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dreamers and daca explained - cnnpolitics

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Learn about US immigration with these key questions about the DACA program and Dreamers.

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EQUITY = RESPECT

Equity in the classroom can be defined as giving students what they need. When teachers truly listen to students and respect in the classroom is mutual between teacher and student, a productive classroom can be formed. Teachers feel good about the lessons they teach and students are engaged in learning.

For example, one semester Janell felt that her students were uninterested in the science topics she planned to teach. She then asked them which science topics they would like to learn about. The moment that she asked them which topics they wanted to learn about their interest level skyrocketed! From there, Janell began to incorporate these topics into the standards-based lessons that she had planned. This sole action furthered student interest and allowed Janell, as a teacher, to grow and value students' input about the curriculum. Additionally, she introduced student reflection sheets on which students could respond to a day's activity and give feedback and suggestions.

Initially, Janell thought that she was giving her students what they needed in terms of curriculum, but not until she asked them what they wanted did their motivation to learn and her motivation to teach increase. In essence, in order to give students what they need, we, as teachers, must be willing to do the following:

Understand the needs of our students.

Value student feedback on assignments and classroom activities.

Support student ideas to help design or create lessons and assessments.

We have included a sample reflection sheet that you can use with your students. You can modify it based on the specific activity (lesson, field trip, assessment). For early elementary grades you can simply ask your students these questions in place of free-write in response to the questions on the reflection sheet. You can use students' responses to enhance future lessons, assess student learning and better your own teaching practice.

Student Reflection Template
This sample reflection sheet can be used to gather student feedback about any lesson. Teachers can modify it to be used with a variety of ages and settings.

Students are motivated to learn and teachers are motivated to teach when an equitable classroom is established through respect between teacher and student. When we listen to our students and create an environment that values their feedback, our students feel respected and encouraged to learn. Respect in the classroom promotes the creation of an equitable learning environment because in this space all voices matter.

ONLINE RESOURCES ABOUT RESPECT IN THE CLASSROOM

Teaching Effectiveness Program: Issues of Respect
This site answers questions about everything from how to build positive relationships with students to managing your classroom.

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility: Teachable Moment
This site lists numerous activities appropriate for elementary students.

This article was written by Janell N. Catlin and Felicia Moore Mensah For more information, see the Contributors page. Email Janell and Felicia at beyondpenguins@msteacher.org
Copyright March 2009 - The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0733024. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license.

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Creating an Equitable Classroom through Establishing Respect - Polar Plants - Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears

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Equity in the classroom can be defined as giving students what they need. When teachers truly listen to students and respect in the classroom is mutual between teacher and student, a productive classroom can be formed. Teachers feel good about the lessons they teach and students are engaged in learning.

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A just, equitable, and inclusive education requires an awareness of and willingness to interrupt and change policies and practices that have historically institutionalized the privileging of one group of students over others. The College of Education strives to prepare educators with the knowledge and competencies to reflect this disposition in their professional work through their ability to provide:

JUST EDUCATION: A commitment to meet the educational needs of all students in a fair, caring, respectful, non-discriminatory manner (NCATE, 2008). This includes recognizing and understanding the impact of one's own privileges, biases, perspectives and beliefs on the interactions one has with students.

EQUITABLE EDUCATION: A process that goes beyond providing equal opportunities, seeking to guarantee access to resources and to the challenges and supports necessary for all students to attain high-quality outcomes, not predicted by race, ethnicity, SES, gender, family structure, first language, religion, sexual orientation, (im)migration status, or disability.

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: A perspective that acknowledges, recognizes, and respects the knowledge and strengths all students bring from their communities (e.g., cultural, ethnic, disability, and linguistic) and makes community-based knowledge an integral component of curricular and pedagogical development. In this way, we as educators learn to value and draw upon students' backgrounds not only as a means to support them in developing tools to participate with success in the broader society but also as a mechanism to transform how we do our work.

Department Statement

The Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education is committed to just, equitable and inclusive education in all that we do, including coursework, community partnerships and research. Click HERE for more on our multiple subject credential and graduate programs.

