may have about their role in the activity. Additionally, by circling one or two of the questions ahead of time, my students with executive functioning issues can have ample time to prepare their answer.

The second half of the lesson is the direct instruction that ties the larger narrative together and reveals to students how their inferences and evaluations of the primary source documents were correct and how they were incorrect. The direct instruction is a short 15-minute lecture and includes a visually stimulating and relevant slideshow that features mostly pictures of the four main characters of the story – this is a helpful focus for students’ attention. Additional resource accommodations during the lecture for my executive functioning students is to give them guided notes. These can be in multiple forms and have differentiated purposes and student tasks associated with them. The bullet point notes offer a summary script of everything I am saying during the lecture and offer a visual connections to tether student focus. These guided notes can be differentiated in two ways: include the slide pictures with lines for annotations or simply be a tangible resource for students whose motor skills or cognitive deficits might prevent them from taking notes during lecture.

As a teacher comfortable with lecture and a proclivity to rely on auditory instructions alone, I have learned that I need to consider both hands-on and written directions to supplement everything I am saying. Additionally, I need to reduce the stress of uncertainty have sign posts and agendas accessible for my students which will provide structure and hopefully create and environment with a few less things for their over-active brains to worry about and/or focus on.

In studying exceptional learners with specific focusing and processing deficits this quarter, I have become aware of the reality that “distracted” learners’ brains are often overwhelmed – not because they don’t pay attention to anything but instead because the are paying attention to everything. Their brains struggle to sort and organize and prioritize. I think the guided agendas, notes, printed questions, circling the questions you’d like those students to answer are all four specific strategies that I will continue to use with my students whose executive functioning deficits disrupt their learning.

Recognizing Privilege & Acknowledging My Own Culture

EDU 6918 Final Reflection
My experience teaching at an all-black high school in DC was diving into the deep end of a pool of indeterminate depth when it came to exploring my own Dynamics of Difference. I was an outsider and learned a lot about my own privilege and cultural competency during my eight years there. I am indebted to my students, colleagues and the parents who welcomed me into their community. They wanted me to succeed and to be my best. Their belief in me allowed me to be my best for them. Many of my 9th graders from southeast DC had not met many white people. If they had grown up in the neighborhood, they had maybe only one or two white teachers before me.

One dynamic of difference emerged during the Socratic seminar I led in my first few years teaching. A room of only black students were being prompted to talk about racial injustice and challenging, polarizing issues like the death penalty, abortion, and gun control by a young white man, whose privilege allowed him [me] to obfuscate my position or opinion altogether. This caused a rift and led to me negating my own culture and point of view. By deferring to my students' cultural truth and ignoring my own, I thought that was being culturally proficient when in fact, it was just my own version of “colorblindness.” Initially, I believed this pedagogical choice was valuable for cultivating a seminar space for my students to work out their opinions in a dialogically friendly space free from my opinions.

However, one of my students DeShawn, wrote in her course evaluation of our journalism seminar course: “I understand that you didn’t want to preach, but I wish you had shared your opinion more – as a young white man. We don’t get the chance, before college, to talk to many people like you, in this open kind of way and I think that would have helped us to go deeper.” This is my first piece of evidence for inclusion here. It reminds me of my commitment to my students’ beliefs and insights and demonstrates the importance of including my own for both their sake and mine.

What DeShawn taught me was that I wasn’t serving her or any of my students by pretending I didn’t have a culturally informed lens that shaped my opinions. With her encouragement and insistence, I was able to better incorporate my own opinion into conversations of social justice in my remaining years at TMA.

I have also included a screen shot of the cultural proficiency continuum infographic as a reminder of the specific language that I am committed to as I work to be a culturally proficient and engaged social studies teacher.

Additionally, my cultural competency grew through mentorship and collaboration with colleagues. Seeking out mentors, collaborators and most especially feedback has been the bedrock of my professional growth. I can see this strength of mine showing in my collaborative work already with teachers, instructional aids and other tutors working at Cleveland. My interest to dive right into TMA served dual purposes. First, it was my formal training. Secondly, this openness connected and committed me to the community and the work we were doing together.

Without any formal training or credentials, it was requisite that I surround myself with competent and willing mentors. Two teachers, in particular, continue to be key mentors and collaborators in my life. Kena, the science department chair and teaching coach who most formally trained me through the planning and critical feedback process and also Karen, the social studies department chair and the mentor both helped cultivate in me the spark and skills to encourage dialogic seminar with my 11th and 12th grade students and promote critical thinking and discussion about issues of social justice and equality. My collaborative work with Karen also led to our work leading three different professional development workshops and also one teaching fellowship.

Both of these two women were and continue to be sounding boards for growing my cultural competency. They’ve helped me to see that I am never done growing in this regard. They have helped me to be mindful of my privilege and how to better incorporate more perspectives when discussing challenging topics with students and colleagues. I am so fortunate to find that this perspective and focus is such an important component of our SPU MAT program and educational philosophy.