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| My new blog is at:
marriedjane.blogspot.com
See you there! | | |
| I logged onto the ticketmaster website right at 9am - had trouble getting in and finally got in at 9:02 and the tickets were gone. ALL gone. Well, you could buy a single ticket, but who wants to see Justin by herself?!
BOOOOOO. | | |
| JUSTIN IS COMING BACK TO THE STAPLES CENTER IN SEPTEMBER!!!!!!!! Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 9am.
Back to the grind... | | |
| I am still craving Coldstone's. I will definitely indulge in one as soon as I finish my National Board Portfolio. I've drafted one part and am working on the other three parts simultaneously.
Since I know a lot of you are on Spring Break and have nothing to do - here's my finished part of my portfolio.
It is due this Saturday, so I don't have time to deal with constructive critcism but enjoy! =)
1. Instructional Context
I have 20 students, ranging between ages 6 and 7, in a self-contained first grade classroom. All subjects are covered throughout the day, with particular emphasis on language arts and mathematics. Within the group of 20 students, there are 4 African-American boys, 3 African-American girls, 7 Latino-American boys, and 8 Latino-American girls. Only 7 of the 13 Latino students in my class are English Language Learners (ELLs). The remaining 8 Latino students come from 2nd or 3rd generation households and were able to test out of the English language development program in kindergarten.
Academically, most of the students test slightly below the targeted benchmarks in all areas, with a small number (approximately 5) consistently reaching the benchmarks. As a group, the class excels at oral comprehension and is a group of very eager learners. There are 3 students with Individualized Learning Plans (IEP). Two of the students have IEPs for speech assistance and one student has an IEP for learning and emotional disabilities. For these students, much explicit instruction and repetition in required throughout lessons. Visuals are also a critical part of my instruction as students at this age, or any developmental level, prefer concrete, tangible, and visible concepts. Students at this age are also learning to express themselves verbally so I often utilize methods of expression that are not limited to the written and oral form. These techniques are beneficial for all of my ELLs as well and so I incorporate it throughout my instructional day.
My language arts instruction is dictated by a district-adopted program. All of the materials, such as books and worksheets, are provided through the program. In total, this program in conjunction with the need for repetition in our class makes for a very structured and predictable day.
2. Planning and Instruction
Specifically, because of the racial make-up of my classroom and school community, I sought to teach students to empathize across racial and historical lines between African-Americans and Latinos. In order to achieve this, I believe that it is important to begin by discussing and celebrating the identity of each student before I ask them to empathize with another student’s identity, especially at this young age. This philosophy drives me to be open to discussions about identity and race in my class, at any time that the topic may come up, and this has been the culture that has been cultivated in my classroom since early on in the year. In this lesson, Jacob Lawrence is introduced to the students as an African-American artist from Harlem who persevered in the face of adversity to achieve his goals. The specific distinctions of Jacob Lawrence’s race, geographical location, and generation inform the main social skill of empathy and social studies concept of an individuals place on the continuum of history.
For the purposes of this lesson, empathy is defined as the ability to understand another person’s experiences and to connect it with personal experiences. This is appropriate for students at various levels of knowledge and development because empathy asks students to see someone else’s perspective and connect it with their own. Empathy does not require students to all have the same understanding because the goal of empathy is to expand student understanding and connect that new knowledge to their own experiences. However, students do need to be able to identify differences between themselves and other people without judgment as a pre-requisite skill in developing empathy. This skill is not taught in a lesson but is pervasive in an environment wherein the teacher is constantly monitoring the dialogue and utilizing teachable moments to help students learn how to communicate about those differences. When Jacob Lawrence is first introduced, one of my main goals is for students to be able to identify him, first and foremost, as an African-American because I desire for race to be celebrated. At this stage of the students’ development, it is important for racial differences to be celebrated because they are still formulating their concepts of race and people. Then, through information presented in the lesson, move students draw out more similarities and differences between themselves and the artist, beyond that of race. For example, in this lesson, we address issues of poverty, geography, and artistic interest in addition to race. Utilizing all of these conversation points allows all students to identify with Lawrence, even if they are not African-American, and race becomes only a part of a person, instead of the sole point of identity. In a multi-cultural classroom, denying racial differences sets race apart as a shameful issue and ironically, it is when we present race as an important topic that students begin to look beyond race to the other parts of a person.