Student Experiences
Combined Credential/Master's Student Gabriela Morales: Credential Student Enrique Rojas: Con Mucho Orgullo, a film featuring research of graduate students in EDEL 541: Culture and Education of Latino Students. Edited by Dr. Sharon Chappell and Graduate Student, Regina Saenz-Lara.
- Mignonette Malik, Graduate Student, Master's program, Curriculum and Instruction

Faculty Work in JEIE
Dr. Michelle Vanderveldt-Brye and Dr. Cynthia Gautrea, STEM Summer Project
Dr. Kim Case, Community-School Partnership with Placentia Yorba Linda School District

Dr. Andrea Guillaume, Multicultural Curriculum Theory and Identity Affinity Groups Dr. Andrea Guilllaume, Implementing the FAIR Education Act with a Keith Haring Mural
Dr. Andrea Guillaume, Inclusion and Mixed Media Journaling

- Pablo Jasis, Faculty and College of Education Co-Chair of JEIE Task Force

Page updated: April 14, 2015

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Just, Equitable, and Inclusive Education | Elementary and Bilingual Education

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A just, equitable, and inclusive education requires an awareness of and willingness to interrupt and change policies and practices that have historically institutionalized the privileging of one group of students over others.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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A multicultural society is best served by a culturally responsive curriculum. Schools that acknowledge the diversity of their student population understand the importance of promoting cultural awareness. Teachers who are interested in fostering a cultural awareness in their classroom should actively demonstrate to their students that they genuinely care about their cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs. To this end, there are several strategies that you can use to build trusting relationships with diverse students. To incorporate cultural awareness into your classroom curriculum, you should:

1. Express interest in the ethnic background of your students. Encourage your students to research and share information about their ethnic background as a means of fostering a trusting relationship with fellow classmates. Analyze and celebrate differences in traditions, beliefs, and social behaviors. It is of note that this task helps European-American students realize that their beliefs and traditions constitute a culture as well, which is a necessary breakthrough in the development of a truly culturally responsive classroom. Also, take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of student names and express interest in the etymology of interesting and diverse names.

2. Redirect your role in the classroom from instructor to facilitator. Another important requirement for creating a nurturing environment for students is reducing the power differential between the instructor and students. Students in an authoritarian classroom may sometimes display negative behaviors as a result of a perceived sense of social injustice; in the culturally diverse classroom, the teacher thus acts more like a facilitator than an instructor. Providing students with questionnaires about what they find to be interesting or important provides them with a measure of power over what they get to learn and provides them with greater intrinsic motivation and connectedness to the material. Allowing students to bring in their own reading material and present it to the class provides them with an opportunity to both interact with and share stories, thoughts, and ideas that are important to their cultural and social perspective.

3. Maintain a strict level of sensitivity to language concerns. In traditional classrooms, students who are not native English speakers often feel marginalized, lost, and pressured into discarding their original language in favor of English. In a culturally responsive classroom, diversity of language is celebrated and the level of instructional materials provided to non-native speakers are tailored to their level of English fluency. Accompanying materials should be provided in the student's primary language and the student should be encouraged to master English.

4. Maintain high expectations for student performance. Given that culturally responsive instruction is a student-centered philosophy, it should come as no surprise that expectations for achievement are determined and assigned individually for each student. Students don't receive lavish praise for simple tasks but do receive praise in proportion to their accomplishments. If a student is not completing her work, then one should engage the student positively and help guide the student toward explaining how to complete the initial steps that need to be done to complete a given assignment or task.

5. Incorporate methods for self-testing. Another potent method for helping students become active participants in learning is to reframe the concept of testing. While testing is usually associated with grades (and therefore stress) in traditional classrooms, in a culturally responsive classroom frequent non-graded tests can be used to provide progress checks and ensure that students don't fall behind on required material. Teaching students to self-test while learning new information will help them better remember and use what they've learned in class and will help them realize on their own when they need to study a topic in greater depth.

6. Maintain an "inclusive" curriculum that remains respectful of differences. A culturally responsive curriculum is both inclusive in that it ensures that all students are included within all aspects of the school and it acknowledges the unique differences students may possess. A culturally responsive curriculum also encourages teachers' understanding and recognition of each student's non-school cultural life and background, and provides a means for them to incorporate this information into the curriculum, thus promoting inclusion.

Schools have the responsibility to teach all students how to synthesize cultural differences into their knowledge base, in order to facilitate students' personal and professional success in a diverse world. A culturally responsive curriculum helps students from a minority ethnic/racial background develop a sense of identity as individuals, as well as proudly identify with their particular culture group. Teachers can play a big role in helping these students succeed through the establishment of culturally responsive classrooms.
If you would like to invite Dr. Lynch to speak or serve as a panelist at an upcoming event, please email him at lynch39083@aol.com.

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6 Ways Teachers Can Foster Cultural Awareness in the Classroom (Opinion)

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A multicultural society is best served by a culturally responsive curriculum. Schools that acknowledge the diversity of their student population understand the importance of promoting cultural awareness. Teachers who are interested in fostering a cultural awareness in their classroom should actively demonstrate to their students that they genuinely care about their cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs.

