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Weaknesses teaching culturally diverse students

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Weaknesses teaching culturally diverse students

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I chose to put a picture of my hand because I believe that my struggles

with teaching culturally diverse students involve knowing a particular set of cultural characteristics of a student. For example, I fear not knowing how to communicate with a student who rejects my interactions. Some may be closed off. I also know that different cultures have different "rules" like students not looking at adults in the eyes as a sign of respect. I am afraid, that even though my strength is building positive student/teacher relationsips, that I will not be able to give a helping hand to those students.

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I found out through my photographs that reading, writing, and culture are all intertwined. Both reading and writing are a part of my culture. And writing about my culture, like I did with this assignment, is very hard. It is harder to speak about it. I realize that many of my future students will have similar literacy practices as I do and perhaps different ones as well. My literacy practices make me who I am. They are a part of my culture. My future students could do an assignment like this as a multimodal project. They may bring their funds of knowledge into the classroom and this project is a great way to do it. Funds of knowledge refers to the “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being” (Moll et al., 1992, p. 133).

My funds of knowledge consist of some of the topics I covered in this project, such as my common literacy experiences and my favorite place to engage in literacy. These topics are apart of my everyday life, especially things like my cultural values. Some of these values, like the value of taking only what I can pay back, I learned from my family. That would be a funds of knowledge that I would bring to my class if I were a student and aspects that I will bring to my classroom when I am a teacher. It consists of my "daily educational practices within the household, extended family, and social networks, and preexisting family college knowledge "(Kiyama). Essentially, my entire home life is brought to field and to class, even in college.
One thing I will try to do differently in my classroom is, as Kiyama mentions, trying not to view myself as teaching to an agenda and more as a facilitator of creating a positive learning environment and having creative ways to cover academic material. I don't want to teach just to get through material. Unfortunately, there is so much of it and such a long check list for teachers. I want to do my best at being a better culturally responsive teacher and engaging with my students and allowing them to bring their funds of knowledge to the classroom.

My thoughts about literacy has changed throughout this project. I realized that literacy can be multiple experiences, not just reading and writing at school. The awareness for who I am matters when becoming a teacher. If I know who I am, I can better identify with my students, especially those from different cultures. I have to know my own cultural practices to be able to relate to my students. It is incredibly important for me to be able to understand who my students are and allow them to bring their previous knowledge and their funds of knowledge and what they know how to do and use it to my advantage. I can use what they know to teach them and it will allow them to relate to the content better.
I also want to get past certain biases I may have concerning the economic status of students and their parents. There may be times where I may think badly about the parents of a student because of their economic status, which is wrong. The is the idea of deficit perspective. A deficit perspective defines students by their cultural values, and worse, their economic status. According to Dudley-Marling, “The high level of reading failure among children living in poverty, for example, is often linked to the claim that poor children lack the rich and varied vocabulary needed to succeed in school.” A deficit perspective comes from thinking negatively about students who come from poverty stricken backgrounds. People also believe that families living in the situations do not care about education and that is not always the case.  This belief severely impacts the students and their education. I do not think I am like this. I love my students and they are all very culturally diverse; however, there is always room for improvement in regards to my own thoughts about parents and students.
I know that students come from all different backgrounds. It is incredibly important to realize that students are not defined by the deficits of their culture. Just because a child comes from a poverty-stricken background does not mean that they are illiterate. It is essential that a teacher should not be biased against students that come from diverse backgrounds.
One thing that I have learned about literacy is that it can come in different forms. What is “good literacy?” Some of the things that I have learned about good literacy from books and people is that sometimes, good literacy is in the eye of the beholder. We have “proper literacy” in terms of school, but to who? I am more critical of the idea of good literacy because I believe that literacy comes in multiple forms. And depending on the culture of the students, the literacy they practice might vary, which does not make them “good” or “bad.” I strive to get to know my students better so that they will be comfortable sharing their cultures with me and other students. When I work with my students, even if their own cultures do not match with school culture, I will make sure they know I care about their well-being. I will do my best to try and assist them with understanding school culture in a way that promotes positivity. I do not want them to feel like what they are doing is wrong, but that there is a time and place for everything. The article read in class by Wheeler & Swords discusses the language students bring from home versus the standard (school) English that is expected in the classroom. This article directly relates to this idea of funds of knowledge and how classroom culture is different from culture students experience at home. This article discusses the problems that students face and what steps we, as teachers, need to take to be better at working with these students.

