After having our autobiographies returned this past week, I've been pondering a few things about my own experience in a K-8 school. How do we imagine our schools looking different than they are now? And how was my own experience unique? And beyond that, I wish I knew more about everyone else and their autobiographical experiences. Luckily our cohort has the next year, and after, to share.
When I imagine schools rethinking their structure and design, a lot of my ideas come from my experience in a slightly out of the ordinary school. It was a very small, public school that had limited funding. It was a new school that was unofficially called a "lab" or experimental school. It was basically a bunch of portables, plopped out in a grassy field, sans playground equipment or anything else that would have been expensive. And it was one of the most remarkable places to grow and experience school. Thinking about new ways to structure schools always reminds me of me experience there, because we were grouped with multiple grades in a given classroom. I wonder now if I knew how little funding the school actually had? I think I knew that regular schools had play equipment for recess, and that ours didn't, but we made due with what we had. I'm still friends with many of the people I went to school with then, and we can still laugh about creating games with what materials we had- rocks, dirt, grass, etc.
There was a big emphasis on project based learning, and projects that involved the community around us. We didn't have enough money to actually take field trips places, but we would as a class walk the mile or so to a lake for environmental science projects, and walk to a nearby assisted care facility to interview the elderly. I remember so much of what we did, and what we learned. I think that's a huge advantage of project based learning. I certainly don't remember completed worksheet assignments I've done, but projects? Somehow I do!
One of the things I've been wondering as I've been reading the assigned readings for this week is about poverty and how that affected the learning environment we had at our small school. As a school, we were poorly funded, but as students we came from different socioeconomic situations. Kids are really perceptive and I'm sure I knew that my family was struggling financially. Because of this, my mom, sister and I moved in with my grandparents around my middle school years. I definitely couldn't afford that prada backpack I had my eyes on, but luckily I think I was somehow exempt from bullying. If I would have went to another school, where all the students didn't know each other from going to school with one another for however many years, it may have been a different story. Is that another reason to consider a K-8 model of schooling? Maybe. I had a great experience. I still joke about how poor I was growing up but it impacted me in a very real way. The poverty readings from this week are really great, I think. I'm excited to hear what our class has to share.

Thinking about Buchmann

I took a weekend to go to Eastern WA, to see family I haven't seen since Christmas (!) and while I was there I was pretty much internet free. I had this weird feeling like I was disconnected, because I was offline. In the back of my mind I was thinking "I should journal about this!" and then I came home and sadly forgot most of what I wanted to blog about. The pitfalls of not having the internet on hand, all the time.
One thing I really wanted to blog about last week was my reaction to Buchmann. I had to reread parts of it, because the first time around I read what she was saying completely wrong. I thought she was for standardized tests and shaping young minds to be robotic. I really read into it incorrectly. I actually think I might have ripped into her a little bit in my journal last week, so I wanted to take the chance to reflect on what she was actually saying, and why I interpreted it the way that I did. Buchmann had the interests of students in mind when she was writing that piece, and in a nutshell, she wanted to make sure that it was understood that what is taught ought to be determined by what is in the best interests of the student. I think I interpreted it in the way that I did because I interpret standards as just being a given. Maybe because of my own experience in schools, but I always assumed that all teachers had to teach the same things, and that subjects were fulfilled by requirements that are necessary to graduate. It never crossed my mind that there was the potential for certain teachers to decide to teach or to not teach certain subjects based on their own likes/ dislikes/ comfort level of subjects. So I didn't considered that, and I assumed that Buchmann was very pro standardized testing and anti project based learning. Sometimes it's good to do a reread.
Another thing I was thinking about this weekend is gardening! I did a lot of that this weekend (so many types of tomatoes! Yes!) and I remembered a class I took through Pipeline at UW Seattle where we were able to volunteer in elementary classrooms where we had a guest speaker come in from a school that had a garden that they incorporated into the curriculum. It was amazing! There were elementary school students and middle school students learning to garden, learning where food came from, doing hands on fun activities, etc. It was something that the students really, really enjoyed doing and they were learning from a plethora of subject areas. I also remember that our guest speaker had a blog, and it will be my mission this week to find it again!