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A primary goal of culturally responsive education is to help all students become respectful of the multitudes of cultures and people that they'll interact with once they exit the educational setting. This can be a daunting task for the educator, given that the world at large is infinitely more complex and diverse than the microcosmic environment that the student inhabits. In typical educational and social settings there is a marked tendency for students to exhibit classic in-group/out-group behaviors.

In general, most students are comfortable interacting with people, behaviors, and ideas that they are familiar with but react with fear and apprehension when faced with the unfamiliar. Among its other goals, culturally responsive instruction aims to teach students that differences in viewpoint and culture are to be cherished and appreciated rather than judged and feared.

How might a culturally responsive educator push against human nature's natural aversion to the unknown and help students become more respectful of cultures with different ideas? The best way to combat this tendency is to provide students with ample evidence that people that don't look like them are, at the core, people just like them. Such a viewpoint can be taught by promoting a culture of learning from one another rather than a culture of passing judgment on differences in values and beliefs.

There are a wide range of classroom activities that can help students recognize the essential humanity and value of different types of people. For instance, providing students with an opportunity to share stories of their home life, such as family holiday practices, provides fellow students with a window into their peer's cultural traditions.

Showing students everyday photographs of people of different ethnicities, shapes, sizes, and garb gives students the opportunity to see people that look very different from themselves and their family engaging in the same types of activities that they and their family participate in; this activity can help humanize types of people that a student has never had an opportunity to interact with personally. Welcoming guest speakers into the class that hail from differing backgrounds and have all made a positive contribution to important fields can also help dispel any preconceived notions that students might possess about the relative competence and value of people from different cultures.

Teaching students about multicultural role models also serves as an effective method for demonstrating that people of all genders, ethnicities, and appearances can have a positive influence on the world and deserve to be respected and emulated. It's important to avoid teaching students about the same minority role models repeatedly; after all, if students never learn about prominent African American citizens other than Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X then it's likely that some students will assume that few other African Americans have made substantial contributions to American culture and politics. If students are taught about the contributions that people of various ethnicities, genders, and creeds have made to a variety of different artistic, scientific, and political fields then they're more likely to respect and value diverse cultural backgrounds as a whole.

In addition to tailoring classroom activities and lessons toward multicultural appreciation, it is critical that the educator provide students with a culturally responsive learning environment. Wall spaces can be used to display posters depicting cultural groups in a non-stereotypical fashion, students can mark the countries from which their ancestors immigrated from on a world map, and classroom signs can be hung in several languages. Such touches will help promote an environment in which students from diverse backgrounds feel more comfortable being themselves and will help insulate students from the cultural and ethnic stereotypes that pervade television and other mass media outlets.

Another important goal of culturally responsive education is to teach students to respect and appreciate their own culture and heritage. Minority students can sometimes feel pressured to dispose of their cultural norms, behaviors, and traditions in order to fit in with the prevalent social order. When this happens it can create a significant disconnect between the culture of the student's school and community lives and can interfere with emotional growth and social development, frequently resulting in poor performance in social and academic domains. Providing opportunities for students to investigate unique facets of their community is one effective way to help students gain a greater appreciation for their own culture. Having students interview family members about cultural practices and traditions or write about important learning experiences that the student has experienced in his home community are just two of the many ways that students can explore their heritage.

Using a culturally-centered instructional approach can help facilitate cultural pride among diverse students. Given the current federal and state preoccupation with standardized testing in core subjects, it is particularly crucial that educators multiculturalize core curricula such as math, science, reading, and writing. Providing diverse students with examples of diverse contributors to these fields and using culture-specific subject matter when teaching core topics will help them perform better in these highly scrutinized and important domains. Placing ethnically diverse students in a situation that emphasizes the strong points of their culture's preferred means of learning may help provide them with a greater sense of self-efficacy and achievement.

Consistent exposure to positive role models is another excellent way to emphasize respect and admiration for the diverse student's own culture. All too often, students are exposed to ethnic stereotypes on television and in movies. Providing diverse students with role models who demonstrate exceptional leadership qualities and make social contributions in a non-stereotypical way helps students recognize the limitless ways in which they can have a positive impact on society.

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Promoting Respect for Cultural Diversity in the Classroom

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A primary goal of culturally responsive education is to help all students become respectful of the multitudes of cultures and people that they'll interact with once they exit the educational setting. This can be a daunting task for the educator, given that the world at large is infinitely more complex and diverse than the microcosmic environment that the student inhabits.

