Urban Education - week 5

Reflections

How do the ideas and issues presented in chapter 9 link with ideas and themes from the Fotofest experience?

Both texts, chapter 9 and India curriculum in Fototest, develop innovative ideas to deal with students and their diversity. Both texts highlights the importance of the “history” and the “story”, that is, what people have to tell or communicate to others, what they see and what is familiar to them. Connections what their own experiences are another link, even if they can not speak English fluently they have a tool to express themselves. Moreover, the language development is an important key as well since they talk about developing language, in the chapter 9 we read about immigrants who struggle with English, pictures and visual resources can help them learn more vocabulary and grammar structures. Besides, as I said in the reflection activity for Fotofest experience, pictures give students and teachers new opportunities for communication. This is another link with chapter 9 since many teachers supported the idea of a democratic classroom focused on the previous knowledge and experiences of the students.

Many times, when educators think about the communicative learning of immigrants, they -teachers- have some urgency for technical aspects, which are important, and they -immigrant students- are going to need them a lot, however those educators can forget about some questions: do they have something to say? or are they interested in recognizing what is said to them? Basically, this attitude and motivation to say something or participate is the engine of its integration and learning, too. Both texts -chapter 9 and curriculum- deal with the motivational aspect too.

What are your thoughts regarding  integrating multiple literacies in education (knowledge, skills, and dispositions Included)?

As we read in the chapter, many teachers and educators have a strong idea of literacy as a simple action of coding and decoding: reading and writing. Most of them they miss “meaning” and the purpose of writing. As a dual-language teacher I am in favor with the integration of multiple literacies in education. In my classrooms I give them more time to talk, I invite them to share their experiences, and even to their families through the use of social media, since every one has a different way of seeing and interpreting things. If they share their perspectives everyone will add more value to their learning, and as extension to their lives as well. Including the fact that I promote multilingualism and multiculturalism, maybe it´s part of my origins, I´m from Europe and there we value “diversity”, for us knowing different languages is a plus.

As an educator who cares of the diversity in my classroom I use different tools and resources to teach my students since I understand how important the motivation in the learning process is. If I don´t implement a good method of teaching that covers all my students I won´t be successful neither my students. Of course, I ensure myself that every student understood what they are learning through conversation and dialogs with them, besides of the adaptations to cover their needs.

I like the references to Carroll whose theory of learning-acquisition are linked to Krashen´s theory of learning a second language. Krashen states the need of the comprehensible input to learn a language. A comprehensible input is the language you are exposed to, that is adapted to your level but one step further in difficulty. This challenge will help you develop skills for understanding the language by leaning on the context, situation and your world knowledge, for example. That´s the link with the cognitive model by Carroll whose understanding and assimilation of the input relies on the long-term memory that depends on your motivation, repetition, and other skills.

HISD Multilingual department offer us, teachers and educator, lots of professional development trainings to implement sheltered instruction, accommodations, uses of cognates, content-language integration skills, among many others that help us improve our teaching daily.

For example, in my blog you can find many posts about multilingualism and methods to teach-learn foreign or second languages in your classroom like this one about CLIL method: http://maestrousero.blogspot.com/2017/04/clil-and-goals-multilingual-education.html

What are sims and diffs between urban, rural and suburban education?

The main difference we can find is geography since urban schools are located in cities, suburban schools are located in the outskirts or far neighborhoods of cities or belong to small cities and rural schools that are not placed in cities.

Another difference is the diversity of the students, in urban schools, mainly, the population of students are diverse since in the other types of schools the population is more homogenous.

In relation to the former difference, diversity, urban schools face issues and challenges different from the suburban and rural schools. Urban school educators and staff are or should be prepared to deal with multicultural/multilingual situations, provided with several tools-skills-knowledge to deal with situations.

As a consequence, the rate of family engagement in urban schools, especially those with a majority of immigrant students, is low, compared to the suburban and rural schools.

Another difference: vocational education, despite of the myth of rural schools because of the lack of career opportunities, this type of education is much more likely to be found in urban and suburban schools.

