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"In the same classroom with these two individuals was an overachieving female student who viewed her life in American as an opportunity to receive the education that her parents never had a chance to get in their home country" (Emdin, p. 61).

This quote really hit home for me because one of my best friends throughout high school is an illegal immigrant, and she was only able to go to college here in Georgia for two years through the DACA program. Unfortunately, after those two years were up, she had to completely up and move her life to the University of Delaware because they allow Dreamers to come there to graduate college. It is an extremely sad situation, but this quote made me think of her because of everything that she has been through. It is so exciting to see her pursuing her degree even though she has been given so many obstacles to get through. This video is about a Valedictorian for McKinney Boyd High School who admitted to being an illegal immigrant who overcame the adversities that she faced. This video relates to the quote from the story because the quote talked about a girl who has immigrants as parents, and the quote talks about her looking as her opportunity in America being an experience that her parents never had the chance to experience. The girl in the story, Larissa Martinez, told her story of being one that her parents never got to experience. She was able to have experiences, like being the Valedictorian for her high school, that her parents were never able to have.

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McKinney Boyd valedictorian reveals unauthorized immigration status in graduation speech

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"The structures in place in traditional urban classroom do not lend themselves to giving students a voice or a space in which to be valued and respected for their experiences. Students who populate urban schools are generally beholden to a 'pedagogy of poverty' that rewards them for being docile and punishes them for being overly vocal or expressive'" (Emdin, p. 66).

** I apologize in advance for the profanity used in this video **

This quote was important to me because it reminds me of the school that I went to as a child. We were treated like we were poor because we were poor. We were not treated as well as we should have been treated because of the area where we lived. We were punished if we were to speak out in class because the teacher only wanted us to do book work instead of actually teaching us. We were treated well if we were up to the teachers standards of being "good". I believe that even the poorest of the poor should be loved on and treated as the wonderful students that they are. Every child needs the same attention and love that other children get. We also should not treat students as if they are poor. We should be treating them like they are just like everyone else. With that being said, my video is about a former teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. This teacher was reprimanded of her teaching job because she was yelling at a black student, and she ended up calling him a name that should never have even crossed her mind. I felt like this video was relevant to the quote that I chose because some white teachers do not know how to handle students who are different from them. That includes the color of their skin, their economic status, etc. This video is a clear example of that.

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Teacher fired for racist comments caught on camera

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A middle school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, was fired after footage of her spouting racially charged comments at her students went viral.

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"I argue that additionally, the optimal way for youth language and experience to be used as a teaching tool involves having the youth themselves do the teaching. For this to happen, students have to be seen as teachers" (Emdin, p. 84).

This quote really stood out to me because as teachers we should be encouraging our students to take charge, have responsibility, and encourage them to explore their thoughts and then share what they were thinking about. We also encourage small groups for the students to learn from one another. What better way to learn from your peers than having your peer teach you? My fifth grade teacher allowed us to teach parts of the lesson that we thought was interesting. That made me feel like I was in charge and had the responsibility of my peers learning the material, and in return that little teaching experience helped me learn the material better. In this video from The Teaching Channel, we see a group of students actually teaching the class a strategy called Keep It or Junk It. This strategy allows the students to pick and choose what information they think is the most important and what is not the most important. You can see the students who are teaching, take charge and teach the material, and we see the other students engaging in what their peers are teaching them. This video relates to the quote that I chose because it actually shows the students teaching their peers, or the other students. This is important for me, and something that I plan on doing in my own classroom, because you really get to see the students light up because they are the teachers. You also see how well the students learn from one another. It is really interesting to see!

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How do students demonstrate their understanding of the text?

2. How do student facilitators help to increase participation and engagement?

3. What role does Ms. Brouhard play in this discussion?

School Details

Glenview Elementary School
4215 La Cresta Avenue
Oakland CA 94602

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Keep it or Junk it: A Student-Run Lesson

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Jennifer Brouhard's fifth graders consider the question, "What happened as a result of English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia?" They read a short informational text and work in pairs to brainstorms possible answers to the focus question. The first pair of students presents their possible answers to this class.

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"Encourage students to disclose their strengths and weaknesses with regard to the classroom content (test-score averages, understanding of content, and general comfort with the classroom environment). This process can be somewhat challenging because students rarely like to admit to their weaknesses. However, if they are encouraged to consistently discuss their weaknesses along with their strengths, they become accustomed to sharing with their peers. For example, a student who says that he or she does not understand a topic discussed in class should be encouraged to talk about their strengths with other topics or aspects of classroom life such as time management or organization" (Emdin, p. 117).

I thought that this was an important quote because we should all be recognizing what our strengths and weaknesses are. Being able to talk about them in a classroom setting can be hard. So, it is important for us teachers to encourage our students to open up to one another and to us. Once they do this, the students will be able to talk about anything. In the video I provided, teachers talk about students weaknesses and strengths that they are able to get through a test called the MDTP diagnostic test. The MDTP diagnostic test gives the teachers an idea of what the students strengths and weaknesses are. From there, the teachers are able to talk to the students about their results, and they see how they can work on their strengths and weaknesses together. This video relates to the quote that I chose because the quote talks about finding out your strengths and weaknesses and then talking about them and getting better from them. That is what the video talks about. It talks about how to get the students strengths and weaknesses, as well as how the teachers have a conversation with the students about their results.

