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I have a personal connection to how I personally help change the norm of the people around me. The guy friend in my life constantly say the "R" word and me actually responding to these statements and stopping it from happening is my way to be that disruption. I usually start by saying to them, "As an anti-bias educator..." and it ends in convincing them not to say these types of things. Its gotten to the point where I have changed the way my friends speak and the language they use. It is a little victory and a baby step, but its a step.

"The government is the  creation of the people. It is responsible to the people. And the people are responsible for it." and "...you must find yourself at war with your society."  (James Baldwin, Collected Essays, pg 684-685).and even being at the smallest war with your society and disrupting the norm can make the change; in your tiny circle first, then out into the world.

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...something that "those who can't do, teach." 

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...something that "those who can't do, teach." 

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When you're a teacher, that's not all you are. You are a champion, a voice, a mentor, a guide, a mother figure, an adviser, a superhero, a backbone, a social worker, a friend, and many, many other things.

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Every kid needs a champion | Rita Pierson | TED

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“Immediately upon our births, we begin to be socialized by the people we love and trust the most, our families or the adults who are raising us. They shape our self-concepts and self-perception, the norms and the rules we must follow, the roles we are taught to play, our expectations for the future, and our dreams.” (Harro, B. pg. 47). We are a mosaic of social frameworks that are influencing us from birth. We must use these socialization that the students have to the advantage of our classrooms. Students bring so much into the classroom from their community and families and we have to utilize it to create a more well-rounded student.

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...create am environment of questioning over conformity. 

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...create am environment of questioning over conformity. 

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In "A Talk to Teachers" by James Baldwin, he states, "Children, not yet aware that it is dangerous to look too deeply at anything, look at everything, look at each other, and draw their own conclusions." (Page 679). As teachers, we must teach children to participate in society by thinking and creating a safe space where we welcome and create that thinking. If your students are not asking "Why?" and questioning injustices that have effected them, you aren't doing your job as a teacher.

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"Sadness, tears, challenges, fears-yes, teaching is filled with all of these- yet it is undeniably also filled with laughter, smiles, hopes, dreams, and rewards beyond measure."
-Jean Lamar
2009 Florida State Teacher of the Year
(Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales)

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In order to be an effective teacher, you need to be constantly learning. Your students should be teaching you as much as you teach them. Teaching is a process of constantly learning and adapting to your students thoughts and behaviors and adjusting practices to those thoughts and behaviors.

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...to help students see themselves in the curriculum. 

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...to help students see themselves in the curriculum. 

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Children learn best when they can see themselves represented in a positive light. We are shaped by others before we shape ourselves and some of those socializations aren't equitable.
"We are each born into a specific set of social identities...and these social identities predispose us to unequal roles in the dynamic system of oppression." (Bobbie Harro: The Cycle of Socialization)
Because of the predispositions, children may not see their culture in a positive light. They may often times, in urban schools, not see themselves in the curriculum, which is so important to learning, then making connections, and then empowerment in education. By helping students see themselves in the curriculum, you can help create positive association with their race, culture, and education combined.

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You model for your students ways of acting, being life-long learners, and how to treat people. You're not only teaching, you are modeling life skills for your students. Students listen, watch, sense feelings, and then look closely at those things. If modeled wrong, these things can be harmful. "Children, not yet aware that it is dangerous to look to deeply at anything, look at everything, look at each, and draw their own conclusions."
(James Baldwin, Collected Essays, pg 679).

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Lessons never go as planned. I have never once stepped into a classroom and actually been prepared completely for what my students throw at me. In order to teach, you come as prepared as you possibly can, and then problem solve along the way.

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...to provide activities and materials that engage and challenge the students intellectually.

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...to provide activities and materials that engage and challenge the students intellectually.

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Children will rise to the expectations you set for them.

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Our students need to know that somebody loves them, that somebody is rooting for them, and somebody is fearlessly leading them.