Another difference or similarity, depending on the glass through you can see this issue, students in urban schools live in the city, inside the district area as well as the suburban school students, on the contrary, many rural students do not live near a school. In cities, because of the traffic situation students can struggle to get school on time or sometimes they spend a lot of time on their way.

As similarities we can mention that they share a “common core” standards or curriculum. There are not big differences in the school structure and the roles of the school staff: principal, counselor, nurse, teachers, students, janitors,… Another similarity is the methods, usually teachers teach, although in urban schools teachers should act more like a facilitator or guide, but many current professional practices don´t correspond to their ideal roles.

Another similarity the student-teacher ratio, urban school classrooms are considered to be overcrowded, compared to suburban and rural school classrooms that are shorter in size and number, however the NCES numbers show that they are so similar, the only difference is the size of schools. Rural schools are smaller.

Some similarities are the number of violent crimes in both urban and suburban settings that are so similar, as well as the tax support that are high for rural and urban schools.

What are your thoughts about the arguments in chapter 18?

 I can understand the myths of rural schools and education as a possible “solution” for what´s happening. I think that, as well as we read in other previous chapters, the need of stability persists on the ideal setting of rural schools as the right answer for the issues in urban education. On the other hand, what is happening in urban education is a parallelism to our current world: global connections, and as a loyal reflection of our western societies urban education is going through the same processes and challenges.

  

Concepts used to describe education in 21st century US are multidimentional, complex, intercultural... thoughts?

As I answered in the former question, I agree. Our urban schools reflects what our societies are living and experiencing in a global connected world. Urban schools have students from many different places and countries with their own diversity. This diversity is a challenge not only to urban schools but to our societies and its with education where we start providing answers to issues like speaking different languages, using different tools, adapting new technologies and innovation among many others, and at the same time the administrators are learning as well and trying to provide formation to educators and teachers to how to deal with all these new challenges, their improving the workforce with the tools they have. Many times the situation changes so rapidly that teachers, administrators and policy-makers are not ready to face them and they need more time to embrace everyone and their diversity. Even the beliefs and ideas that the whole society has about them, they need to understand that diversity is something that adds value to their societies, beneficial instead of thinking of the disadvantages as we can hear in our districts about bilingual education programs, that struggle to have native students because their parents still think about the loss of knowledge or language, but not about the future better opportunities for their children´s lives.

The policy of Assimilation, the predominant in the US during the last decades, does not provide space in any academic program or classroom practices of L1, its proposal is the rapid and mandatory learning of the local language in all spaces. Fortunately, US policies changed, and they are investing in other programs in favor of multiculturalism. Another example of change, Europe, which had also shared the idea of ​​Assimilation, changed its attitude in some of its areas. Multiculturalism, which is a way of acquiring the L2 but keeping the L1 (on request and in the first years) in the academic formation, and respecting its use and within the school environment, is seen as an alternative of a fair integration, less dramatic and appropriate for content learning. For example, Sweden considers within its curriculum the teaching of Swedish and the language of origin (this is given on demand, that is, number of students) or that example of Australia or the United Kingdom that have accommodated other languages ​​in education, are examples of the possibility of working an inclusive policy.

The community, the school, the teacher, the teaching method, ethnicity, good results in what is done, etcetera act on our way of thinking (about oneself and others) and react towards the willingness to learn. In a kind of reciprocal relationship, our internal part is transformed according to manifestations from outside, and the outside also perceives my response and feeds it back. For example, if we are not involved - we are taken into account - because we do not know the language, my affective filter goes up, we start to lack motivation and think about the causes of the "discrimination" (Theory of attribution), and these students simply give up their process of learning. On the contrary, if the environment values them, sees them as someone who can contribute, and who cares about the others, then the affective filter is turned off and their attitude changes completely.

Reference:

Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller (2003): The Age of Migration: International Population Movements, in the Modern World, Third edition. New York: Guilford Press.