Culturally Responsive Teaching

http://elschools.org/best-practices/standards-movement-spirit-expeditionary-learning

I chose the blog that talks about the spirit of expeditionary learning. I found it interesting in the way that it applied to the list of culturally responsive teaching.  It struck me the biggest in that through this type of learning the students were able to build bridges and maintain meaningful connections and knowledge.
The project that the students engage is on that they have been measuring the health of a stream near the school for the past five years.  This is a great way to build not only community, but also teamwork throughout the class that spans over years, not just weeks and months. This has greatly expanded into other areas of learning and has become a rich experience for everyone involved. Through this the students learn to work together and apply knowledge through teamwork and other areas of learning.

Where I'm From Video

I learned that power has everything to do with how language and literacy is perceived. The more power one holds and exerts, the more they are seen as a paragon of success and the more people what to imitate them. Not using Standard American English is seen as being less than average intelligence, therefore, less than human. In the most powerful quote, “ As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew she was ignorant.” (Purcell Gates, 2002) It can be seen that people don't respect others who speak differently than what they perceive as the correct way to do so.

Teachers and schools absolutely contribute to poor literacy instruction. However, in my opinion, not on purpose. The way teachers have been teaching and are taught to teach is antiquated and is starting to show it's age through a changing social climate. Corrective instruction and saying that one way is right and the other is wrong only furthers the cultural deficit perspective. “When dialect awareness programs use linguistic terms for educational purposes, the terminology is much more likely to carry with it connotations from everyday use.” (Rowland & Morrow, 2010) This quote backs the cultural difference perspective and strengthens the need to teach “code-switching”.

To overcome cultural deficit perspectives of their students is very important for teachers to not demean or treat others different because they merely talk different. As Moll stated, “involve students as thoughtful learners in socially meaningful tasks.” (Moll, 1992) In this way students focus less on how they talk and realize what is being said is far more relevant.

There are a few strategies that teachers can take to improve instruction of non-standard English students. First, we must realize that students come to learn with their own funds of knowledge and that those cannot be ignored. These “funds” should be built upon so that they can not only increase their cultural capital, but society's as well. In the NCTE article, “writing becomes the centerpiece, support can best come through carefully designed writing instruction oriented toward acquiring new strategies and skills.” (NCTE, 2008) Writing is such a centerpiece of cultural capital because it is the backbone of culture as we know it.

The “Where I am from” project supported culturally responsive learning because it put together out funds of knowledge from where we grew up and how we became us as students. Also, by us watching and reviewing peer videos we were able to learn and listen to each other. The project also used different types of learning styles. We used music to appeal to the auditory learners, hands-on, by making the actually movie and visual by watching it happen. All of the learning styles were covered and are all crucial in the teaching scheme.