I believe this weeks reading on Gorski really just boils down to knowing your students and doing your best to meet their individual needs. The cultural and learning styles of the students I most recently taught were not necessarily all that diverse. The school's population was approximately 95% African-American, 4% Mixed-heritage, and 1% Hispanic. Given that scenario, I wasn't forced to dig to deep for culturally sensitive materials save for the usual 1 or 2 exceptional students who were placed in my program.
Having just completed my Teacher Education and certification, which has all student teachers complete BBE 5000 and SED 7050 (Diversity and Special-Ed), I feel I am able to meet the challenges of most of the diversity challenges of today's classroom. More importantly, my work in the Navy has prepared me well for most of the challenges of the workplace and school environments. A few years ago, I was selected for and received extensive diversity training, so that I may serve as a Workplace Relations Advisor at my Unit. That said, 13 years at Chrysler also prepared me well for my second career as a teacher. As a Business teacher, I was constantly bringing in workplace examples of differences in culture or opinion to better prepare my students for workplace realities. I believe this is often called the "Hidden Curriculum" in education.
Gorski lists his seven considerations for culturally appropriate multiculural education using Internet-based resources, which I won't repeat here, other than to say that most technology-savvy teachers do instinctively. That is, I carefully select resources that best fit or illustrate the main point of my instruction. For example, I taught a unit on Financial Literacy last semester and the students enjoyed it because it was highly interactive. It contained short video clips on banking and financial concepts, used actors that were culturally diverse, contained many cross-curricular activities, and allowed the instructor to easily adapt the content to the needs of the students (It even had a Spanish version !). In all, the site contained many of the considerations that Gorski considers, but I would caution any teacher to waste valuable time trying to find that perfect website that contains all of the above.
Generally speaking, I will not use a web-based resource if it is not authoritative (business or education endorsed), or does not reflect the curriculum I am required to give the students. I am conscious of my duties as a teacher to provide a culturally diverse and appropriate curriculum and I use my common sense when deciding to use any resource in my classroom. Finally, the Gorski reading basically highlights the things I do naturally as I plan my instruction on any given lesson or unit.
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3 comments:
The diverse learning experiences you have been exposed to contributes to making a good teacher. You have a lot of knowledge to share and varying the way of disseminating that knowledge will be very intriguing for students. Just reading about the Financial Literacy lesson that you did excited me!
The mentioning of common sense is crucial too. However, common sense varies as well. I concur that a teacher must know his or her students and uphold his or her responsibilites as a teacher when deciding what meets the needs of the students when incorporating instruction into the classroom .
I agree with your statement that much of what Gorski recommends whe evaluating a website for itsmulticutlurality is commonsense. But that is for teachers who are familiar with the web and internet searching, for those who are still discovering it he makes some valid points. i especially liked when he said the web is the greatest medium available to "facilitating intercultural, intereactive, and collaborative teaching and learning".
Bonnie & Kristen,
The jury is in! Common sense is a rather provincial quality. The temptation to "know" what I know, and knowing how to do something is a rather innate quality teachers have. So, for reflection purposes I believe what I was trying to convey was that I instinctively do many of the things Gorski states in his article (as you both stated). The trick then, is to be able to articulate it and document this knowledge in the form of a rubric. Precisely why Michael has us completing this exercise methinks!
For new teachers (like me) and for those who tend to avoid technology as a potential resource for teaching diversity, I also agree with good advice that the author makes.
Thanks for your comments!
Brad :-)
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