In connection with empathy, the social studies concept addressed is an individual’s place on the continuum of history and geography. Chronologically, this concept links the individual student with historical events that preceded them and the events that will follow them as a direct result of their own action or inaction. Geographically, a student is to understand that his/her geographic location affects his/her experiences. The point of this concept is to teach students that they are a significant part of society because what they affect their society, but also to show them that they are a part of a society are responsible for it. This is important in setting in foundation for future social studies instruction because in studying any other country, people group, or historical event, student will best internalize the information if they can personalize it. For example, a student learning about the Revolutionary War will better understand the events if he/she can understand the whole context of the events and relate it to a more personal struggle for change and independence. In this way, social studies instruction becomes of vital, dynamic study of real life instead of seemingly fictitious characters and events in a textbook.
For the social studies component, the lesson leads students to look at Jacob Lawrence’s environment and to draw similarities and differences between his environment and their own environment. The lesson focuses specifically on comparing and contrasting Harlem with our own neighborhood because both places experience similar struggles with race and poverty. Geography was one way to get non-African-American students to identify with Jacob Lawrence because his environment was so similar to our own. The lesson also focused on racial discrimination in Lawrence’s time, but because of the sensitive nature of the issue, this was an inappropriate time to delve into causes for the discrimination given the purposes of this lesson. I believe that while it is important to discuss racial segregation and discrimination along with its causes, in this lesson, I simply wanted students to again be exposed to it as an unacceptable part of our historical past as a nation and the conversation was treated as such.
In relation to the discussion of Lawrence’s person and environment, the arts concept addressed in this lesson is art as a portrayal of real life. More specifically, that artists use their art to show their point of view about reality. After having introduced Lawrence as a person and his historical and social environment, the lesson connected his art pieces as a reflection of all the information that had been presented about him, from his own perspective. I wanted students to see Lawrence’s depiction of Harlem and to delve into why he would portray his environment in such a way. For example, in a painting of Harlem, Lawrence paints a group of people in front of an apartment building with tombstones on sale, prominently in front of the building. Clearly the prevalence of death is a theme in this paint and thus a question for students is, if this is a realistic portrayal of Harlem, what does Lawrence want us to know about Harlem? Furthermore, how is that similar or different from our community? This is directly related to the social studies concept of students seeing themselves in relation to other communities and generations; Lawrence’s art served as a perfect avenue for students to be able to compare and contrast Harlem in his generation and their own communities in their own generation.
As an extension of the art the social skills concept of empathy, the assignment for students was to take a Lawrence painting and utilize it to create a picture of their own community and environment. Students were given a 4x6 replica of a Lawrence painting and they were to put the replica in the middle of large sheet of white paper and extend the painting onto the white space using pencil and crayon. However, in the white space, students were to add elements from their own community. One of the major distinctions between Harlem and our community that students identified was that Harlem did not have any cars and our neighborhood had plenty of them. Secondly, houses and buildings in Harlem seemed much taller than the buildings in our community. These were the elements that students would have to add to the picture in order to change Harlem into our own community. Students were also encouraged to keep the things that were similar in their extensions. For examples, Lawrence’s paintings are of African-Americans and it was important for students to include African-Americans in their extension because our community also has a considerable population of African-Americans. By putting the replica picture in the middle of the white space, students were forced to incorporate Harlem into their picture instead of focusing on their own community.
For this lesson, I utilized a PowerPoint presentation because it is a great way to show students real pictures of the people we are talking about. As we discuss these giants in history, the pictures help to humanize the figures and allow children to relate to them. Visuals are also a great method of scaffolding for my English language learners. The visuals are especially important in this lesson because of the art component and projecting the image onto the white screen enabled to everyone to discuss the paintings by have the same reference points. Maps were also used to illustrate the reference Harlem’s geographic location in reference to our own geographic location.
This lesson on Jacob Lawrence is a part of an extended unit that I have been teaching for approximately 2 months prior to this lesson. Every two weeks, I introduce either an African-American or Latino and discuss their achievements and contributions. I then assign students an activity that helps them to relate to the person being introduced. Previously, I introduced Guion Bulford Jr., the first African-American to travel into space. After the lesson, students had to draft a plan for a journey they want to take utilizing maps and weather reports. I have also introduced Alvin Ailey, an African-American choreographer, and Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina in space. The ratio of African-Americans and Latinos introduced should and will be balanced out by the end of the unit. These lessons began as a part of a school-wide push to have students begin considering their college plans as early as kindergarten. This effort to promote a college-bound culture led me to introduce career options to students and college, and ultimately education, as an invariable component of those options. The lessons on careers then led to these lessons about specific individuals and their own journey on their career paths. The rationale for this progression is for students to see the big picture of going to college in relation to personal experiences of people who have actually gone through it. More specifically, it replicates the process of setting a goal (going to college) with specific steps taken to achieve that goal, as exemplified by the people I introduce in the lessons. I make a very concerted effort to introduce people whose backgrounds and experiences are similar to my students so that college-going experience and career is never an unattainable concept for my students.