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Sharing Student's Strengths & Weaknesses

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Sharing Strengths and Weaknesses asks teachers how they use MDTP diagnostic tests to coordinate and inform their efforts at a more collective level to shape mathematics teaching, assessment, support and intervention, and other policies. Typical questions were: What has been the impact of MDTP on your department?

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"Have high-performing students partner with low-performing students and create a space in the classroom where these groups can target their specific strengths and weaknesses" (Emdin, p. 118).

I felt as though this was an important quote because we ask students to work with partners all the time. It is something that every teacher does. I feel as though we should take into consideration the students scores in the class and place each student with their own partner rather than having the students find their own partner. I remember when I was in elementary school, my teacher would always ask us to find a partner to work with for the day. I would always go for my best friend. We would then be placed together for the entire day and none of our work got done because we were talking the whole day. To prevent that from happening, the teachers should place each student with a partner in order for them to learn and grow. We can strategically place a struggling student with an excelling student. Then, the excelling student would be able to help the student that is struggling. This video shows two students working together in pairs. Not only are they working in pairs, but they are having good conversations and trying to help each other learn and grow. This video relates to the quote because it shows two students, who you can assume were placed together beforehand, and they are working well together in order to help each other learn and grow.

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"The reality is that we privilege people who look and act like us, and perceive those who don't as different, and frequently, inferior. In urban schools, and especially for those who haven't had previous experience in urban contexts or with youth of color, educators learn "best practices" from "experts" in the field, deemed as such because they have degrees, write articles, and meet other criteria that do not have anything to do with their work within urban communities" (Emdin, p. 19).

I thought that this was important because we, as future educators, need to realize that we are going to have students who are different than us. Gwinnett County is one of the most diverse counties in Georgia. So, we need to get in the habit of trying to celebrate others. This goes along with my picture because my pictures shows a lot of different people, with a lot of different languages. They are embracing one another, and I feel like that's something that we should do (and be doing already).

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"I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded be mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me" - Ralph Ellison (Emdin, p. 17).

This quote is at the very beginning of the first chapter, and it was a quote that stood out to me during the whole reading. I went and reread this quote many times because I thought it was an interesting way to start off the chapter. I think it's important to recognize that Ellison was talking about feeling invisible because people only saw the outside rather than getting to know him on the inside. I think a lot of times we are quick to judge people. We are quick to just recognize what's on the outside rather than taking what's on the inside into consideration. So, some children that we have in our classrooms could end up feeling "invisible" if we don't try to get to know them, and they will end up like my dad little boy in the picture above.

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"First, the belief that students are in need of 'cleaning up' presumes that they are dirty. Second, the aim of 'giving them a better life' indicates that their present life has little or no value. The idea that one individual or school can give students 'a life' emanates from a problematic savior complex that results in making students, their varied experiences, their emotions, and the good in their communities invisible" (Emdin, p. 20).

I also connected to this on a deeper level because a lot of the teachers at the elementary school I went to tried super hard to make our lives better. The thing that I never understood was that we were all really happy with the way our lives were, and it was offending and confusing when the teachers tried their best to "give us the life we didn't have". I had teachers telling me that the way my parents did things was wrong, and that's not the way that should be. We need to get to know our students, get to know their families, and get to know the community that our future school is in. We shouldn't be trying to change the lives of our students, or trying to make their lives better. It will cause a lot of issues for you, the student, and the family involved. More than likely, the child involved is completely happy at home, and doesn't realize that they are any different than others. This goes along with my picture below because they are happy children. Most children in elementary school are happy. So, we need to encourage them to be the happy little people they are.

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"The work for teachers becomes developing the self - reflection necessary to deconstruct the ways that media messages, other teachers' negative (often exaggerated) stories, and their own need to be the hero affects how they see and teach students. The teacher must work to ensure that the institution does not absolve them of the responsibility to acknowledge the baggage they bring to the classroom and analyze how that might affect students achievement. Without teachers recognizing the biases they hold and how these biases impact the ways they see and teach students, there is no starting point to changing the dismal statistics related to the academic underperformance of urban youth" (Emdin, p. 43).

I really connected to this part of the story because it reminded me of what happened when I was a child. This was the part of the book where he talked about the teachers all sitting together, pretty much judging the students who walked by. My elementary school was like this in a lot of ways. Most of us in the school came from the "ghetto", and if you were one of those students you were looked at and treated differently. So, this made me think of stereotypes, and how people can perceive the stereotype to be true. It's important to remember that no matter what the students look like, act like, or speak like they are to be treated with dignity and respect. Also, that we are all not our stereotypes. We are so much better than that.

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"The best classroom teachers develop ways to make the classroom feel like a family that has its own distinct rules, ways of speaking, and power dynamics. Pentecostal pedagogy teaches us that once student voice is prominent in the classroom, and a classroom family structure has been established, issues that traditionally plague urban classrooms, like poor management and low participation, are quickly addressed or even self - corrected" (Emdin, p. 60).

We have all been taught that making our classrooms more like a family is the way to go because it makes all students feel welcome. In my opinion, the best teachers always turn their classrooms into a family in some way. Making your classroom feel more like a family allows more freedom to do things, and it also makes the students feel a little more comfortable with everything. So, the picture I provided above describes the classroom that I want in my future. I will more than likely have this exact picture hanging around somewhere in my classroom, or I will have it written somewhere. I want to be able to create the environment where every single student feels comfortable.