"My first slogan is: if you're going to lead, lead."
"That brings me to my second slogan: So what? Now what?"
"And that brings me to my third and final slogan. If nobody told you they loved you today,you remember I do, and I always will. My students have problems: social, emotional and economic problems you could never imagine.Some of them are parents themselves, and some are completely alone. If someone asked me my real secret for how I truly keep Strawberry Mansion moving forward, I would have to say that I love my students and I believe in their possibilities unconditionally. When I look at them, I can only see what they can become."
-Linda Cliatt-Wayman

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Linda Cliatt-Wayman: How to fix a broken school? Lead fearlessly, love hard

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On Linda Cliatt-Wayman's first day as principal at a failing high school in North Philadelphia, she was determined to lay down the law. But she soon realized the job was more complex than she thought. With palpable passion, she shares the three principles that helped her turn around three schools labeled "low-performing and persistently dangerous."

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This is one of my all time favorite TedTalks. Sir Ken Robinson speaks about how often times schools do not foster creativity, but rather crush it. Instead, one of my responsibilities as a teacher needs to be to foster my children's creativity through supporting their goals, dreams, skills, and experiences because that is what makes them who they are. All of our students will be different when it comes to learning. That being known, it is up to teachers to make sure we don't try to fit our students into a 'box'.

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Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

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Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

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...to promote various diverse interests in children.

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...to promote various diverse interests in children.

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Teachers jobs, according to the government, is to show growth in test scores for students. Our real job? Our real job is to teach all that we can and integrate all that we can. We must pull away from teaching to a test, because that is setting up our students for failure. I haven't ever heard a teacher say, "I want to teach students to fail." Teach for mastery, understanding, integration, connection, and relevancy, but do it in a way that can support these stipulations the government has give us. Teach mastery.

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Let’s teach for mastery -- not test scores

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Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven’t always grasped the basics? Yes, it’s complicated, but educator Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.

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If we do not let children have some agency in their learning, we will lose them.

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Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

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Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

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...giving a voice to the students have been previously undeserved. 

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...giving a voice to the students have been previously undeserved. 

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Victor Rios: Help for kids the education system ignores

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Define students by what they contribute, not what they lack -- especially those with difficult upbringings, says educator Victor Rios. Interweaved with his personal tale of perseverance as an inner-city youth, Rios identifies three straightforward strategies to shift attitudes in education and calls for fellow educators to see "at-risk" students as "at-promise" individuals brimming with resilience, character and grit.

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...taking risk for the sake of your students. 

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...taking risk for the sake of your students. 

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1.) "The first thing teachers have to do is make a decision for themselves that they will not be obedient in staying within the boundaries that are usually set by principles, school administrators, and parent-teacher associations."

-A Pedagogy of Resistance: Howard Zinn/Catherine  Capellaro

Being a teacher-activist involves taking risk and standing up for what you believe in. It involves disrupting the norm and stepping over lines and boundaries to let children think for themselves.

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"If you neglect a child long enough, you no longer have the right to be surprised when things don't turn out well."
"The quality of your education is directly proportionate to your access to college, your access to jobs, your access to a future."

-Kandice Sumner

In this video Kandice Sumner speaks on her first-hand experiences the disparities of the urban education school system. She speaks a lot about he many things Ladson-Billings spoke about in her books I had read in class. She even mentions Ladson-Billings in this. It isn't an 'achievement gap,' it is an inequitable disparity. As teachers, we need to go, trained into schools like the one Sumner speaks about and make the change and teach the children who are being overlooked. We need to be the voice of desegregating schools because it still persist in school systems and our students will notice it and speak about it.

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How America’s public schools keep kids in poverty

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Why should a good education be exclusive to rich kids? Schools in low-income neighborhoods across the US, specifically in communities of color, lack resources that are standard at wealthier schools -- things like musical instruments, new books, healthy school lunches and soccer fields -- and this has a real impact on the potential of students. Kandice Sumner sees the disparity every day in her classroom in Boston. In this inspiring talk, she asks us to face facts -- and change them.

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throughout my entire time in the education field, I've heard my teachers speak about the importance of scaffolding. Learning doesn't always just click, and it definitely isn't just rote memorization.