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"I didn't know that [teachers] felt so uncomfortable talking about it until we started doing this," said Alexa Parvey, a junior at Chapel Hill High School and one of the Student Six facilitators. "It helped me understand that teachers aren't doing it because they don't want to include you, they just don't know," she said. Now that she and other student facilitators spend a lot of their free time training teachers about race sensitivity, she feels like it's her job to help educate her teachers even when they aren't asking for it. But she also understands that most of her teachers are well-intentioned but lost when it comes to talking about race.

"The teachers treat us like we're peers and we respect that."

"It's necessary to talk about race because most of the time race takes the backseat to everything," said Jotham White, another Chapel Hill junior and student facilitator. "Once they know that we need to talk about race, we can help students build a positive race identity." The students described how uncomfortable they feel when teachers ignore blatantly disrespectful comments from other students or when it's clear that their teachers don't trust them. Volunteering as Student Six facilitators has helped students understand where teachers are coming from and has strengthened relationships with many of them so they can check in beyond the seminar.

"All of this has helped me have a better communication with my teachers," said Jazmin Rosales, a junior at Chapel Hill. "I happen to be the only Hispanic girl and it has helped me to achieve more than I usually achieve." Since she started taking a leadership role and advocating for herself in discussions about race, Rosales has vastly improved her academic performance.

"The teachers treat us like we're peers and we respect that," said Simon Lee, a junior at Chapel Hill. "They ask us what we can do better and if they don't ask us we give a suggestion." Lee observed his old middle school teacher as he tried to implement the tips learned at the Student Six training. It was amazing to watch younger students respond more positively to the teacher and know that they were being set on a better path, Lee said.

All the students stressed that it can be tough to give teachers feedback. They try not to criticize and never approach teachers in the middle of class. Instead, they give suggestions after class, alerting teachers to how the structure of a project or an assignment disadvantages some students over others. It's a constant process, but the students feel good knowing that their teachers want to improve in an area that is so uncomfortable for them to discuss.

Half of these strategies apply to all students, not just those of color. Students want to feel that their teachers know who they are individually and care about them. While that would be the ideal for all students, it is a crucial foundation for building relationships strong enough to create safe discussions around difficult topics like race. The six strategies work together and are weakened individually when taken piecemeal.
STUDENT SIX TIPS
1. Be visible. Make sure every student feels welcome and part of the class. The simplest examples of this are greeting each student when he or she comes into class and knowing everyone's names. Small signs that teachers know and are interested in students go a long way to forming trust.

2. Create a safe space. The way a room is arranged and a teacher's physical proximity to students can make a difference when trying to reduce the vulnerability students feel. If teachers stay behind their desks, they inadvertently signal they want space between themselves and students. Teachers who walk around the room and check in on student progress, create a more equal and focused space. "I can get a kid to focus better just by placing myself near them," said Teresa Brunner, academic support specialist at Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Research shows that humans are more engaged when they are within eight feet of the person talking to them. That's why being asked to sit up front isn't just a punishment, it's a strategy.

3. Connect to students' lives. Give students a reason to care about what they're learning by connecting it to situations and concepts that are relevant to their lives. For example, in English class, teachers can assign current event articles on subjects students care about or that affect them. Math teachers can make strides just by making sure the problems deal with quantities and situations kids understand. Learning could be even more relevant to kids' lives, but starting with a basic connection is a good way for students to feel teachers cares about their lives.

4. Connect to students' culture. Make positive connections with student culture through class assignments. For example, one teacher in the Carrboro district created an ancestor project around the traditions of Day of the Dead. The class studied the Mexican holiday, but also talked about the ways various cultures connect with ancestors.

Conversely, cultural differences can make for classroom clashes if teachers aren't aware. One teacher sent a student to the principal's office for being disrespectful because he answered a rhetorical question. The student didn't understand why he was being disciplined because his culture doesn't have rhetorical questions; he'd been taught to answer teachers. "Often times what is a discipline problem is really a disconnect in culture between the teacher and the student, even if they look like each other," Brunner said. Sometimes it takes a little more time to sort those differences out.

"We may not be able to prevent everything, but we can control how we react to things," Brunner said. If a student isn't usually a troublemaker, take the extra time to find out why he's suddenly acting out of turn. "Talk to the kids, watch patterns, read so you better understand," Brunner said. The key thing is to open up dialogues and listen to what students say.

5. Address race and racial dynamics in the classroom. This is one of the most uncomfortable steps for many educators who either don't know what to do when a racially-charged incident occurs in class or don't want to see racist themselves by calling out a student's race. But by ignoring a fundamental part of student identity, teachers can inadvertently misstep and damage student trust. A common example is calling on students of color to represent their entire race in a discussion where few others minorities are represented.