Several more figures will be introduced after this lesson and all of this will culminate with each student creating his/her own college-going plan. In this plan, students will have to lay out their career choice as well as steps to achieve that goal, working backwards until they get to what they must do in first grade as a part of the plan. I believe this skill of goal setting and backward planning is extremely important to my students because it is usually recognized as a middle class skill. That is, the middle class and those above have the economic privilege to be able to think ahead and realistic adjust their lifestyles to prepare them to meet their goals. In contrast, people of low-socioeconomic status work to sustain themselves on a daily basis and have no room to save or prepare for the future. For example, a person of middle-class income may be preparing to purchase a car. In this preparation he plans how much he must save each month and adjusts his month spending accordingly. He is able to do so because his income is sufficient for his daily living expenses and provides him enough to give him to freedom to choose what to do with the rest of the money. A person of lower income in the same situation does not have that freedom because his income is barely sufficient for his living expenses and there is nothing left after that to prepare or save. This makes it impossible for someone of low-economic status to plan, thus creating a culture that prefers immediate gratification to long range planning and work.
My students who come from this culture then, are subject to the limitations of the culture. I, as the teacher, want to offer the perspective that they may not be privy to in their own homes. This is not to say that my lifestyle is better than what they have, but it is about offering students all the tools and knowledge possible in their expedition to find success. I see these lessons and assignments as a compliment to their home experiences, encouraging them look beyond their own sphere to see the possibilities beyond, while all the while validating what is taking place within that sphere. In my opinion, this offers my students in their unique circumstances fair access to the world beyond their sphere.
One of the most wonderful things about asking students to compare themselves to others is that students begin to share a wealth of information about their personal lives. Every student has a story and at this young age is looking for listeners who will validate that story. In order to ensure fair and equal access for students to share their experiences, I encourage students to not see me as the sole authority to share with. Students often look to the teacher as the only person who can validate their ideas, but that is impossible in a classroom with a ratio of twenty students to one teacher. Therefore, other students must also become respected listeners, and also sources that can help direct the conversations in the appropriate direction.
In order to do this I utilize many discussion protocols throughout the instructional day to train students to talk to each other. Discussion protocols are procedures that students use to discuss a teacher given topic and are important because the procedures ensure that each student has a chance to speak and be heard. When left to their own devices, students tend to talk over one another instead of giving their classmates a chance to speak as well. An example of a discussion protocol is “think-pair-share”. This protocol allows for everyone to share but it also helps the teacher filter out some of the conversations. My students have been using this protocol since the first day of school and at this point in the year, they begin to help each other formulate and clarify their ideas. This is a particularly powerful tool for English language learners because they use their partners to clarify the directions and also, if they do not yet have an idea to share, many of them replicate their partner’s ideas, allowing them to participate in the conversation as well. To ensure accountability, I often ask students to share about what their partners have said to check if they had been listening. Other discussion protocols that I used in this include “Pick-A-Stick”, “Shout It Out”, and “Whip Around”. All of these either allow for a choral response or individual student answers. As a teacher, these protocols keep me objective in management of student participation. Research has shown teachers unintentionally choose the same students over and over again, or an unfair ratio of girls and boys when they “randomly” call on students during a lesson. The protocols leave room for teacher choice, but its goal is to construct the teacher as a facilitator rather than the sole authoritative voice. These protocols, in conjunction with the PowerPoint visuals, truly allowed all students to be engaged in the conversation.
For the follow-up assignment, I opted for an art piece instead of a writing piece partly because of reasons of fairness and access. As developing writers and readers in first grade, many of my students struggle with putting their ideas on paper. In my opinion, this is not solely a matter of academic skill because even the most proficient writer in my class tends to water down his/her ideas when asked to put them on paper. This is because the school setting is the first place in a child’s developmental experience that requires him/her to put thoughts on paper in order for them to be validated. In school, conversations and verbalized ideas are almost never taken into account for grading and nearly all grading is based on written work. However, outside of the school walls, verbal words are the main method of communication and so to force a student to only express him/herself in written word stifles some of his/her ideas because it is not yet a natural form of communication for him/her. Therefore, I believe it’s important to give students multiple avenues to show what they know. In this assignment, all students are required to produce a drawing piece, and I feel that the use of art already opens the door for more students to engage because it is a form of expression that they are more comfortable with. For example, a student may not be able to describe a scene in a sentence, but he/she can certainly draw it. Futher more, students were given two options in the presentation of their work: they could explain their art in a written paragraph or in an oral presentation to the class. Both methods had to follow the same criteria and my main intention here is to validate multiple forms of expression and assessment, all the while maintaining the same standard for all students.