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"Could be."

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"But the important thing was that the teachers were not strangers in the  community."
The Dreamkeeps (pg 7)
By: Gloria Ladson-Billings

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...a way to give us a future and quit lingering in the past.

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...a way to give us a future and quit lingering in the past.

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'Historically' is a word we hear quite often in our textbooks, but , many of the things that plagued the school system in the past, plague it now. "The dynamic of social change requires an active concern about the denial of equality of opportunity and equality of educational opportunity." (Page 143 of American Education

....

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...help them maintain a positive identity. 

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...help them maintain a positive identity. 

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...happens when there are high expectations. 

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...happens when there are high expectations. 

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Students will rise to the expectations you set for them. If those expectations are low, the child will not learn much. "She gives little thought to how her low expectations impede the students' progress." (The Dreamkeeps pg 15).

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"We don't call the subjects the old-fashioned names in Room 211. Math is 'Puzzling,' science is 'Mad Scientist Time,' social studies is 'T.T.W.E.,' which stands for 'Time Travel and World Exploring,' language arts is 'Art of Language,' and reading is 'Free Reading Time.'"
(Educating Esme pg 30). Kids come into school thinking they're good at one thing and not the other because they have preconceived notions from years of learning before. And those notions stay with them until we, as teachers, can help them see that learning is actually fun, as cliche as it sounds. The traditional route of teaching does not produce lifelong learners, but when learning makes sense and is fun, that changes the game.

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These classroom pictures were not taken in the same time period, but they very much resemble each other. If children learn so well from collaboration, why are classrooms still set up like this? Children need the chance to experience subjects through collaborative methods of learning. "Students may have many opportunities for group work, but what teachers deem cooperative behavior more accurately falls under the category of compliance or conformity. Culturally relevant teaching advocates the kind of cooperation that leads students to believe they cannot be successful without getting help from others or without being helpful to others." (The Dreamkeepers pg 76)

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"The ability to create knowledge works in conjunction with the ability (and the need) to be critical of content." (pg 100 of The Dreamkeepers). How can we teach students to be critical of things when we are telling them what to think? We should open the doors and windows to their thinking, not give them a bread trail to the answers.

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You are more than a teacher. And teaching is more than a job. You carry everything that is brought into that classroom on your shoulders. You are forced to question socialization and ask the hard questions like "Why do these things happen to MY kids?"

"I feel a certain ill ease about the human race and its unpredictable nature, it's folly, its abuse of the children. I look around and see that even grown-ups are really children, making mistakes and needing love. Does being wrong make you weaker? Does being needy make you weaker? I find myself praying, wishing for God, wishing for someone who sees everything that's happening, someone who cares what's happening. Maybe it's because it's so hard being the only grown-up in the room all day long."
(Educating Esme pg. 153)

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Getting inside the home, as a teacher, can prove to be so resourceful. Students are socialized by their family. " Experiences in the home might provide the social knowledge..." (pg 113 of American Education). Students have lives outside of school and those lives affect their social behavior as well. Those behaviors can be brought into the classroom. Knowing these behaviors prove to be important tools for the classroom and can be used to the teachers advantaged.

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...the forefront of culturally relevant teaching. 

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...the forefront of culturally relevant teaching. 

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.Thinking of the child as a being, outside of the classroom, with a family and other outside forces acting upon their education, can change the way a teacher views them as a learner. When the view changes from “student” to “learner as a whole” the teacher begins to make connections, identify the child’s strengths and weaknesses, and work on flexible learning styles. The student is seen as a cultural being rather than a machine-operated leaner.

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Time after time you hear how teachers take their work home with them. You are not just teaching the students content material, you are teaching them how to function in a classroom setting, work with others, and become well-rounded humans.

"It's just another example of how I'm supposed to teach what they should get at home: teacher as unwilling extended family." (Educating Esme pg 167).