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My favorite place to engage in literacy is in my room, on my bed. My bed is comfy and cozy. I do my homework here and read here. I write in my journal and create "art" for my room. It all happens here. It IS the center of literacy engagement.

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This is a picture of my room before I cleaned it. Life is a little crazy at times. This represents my inability to stay at home and clean 24/7. My cultural discomfort is this idea that women (in some cultures, not all) must be at home with the children cooking and cleaning. I find this discomfort from being around people from europe.This is something that I am able to do and obviously should do from time to time (when I actually have children) but not something I feel like I have to do. I mean that I cannot be the perfect housewife because that is not who I am. While, this isn't a serious threat in my life, it is something I would be uncomfortable with. It is an expectation that I could not perfectly meet.

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I love Tumblr. I love blogging. I love writing my thoughts and reading other people's thoughts. I chose this because I practice this literacy experience almost daily because it is enjoyable for me.

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This is how I see myself. I wear braces, look 12, and wear glasses. That's okay

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Kayla
Stubborn, Kind, Silly, Honest
Daughter of a broken mother
Lover of food, sleep, and music
Who feels happy when she sleeps, sad when she can't eat, and strong willed at all times
Who fears bugs, spiders, and failure
Who would like to see my siblings, the world, and a bowl of mac and cheese
Resident of Lilburn GA
Parham

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Strength Teaching Culturally Diverse Students

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Strength Teaching Culturally Diverse Students

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My strength teaching culturally diverse students is that I can build positive student-teacher relationships with them. I have empathy for those who are culturally diverse, and am always willing to work with them. This is a picture of a bear that a student gave me. She came from Mexico, spoke very little English, and had difficulties adjusting to school life in America. Her culture was very different than that of the classroom. i worked with her every day by modeling of examples of classroom rules and activities. I played games with her, helped her, and attempted to make her feel welcome in our classroom without compromising her own cultural beliefs. I chose this picture because it reminds me that my strength is building positive relationships with culturally diverse students in order to effectively teach them. This gift symbolizes a positive student-teacher relationship that I had.

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I had such an emotional time reading this book. A young girl blames herself for her mother's death. This is during the time of segregation and racism. This story discusses major social justice issues such a race and also discusses the importance of the role of women in literature. I cried multiple times.
I thought about how realistic this book is, and it made me sick. I relate to the  main character, Lily, because she is truly trying to find herself and piece parts of her life together. I have been this way since I was young and can relate to this. As a child, I struggled with finding out why parts of my life didn't add up and why things were not the way I wanted them to be. And just like in this book, things were always more complicated than what was actually known.

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These are the literacy practices that I often participate in.

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Only take as much as you can pay back. This is a cultural value of my own. I learned what not to do from certain family members. I do not believe in taking from those who give to the point of no return. If you give to me, I will give back to you.

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My cultural biases involve thinking that people who voted for Donald Trump are people who do not care about people of other cultures. I KNOW that this is not true. This is something that I have been thinking about recently.

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I am privileged enough to be given time to live my life because there have been many times when it could have easily been taken. I know many people who have been deprived of that privilege.

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This is my baby blanket. It was passed down to me by my aunt. She made it by hand and it originally belonged to my cousin when she was born. This is incredibly important to me because it is the only possession I have from when I was very young. It has extra value because of the fact that it was made by my aunt. When I was young, I had a rocky childhood. Many things were unstable in my life, and I moved more times than I can count. I lost friends, family and confidence in myself at certain points in my life. One thing that stayed with me throughout time is this baby blanket, and it has more value to me than I could say.

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My favorite physical characteristic is unique to myself. I have always been known for my freckles. People have called them angel kisses, and talked about how many I had and how we could play "connect the dots."

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My favorite characteristic about myself is that I am kind-hearted. I have a hard exterior sometimes, but I care about people. Once I care about a person, I care about them for life.

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My name is Kayla.