Excerpt from my Journal, Week 3

After reading chapter two of Ayers this week, I finished my journal entry. I did a lot of journaling this week and I was surprised what came up! This is an excerpt of mine from this week's journal:

  I love the questions that Ayers poses to his audience. Who is this person before me? What is the measure of her hope and hurt? What are his interests and areas of wonder? How does she express herself and what is her awareness of herself as a learner? What effort and potential does she bring? (pg 42) Those questions are so significant to making each student in the classroom visible. I think that I was given that luxury as a student. Each teacher seemed to focus on my strengths (because our school was so ridiculously small that everyone knew just about everything about everyone- it was easy to know who was struggling with what, but also who had strengths in these areas, etc.). I agree with Ayers when he proposes breaking away from the deficit-model of teaching. Narrowing in on perceived weaknesses of the students can be a very discouraging approach- for the teachers and the students. It also seems like it isn't the most nurturing model for teachers to take. This chapter reminds me of an experience I had volunteering in a 2nd grade classroom- the teacher asked me if I would type up each student's story they had written for an upcoming parent-teacher conference. I was instructed to type the stories exactly as they were written. Grammatical errors and all. The stories were absolutely fabulous! And I just remember learning so much about each student that I had previously had no idea about. One girl wrote a story titled "When I Lost My Fifth Tooth". Specifically fifth. I thought it was great! I started reading the story, and I was amazed by how much information I could get from reading this girl's story: a story that I thought would be a tale about the tooth she had lost, but it turned into this amazing tangent on pretty much every activity she had done that weekend, who she was with, where they went, and what they did. These were the things that were really important to her in her life and I was amazed by how much more I learned about her from reading her story. There was also another student who, instead of writing, did his entire assignment in pictures. It was like looking at a very detailed graphic novel. When you asked this student to tell you the story, he could point to each picture to describe what happened at that increment of time. The way he chose to complete this assignment expressed a lot about the way his mind works and how he can express himself best. On page 54, Ayers noted that, "The strongest source of knowledge about the student remains the student herself, and tapping into that knowledge is not so difficult.". I think knowing that, and knowing that there is always more we can learn from students is important as well. Students are multidimensional persons, and I want to keep in mind that, for all I learn about them and their stories, there will always be more that I do not know about them.

How do you deal with racism in the classroom?

Up until now I wasn't really sure what I would blog about first, but after reading this week's assigned readings, I am spurred to writing down some of my thoughts. One of my majors in my undergraduate career was Women Studies, and having that background of study has really affected my lens for the readings each week. One of the reasons that I chose to pursue my teaching certification through this program was because of the commitment to diversity and multicultural education. But can I just say that in week 3 of this program, I am both excited (and terrified) to encounter the topic of cultural competency in the classroom. I'm excited to learn about cultural competency, and to have some way of applying the knowledge and the countless readings that I've had in a way that makes a positive difference. However, there is this gripping fear that I have for when I encounter a situation like this in the classroom. For real. Will I be prepared enough to handle the situation when it arises? It helps to feel fairly solid in the theories, but... knowing the best way to handle a situation like this, especially with young children, is so important.

I appreciated the Tenorio reading from this week. Having a Do's and Don't's list was especially clear, straightforward, and much appreciated. In particular, the "Do apply consequences to the attacker in accordance with school policy (etc)... Don't humiliate the attacker when imposing consequences" as the attacker may feel like a victim too. And I think that is a pretty paramount point in this subject. One of my ultimate goals as a teacher is to create a safe space for all students. We can't ignore racist or prejudiced remarks from students in the classroom by any means. And we also can't ignore those remarks or let them go unchallenged. If the student who made those remarks is publicly embarrassed or humiliated by the teacher, that student becomes victimized as well and you loose the potential for teaching valuable lessons to everyone involved.