Often times, teachers are unwillingly put in circumstances that were not mentioned in our traditional, college education classes. For example, I never knew or wanted to be in the circumstance of being a mother figure to a student and ending up being the caretaker that calls social services. Yet, this child was in my care, and as the sitting-in caretaker, it is my job to play the role the best I can when I need to play it. This is teaching.

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We tell our students regularly, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Then we don't tell them about the world, as teachers, we need to open up the world for our students and give them a window in the world around them. We call our students the future, the put them in this box. Open up the box and create your students a world for social change. Turn children into activist, and let them know they are a source for social change and injustices.

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Natalie Warne: Being young and making an impact

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At 18, Natalie Warne's work with the Invisible Children movement made her a hero for young activists. She uses her inspiring story to remind us that no one is too young to change the world.

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Teachers go into these classrooms doing more than just presenting materials. We are with students for more than 8 hours a day and are expected to do so much more than ask them to memorize words, have them take notes, and give our students assessments. I feel so personally attacked when people say "teaching is easy" because there are so many things that go into it and so many little minds you have to mold in more aspect than one.

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...should be a positive link to identity. 

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...should be a positive link to identity. 

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Lessons plans never go how they are supposed to go and children are unpredictable. Because of this, teachers have to be ready for whatever. Often times, we do not have the resources that we need and many things are not available to us. We need to utilize whatever we can. For example, "Experience at home might provide the social knowledge students need." (pg 109). Teachers have to be willing to use the resources like family, experiences, social class, living conditions, status, and skills to create a well-rounded student. We use what we have, and we use it well because we aren't just teachers, we are inventors of knowledge in the most resourceful manner.

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In US school systems today, students are not as valued as standardized test scores. Students are all assumed that they are coming into school with the same background and standardized testing scores. It has been valued over many other things such as language, culture, and community

Schools mitigate inequalities in many ways because it is ground in our schooling system and the way we choose to educate our students. Teachers and schools create, maintain, or exacerbate inequality through the practices that go on in certain instances. Often times, students aren’t looked at through a cultural lense and are seen as stereotyped beings defined by color, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Many teachers also often do not know where their students come from or what they connect to, creating an atmosphere where they do not see themselves in the curriculum or feel represented. Schools sometimes dismiss culture or are colorblind instead of breaking down stereotypes.

Something I hope for more than anything else in my classroom is my ability to show my students their own personal value and how to use their qualities and characteristics to their fullest potential. Differences should not be looked at as a deficit, but as a useful tool.

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...their own person with their own identity. 

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...their own person with their own identity. 

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We have to get to know our students. Something that is one of my teaching goals that I think about often in Urban schools is classroom management. I really struggle with the idea of classroom management because it is something I am worried about misinterpreting. Since my students all have their own identity, I do not want to confuse what I was taught was, "misbehavior," as misbehavior. It is not always misbehavior because students are active, excited, and sometimes learn differently, especially when children have different and multiple intelligences. Because of this, I want to make sure my motto when it comes to teaching and utilizing classroom management is NOT, "Misbehave, get punished." This "pretty much sums up the approach to “disciplining” students that educators through the decades have taken in schools and classrooms. " ( Restorative Justice, Rethinking Schools). Your students have different identities, social identities, and multiple intelligence, why do we look at this "misbehavior " as " a opportunity" instead. That is one of my goals: Take the actions of our students and turn them into opportunities because all of our students learn differently and are different people.

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"If the student needed to take the class to a different emotional place or a different topic of conversation, the teacher...needed to celebrate it." (pg 54 in For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Ya'll too). This is the type of collaboration that needs to be seen in the classroom; and not only seen by recognized and celebrated. Collaboration isn't just among the students-it is among students and teachers, and teachers and teachers as well. Teachers need to hand over the reigns sometimes and collaborate with their students about their learning and give them agency.

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Collaboration is where you guide the student without controlling the student, thus making it an invaluable tool. Our students live in their own realities because we ALL have our own realities.  We must collaborate with the students lives outside of a test. Their whole being is worth learning about and using as a collaborative force.