3. Analysis of Video Recording
The videotaped portion of the lesson shows the use of the PowerPoint presentation. The beginning of the portion is approximate 10 minutes into the lesson and prior to this, students were orientated to the objectives and goals of the lesson, which were to learn about Jacob Lawrence as an artist and to identify similarities and differences between him and themselves. Students were also told that they would be looking at his art as a reflection of Harlem and that they would also compare and contrast Harlem and their own community.
The discussion in the videotape delves into comparing the world represented by Lawrence and the student’s own lives. Constantly, every element of Lawrence’s life and every painting is related back to the students’ own experiences. One example of this is the discussion of the painting “Migration”. As the first painting presented in the lesson, I utilized it to speak to some of the larger themes in Lawrence’s work, namely, the exile of African-Americans and the common experience of African-Americans in his time. In the video, I clearly explain to the students that African-Americans were exiled and that it was simply, “not right”. The painting provided a good opportunity to connect African-Americans in the painting to the African-American students in class. However, it was clear that students were still not clear what classified a person a African-American, despite the fact I had gone over this at least twice in previous lessons. I gave a quick explanation of the technical meaning of African-American (“You’re African-American is someone in your family might have come from Africa … and usually your skin is much darker.”). This unexpected backtracking in my lesson was important because students had to be knowledgeable about their own experiences before they would empathize with another person’s experience.
In my goal of helping students to developing empathy, I felt I had much success in relating the students to Lawrence’s personal life, particularly in our conversation about single-family households and financial hardship at the beginning of the video segment. Part of the reason, in my opinion, was because I presented the questions in such a matter-of-fact manner. I did not whisper it or encourage them to share in secret, but I posed the questions about their personal lives as though it was a survey, not unlike, “Who likes chocolate ice cream?” Probably as a sign of the times, my students don’t seem to have trouble identifying themselves as living in single-parent households, but nevertheless, I tried to encourage the participation by praising students who proudly put their hands up.
The next discussion about financial hardship was a little more difficult because even though my students do not feel shame in living in a single-parent household, in our culture of consumerism, they do feel less sure of themselves when it comes to the discussion of money. Students were told to share with a partner about a time when they did not have enough money to do something. Initially, the girl in the white tries to engage her in sharing, but the girl in the glasses simply gives her a look over the top of her lenses. However, when the girl in the glasses realized that she was in a group of three and would have to wait to share, she immediately turns back to the girl in the white and begins sharing with her. This illustrates the desire of students wanting to be heard, and also students being willing to hear each other, as the girl in the white does not reject the girl in the glasses on their second attempt. The girl with the white hair tie sitting closer to me is at first sharing with another student and then sees a girl right next to me who is unengaged in a conversation and engages her in sharing. This is not an example of empathy, but it does show the first step towards empathy: listening.
This is why I shared my personal story with the class first. It was my way to give validation and courage to students who may have felt uneasy about sharing, but also gave students a better idea of what I was asking for. After I share my story, there is an audible “aww” coming from one of the girls in the front row. This is a clear sign of empathy, as the girl was felt pity for my sad story. When the first student Roberto shares his story, most of the students are clearly engaged as exemplified by the body language; they are sitting very close to him and most of them are looking at right at him as he shares. These too, are signs of active listening as a step to building empathy.
In order to solicit student sharing, I use many methods of engaging students before they have the opportunity to share aloud with the rest of the class. One of the main reasons why I do this is to give students more time to process and edit their ideas before they speak so that their contributions are on point and prepared. In addition to using think-pair-share, when I am asking students to formulate answers to my questions, I “think aloud” and generate sentence starters for the students. I find that this helps to jump start ideas for students who may have trouble doing so independently. I also utilize Total Physical Response (TPR), a technique that engages students by having them respond by physical motions rather than words. For example, I ask students to point to the screen at words and places in the picture to get a quick informal assessment of student engagement. On three separate occasions, I ask students to give me a thumbs-up to indicate that they agree or that they can identify with the experiences I was asking them about. This is effective for students who don’t quite understand the direction because by sight, a student can figure out what they’re supposed to do by watching other students. While this doesn’t necessarily increase understanding for a struggling student, he/she will be less likely to give up because he/she can still participate on a certain level. Both of these strategies are intended to engage and include as many students as possible in the lesson.