"Don't have a false conversation," Brunner said, but do address race every time it comes up. One teacher overheard black students in her class calling one another the "n" word. Instead of sending them out of class or ignoring their comments, she held a seminar discussing the history of the word, how it connects to a history of slavery, which students happened to be studying in their history class. Race was brought front and center, connected to the curriculum and not allowed to pass unnoticed.

6. Connect to students' future selves. Teachers need to recognize that all their students have dreams about what their futures will look like. Too often, the implicit message in school is that white students have bright futures with many career paths to follow, but students of color aren't likely to go anywhere. "We recognize that kids have hopes and dreams and goals for themselves and we can help them to see how to get there," Brunner said. Students and their families have a lot to offer schools and that should be celebrated. Too often curriculum implies that only white Americans made important discoveries and positively impacted the outcome of the country. With a little more research and attention to race in the classroom, teachers can easily highlight the many people of color who have made scientific discoveries, are brilliant mathematicians or have added to our collective literary history.

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Facing Race Issues In the Classroom: How To Connect With Students

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"I didn't know that [teachers] felt so uncomfortable talking about it until we started doing this," said Alexa Parvey, a junior at Chapel Hill High School and one of the Student Six facilitators. "It helped me understand that teachers aren't doing it because they don't want to include you, they just don't know," she said.

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Races?.

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1. Play dress-up. Dressing up lets children literally step into someone else's shoes. Provide a variety of traditional costumes from all over the world.

2. " Accept linguistic/cultural hybridity (e.g. combined use of the native language and English for instruction, allowing code switching) as a viable and authentic way of being and communicating so that students may not learn to value one language/culture over another" (DaSilva Iddings & Katz, 2007, p. 313).

3. " Structure classroom activities so as to promote a multiplicity of perspectives (i.e., voices)" (DaSilva Iddings & Katz, 2007, p. 313)

4. " Provide opportunities for ELLs (and their families) to adopt identities of competence in the classroom" (DaSilva Iddings & Katz, 2007, p. 313). Ask students to teach their peers about their home language and culture. This lets the student learn to draw on his knowledge of Spanish (or other home language) to better understand English. Additionally, students are able to act as an expert within the classroom, which improved his self-esteem.

5. " Learn how to correctly pronounce all students' names" (Díaz-Rico & Weed, 2006)

6. Books should reflect a wide variety of languges and experiences, featuring themes and people of different races, religions, countries, ages, abilities and family structures. "Include books in the class library written in languages other than English" (Díaz-Rico & Weed, 2006). The selection of books in your classroom should be language and culturally diverse. Include bilingual books; make sure you have books in all of the languages that are spoken in your classroom. Have books in English about different etnicitys, cultures, family structures and abilities. Exposing children to different cultures will open up opportunities to discuss differences and highlight similarities. Bilingual books can be sent home or kept in the classroom to integrate students' home languages.

7. " Welcome class visitors who speak home languages and ask them to talk about being bilingual" (Díaz-Rico & Weed, 2006). Parents can read or tell stories in their own languages, and share music, food, games, hobbies, or traditions in the classroom. You can use the help of parents to translate stories or teach you how to say important words in their language, such as hello, goodbye, and thank you. This will enrich de education of the whole classroom will give children and families the certainty that their culture and language is valued in the classroom. Parents will feel useful as they are the experts in their language and culture, and it shifts roles as you will feel humbled when you are the one that doesn't understand the language. Sometimes it's difficult for parents to come to the classroom, so ask them to contribute with clothes for dressup, toys, pictures or objects from their culture that you can use in the classroom.

8." Create occasions for family and community lives to intersect with school experiences" (DaSilva Iddings & Katz, 2007, p. 313). Host guest speakers. The best way for children to understand new information and appreciate diversity is for them to see it with their own eyes.

9. Allow students to preview material in their home language. If a child will be learning about animals encourage for the child to talk about his favorite animals at home in their home language, That way students will be able to familiarize themselves with the content in their native language. Thus they can better understand the material and participate when they go over it in English in class.

10. " Be honest about and aware of your own cultural biases" (Díaz-Rico & Weed, 2006).

Hope this 10 Ways for Promoting Diversity in the Classroom help you and your child.

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10 Ways for Promoting Diversity in the Classroom - Growing Up Bilingual

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1. Play dress-up. Dressing up lets children literally step into someone else's shoes. Provide a variety of traditional costumes from all over the world. 2. " Accept linguistic/cultural hybridity (e.g.