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Children need a safe environment to speak out, speak up, and be themselves. How are we supposed to teach our students if they feel uncomfortable in our own classrooms? We have to make our students feel safe and valued to help create a place where learning is meaningful and relevant. In Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, value and esteem falls within the lines of creating a well-rounded student, and that starts with the environment we create for them.

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...to help children make connections in their life. 

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...to help children make connections in their life. 

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Many times children do not see themselves represented in the curriculum.' Every thing I have read or written that didn’t involve school was something I connected to personally. Why do we take that opportunity of connection and meaning from our students?  “...perhaps if the teacher provided literature I connected with, I would have finished a novel” ( Johnson & Winn pg 2 - Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom).

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Ultimately, teachers have the chance to change the way schooling is perceived and what society sees the purpose of schooling as. "The school-to-prison pipeline begins in deep social and economic inequalities, and has taken root in the historic shortcomings of schooling in this country." Because of this, we as teachers have the ability to adjust the ways our students are taught and change the way they see themselves as well. "The definition of what is a crime as opposed to a teachable moment has changed in extraordinary ways," and teachers have the chances in the classroom to use those teachable moments to the best way that they can because "a student’s trajectory to a criminalized life often begins with a curriculum that disrespects children’s lives and that does not center on things that matter." We, the teachers, need to change the trajectory of the path that the school systems have traditionally sent our students on.
(Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline, By: Rethinking Schools)

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“...culturally relevant teachers arise from a strong research base” (Johnson & Winn pg 6 - Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom). We have to be lifelong learners and obsessed with knowledge and absorbing as much as we can.

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If teachers take the time to let children speak with others, have some agency in their education, and advocate for things important to them, the outcome will be great.

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Social interactions are important to help facilitate learning because you will be interacting socially out in the real world. Classrooms should model this type of interaction and conversation.  Schools have the ability to take hold of our student’s education and make connections to self, life, curriculum, and environments. Give children current/relevant examples of their curriculum while also creating an inside view into the world around the.

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Learning is not based on the skills you were born with, that is how we get into this cycle of social reproduction. Kids should not be tracked from Kindergarten into adult employment based off the skills they eluded from a test taken somewhere in their early schooling. ""With schools as sorting machines..." (American Education by Joel Spring pg. 97) and "Today education is the fault line that separates those who will prosper from those who cannot." (American Education by Joel Spring pg. 98) are not things I want the learning of my students to be based on.

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...see themselves in the curriculum and use cultural capital to an advantage. 

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...see themselves in the curriculum and use cultural capital to an advantage. 

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Letting student see themselves in the curriculum is important. This starts with modeling it for our students. Successful models of culturally relevant teaching also look like using the child’s own cultural capital in their learning experiences. Always make an effort to link school to culture. Students are all different, so they learn differently as well. One student should not be benefited over another based on the color of their skin, where they live, or how they grew up. Culturally relevant teaching encompasses all of this and more because it is the conscious effort of creating a diverse educational experience for all students to, not only learn, but thrive in.

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...more than the options we are given to choose from. 

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...more than the options we are given to choose from. 

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This photo here, shows us what many people believe the purpose of schooling is. Seeing as school may sometimes fall into these categories, it is much, much more than just this. Kids have emotional needs, different learning needs, they need to be taught how to treat others, or a mixture of many different things. If we solely focus on what one branch or category of what the purpose of schooling is, then we will miss our on all the other amazing things we can teach our kids that will help strengthen all aspects of our society. If we focus too hard on one part or one goal of schooling, we will also miss all the amazing things about our students; all the skills they hold, the places they'll go, and the changes they can make.

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...bring my own and their own experiences into the classroom. 

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...bring my own and their own experiences into the classroom. 

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“Ultimately the most important thing we bring to teaching is who we are.” (Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J.O. Chpt 3 pg 22).

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I believe, wholeheartedly, that it is our job as teachers to help our students go places. I'm not saying them just leading them to the next grade, I'm talking about making an actual difference in our students lives. Children will rise to the expectations you set them to, so hold them high.

