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

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.

Discovering Virtue Through Socratic Seminar

EDU 6120 Week 6

Herbart wrote that virtue expresses the whole purpose of education. He defined virtue as the “inner freedom that has developed into an abiding actuality of the individual.” Put more simply, Herbart believed that education and the responsibility of the teacher was to create the environment where a student can grow by safely embarking down a twisting and challenging path of individual curiosity, discovery and as Maslow would say, achieve self-actualization. This, at first, might sound counterproductive to the democratic charge of education today, which focuses on socialization, multicultural awareness, and an emphasis on collaboration and collective responsibilities. However, I believe that exercises and strategies like dialogue circles, Socratic seminars and thinking routines simultaneously serve these two idealistic aims of education by empowering and awakening the individual all the while creating the space and patience for collaboration, understanding and listening across difference.

My first, and arguably best, experience with Socratic seminar came during my 12^th grade AP English course. Dr. William “Doc” Carter was an institution at AHS by the time I took his course. He taught my mother the same course 30 years prior, though he didn’t have his doctorate in philosophy yet. Question of the day, his brand of Socratic seminar, was a routine that today, 12 years later, I still reminisce about with my friends from high school. All of us agree, this practice was an indelible component of our high school education. And upon further reflection, I think it is memorable both because of its atypical and democratic design of a classroom (i.e. we all sat in a circle facing our classmates) and the premium it placed upon each person’s “air time” to work through their own ideas and truth.

Each day Doc posed a question for the groups’ appraisal and reflections. Sometimes it was as inane as: “what’s your favorite color and why?” and other times as essential and challenging as: “does the death penalty serve as an adequate punishment or deterrent?” Every individual would be given 30 seconds to a few minutes to share their own ideas before there could be any questions, debate or dialogue from the whole group. Some days sharing, listening and dialogue was discursive, other days it was cogent, reflective and pregnant with meaning – all favorite Doc-isms of mine. On occasion, the topic was so rich that we easily talked the entire 55-minute period – many of us eager to stay through lunch and keep going.

I only remember covering four texts that year: The Iliad, Plato’s The Republic, Hamlet, and Brave New World – in that order. How incredible (and meta) looking back that we read and explored the formulation of meaning through The Allegory of the Cave while in Socratic seminar. What a remarkable modeling of collaborative work that charged each individual with being reflective, present and contemplative. This was next-level democratic teaching. Doc’s carefully constructed routine was reliable for each of us and such a platform readily enabled improvisation and investigation.

During Hamlet we were tasked with memorizing Hamlet’s soliloquy “to be or not to be…” where he contemplates the merits of suicide. I can still perform the entire thing 12 years later and remember vividly each of us standing and reciting from memory as much of the soliloquy as we could. I remember that it was only one other band and theatre nerd (like myself) who could recite it in its entirety.

Additionally, we had spiral-bound journals that we submitted to him bi-weekly for feedback on our poetry, short stories, and reflections from seminar as well as personal musings. This exercise was a useful contrast to our usual outlet for self-expression in his class and often included extensive, detailed and probing feedback.

Through each of the pedagogical strategies, Doc imparted his educational philosophy: we were, in his class and throughout the rest of our lives, to embark on the work of knowing ourselves for the sake of our interaction with and pursuit of understanding others. We were challenged to continually ask questions of others and ourselves and never believe that we had answers set in stone – big or small.

During his 44 years teaching high school English, Doc modeled and imparted this philosophy to countless students. Both directly and indirectly he demonstrated the that the virtuous inner life and goal of knowing our true self meant continually challenging our assumptions and biases – especially when it came to listening and working to understanding another’s struggle, strife or perspective. Doc inexorably shaped my educational philosophy and practice. I hope that I can continue to cultivate the patience and strength to lead by his example and pay it forward just the same.