My materials mostly focused on the Lawrence’s art projected on the screen. In the video, I make direct reference to the painting and was able to fully engage it because it was projected onto the large screen. The larger size of the painting allowed for students to see the details of the painting and helped them to make more astute observations. The social studies portion is derived mostly from the information I provide to the students and their responses.
In the video, I clearly addressed in the issues of equity, fairness, and access during student sharing. I do my best to make sure that each student had a partner to share with for think-pair-share and encouraged them to listen. I directly address Angela and asked her if she had already shared with Marco, and when she had not, I asked her to share with him. When students are given a chance to share with the class, as usual practice, I allow students to pick the next person that will share. This is again to divert the concentration away from me as the teacher and allow the class to take ownership over the discussion. We utilize the cue of “Would anyone like to share?” to indicate that the person has finished with his/her sharing and is already to choose the next person to promote polite listening. At the time of the video, I am still working with students on equitably choosing people instead of choosing their friends. In the video, I make a request to a student to “consider” choosing a girl because two boys had already had a turn. The student chooses a boy anyway, and after the third boy goes, I give the directive for him to choose a girl. As a general philosophy, I do not impose directions on students when I’m giving them free choice, but I will do it to ensure equality. This is a philosophy that I abide by throughout my instructional day because while I want to develop independent and critical thinkers, I also understand that it is my duty to create an equitable learning environment for everyone.
4. Reflection
I was able to meet my objective of introducing Jacob Lawrence as an artist and the context of his career and achievements.
I think I was able to meet the objectives for the social studies and art component of the lesson, but would have adjusted my instruction to create a stronger lesson in empathy. Students were clearly able to grasp the similarities and differences between Harlem and their own community by the end of the lesson and that is evident in the work that the final art piece that they produced. Not only did they extend the painting of Harlem, they added on things that were unique to our community such as airplanes that are constantly flying overhead to the airport nearby. Students who did not understand the comparison activity made it evident by not adding realistic elements of their own community to their art pieces. To them, Harlem was still a far-off imaginary place and therefore they were unable to connect their real-life community to Harlem. I was also successful in reinforcing the identity of African-Americans in my class and, in my opinion, celebrated the differences in our classroom on a small scale. The next step after this lesson to deepen this comparison would be to look again at Harlem and our community to compare and contrast the events and people that created Harlem and those that created our community as a celebration. This moves students beyond superficial comparisons to identifying common characteristics that affect a community, regardless of its geographic location, which was initially my ultimate objective and I certainly feel that this lesson took us a large step in that direction.
In regards to the art objective, my students definitely developed an appreciation for Lawrence’s art and enjoyed imitating his style. One of my objectives was to get students to understand that artists reflect their surroundings in their work to make a comment about it. My students certainly did that in their own drawings. Even though our neighborhood is one where graffiti and abandoned houses are noticeable, not one single student included that in their drawing. I know that this is not an oversight on their part because even the students who were extremely accurate in their details did not include it. I believe that is evident of my students’ optimistic outlook on their community.
One component of my lesson that I would want to improve on is emphasizing the idea of empathy. Upon reviewing the video, I realized that I worked extremely hard at getting students to identify the commonalities and differences but neglected to connect those elements to their own personal experiences. For example, as students shared about a time when they encountered financial hardship, in order to emphasize the lesson on empathy, I would ask students to specifically identify how they relate to what had been shared if I were to teach the lesson again. At the time of the year represented by the video, the first-grade students were still adjusting to the concept of a discussion and it was still quite a teacher centered discussion in that I was guiding them and helping them move the conversation along instead of allowing them to do so. However, I do think that the lesson on video was invaluable in developing a classroom culture of sensitivity as students began to see each other as people on the same side and having the same experiences. I’m particularly proud of the way the discussion about single-parent families and financial hardship because I feel that I was genuinely validating the students’ experience as well as reflecting the similarities of their experience back to them as a group.
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| Trader Joe's is not just a supermarket. It validates my life as a single diner. It's one of the few markets you can go to that actually sells things in portions suitable for a person eating dinner alone. When I make a purchase at Trader Joe's, I'm raising my fist in support of single diners everywhere. My favorite things are their small portions of vegetables. It affords me the opportunity to eat different types of veggies each night instead of eating the saaaaame vegetables all week.
Actually - crap aside - I go because of their chocolate almond clusters. FREAKIN HEAVEN.
So I was watching America's Next Top Model, Cycle 8. Anyone else notice that the models are not as pretty as the ones from cycles past?
I've been craving Coldstone's. And Lucille's - because people at work keep talking about barbecue.
I got my Spring 25% discount for Coach. The possibilities are endless!! =)
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