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"The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth."
-Dan Rather

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"It takes a village to raise a child."

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...make the material 'culturally congruent.'

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...make the material 'culturally congruent.'

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“Ultimately the most important thing we bring to teaching is who we are.” (Sparks & Edwards, Page 22). This being stated, we must first know ourselves, our biases and privileges, and the way experiences affect us before stepping into the classroom. “The better you know yourself, the better you can understand your own responses to the children and families you work with.” ( Sparks & Edwards, Page 21). The way many teacher, is the way many are learned and many of times teachers were not taught in their early years in a culturally relevant fashion.

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...the pressures of the outside world are not weighing them down.

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...the pressures of the outside world are not weighing them down.

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School is not the only place students learn. Children carry in all types of things from the outside world that may weigh on their minds in the classroom. We cannot dismiss these children and think that these things all get dropped at the door when they enter. We've got to embrace this because these things are part of their identity and culture. We shouldn't force our students to suppress these feelings, but do not force things out of them either. I witnessed this teaching practice where students can "check your problems at the door." This is where, if you have something weighing on your mind, very heavily, the teacher is ready to accept your worries for you so that you may have a clearer mind knowing someone is on your side and there to listen.

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"In districts across the country, the presence of police inside public schools has led to rising rates of arrests of students for minor violations of disciplinary codes or simple youthful hijinks that in another era would have landed a student in the principal’s office. The idea of the “teachable moment,” turning a student error into a learning opportunity, is less likely in a schoolhouse where handcuff-wielding cops teach the lesson." (Arrested Development, Rethinking Schools). The way we are making the minor "crimes" of schools mimic the crimes of the outside world take a massive toll on our students. By sending students to the office for things like uniforms or papers not being signed by parents, create an unhealthy environment where students are fearful of the punishments that will ensue for minor offences. Our job is to make the students environments safe and comforting, using teachable moments whenever we can. Our job is not to mimic the prison system with our students and these "Zero tolerance" type programs.

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All children have different strong suits and social levels. How are we, as teachers, supposed to give the students agency in their learning if we do not first all care about each other? Building a classroom includes building a classroom community. The stronger the community as a whole, the stronger the classroom and the classroom goals will be. The goal is to look at the classroom as a whole, not always as an individual. We can advocate for our students to actually KNOW eachother.

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I have always felt that by owning-up to something and trying to model things for students, leads to the best teaching moments. By setting an example for my students about my attempts to understand other cultures, being empowered in my community and classroom, trying to be consciously engaged in and out of the classroom, and working to always learn along with and from my students, I can pose a great model for all the kids who pass through my classroom. I learned how to do these types of things throughout this class.

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...reflect on myself as much as I reflect on them. 

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...reflect on myself as much as I reflect on them. 

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I would plan to reflect on my teaching practices, word phrasing, generalizations, and flexibility in language and methods to better myself as a teacher. I think by modeling all of these things for my students, correcting my mistakes, showing them it’s okay to make those mistakes, and working to empower myself and students can really make me a better teacher, learner, and citizen. When you’re modeling these effective life choices for your students, they will catch on. And while those students catch on to your modeling, you, as a teacher, are creating good habits that will follow you.

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If you cannot talk with you peer teachers, you are doing it wrong. Co-teaching is something I love and something that has so many benefits!

"The realities of today's classrooms include a focus on inclusion, evidenced-based instruction, accountability, diversity, differentiation, and continuous assessment. To meet these challenges, many teachers are collaborating for all or part of their day. When a student teacher joins the classroom of two co-teachers, we are adding yet another collaborator into the classroom mix."
http://faculty.virginia.edu/coteachUVA/whycoteach.html

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In this video Christopher Emdin talks about how to teach what the kids relate to. Think about the way Church is relevant to students, not in the way that it is religious, but how it is a lesson as well. Think about how collaborative that aspect is. Ironically, he also wrote the book we are reading in class as well.

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Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic | TED Talk

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What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don’t teach to educators. A longtime teacher himself, now a science advocate and cofounder of Science…