This semester,
we had the opportunity to go to Rhode Island College’s 17th Annual
Promising Practices Conference: Culturally Responsive Curricula in STEM. The
conference was held on November 1, 2014. After finding out I had to spend my
Saturday at RIC, I was definitely annoyed, but after attending the conference,
my view had changed. I decided I would sign up for Making It Personal and
Comedy in the Classroom. The description of each of these workshops seemed as
if they would really help in making me a better educator. So, even though I
hated that we had to wake up early on a Saturday, I was excited about learning
something new about education and bettering myself.
The first
workshop I attended was Making It Personal. This workshop was presented by
Buddy Comet whom is the Dean of Pedagogy in Central Falls, and Karen Oliveira
who is from the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College. The main idea of
this workshop was personalized learning. Buddy used an example of his
experiences working with self-contained high school students. He wanted to
achieve a balance between individual autonomy and collaborative work, so his
solution to that is station learning. In station learning, there are 5 or so
stations set up that each focus on the same topic, the one we used during the
workshop was slope. So, the students would go to each station in groups and
would work there for some time and achieve an answer both individually and
collaboratively. However, in order to achieve this, there are some things that
need to be in place. The first thing is well written directions. The students
who will be using this method of learning have a range of disabilities, so it
is important to use clear and concise directions. As Delpit says, “If you are
not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the
rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier” (Delpit, p.25). Students,
especially those with disabilities, need these codes in order to participate
actively and successfully. The second thing that is needed for this foundation
of teaching is that the students must have prior knowledge on the subject. The
station learning method is used to strengthen their knowledge, not to teach a
whole new subject. So, it is crucial that students are familiar with the subject,
or they will be completely lost as they try and complete the activities at each
station. The third aspect that must be implemented in order for this to work is
to mix children. This means that in each group there must be some low
performing students and some high performing students. This type of inclusion
will help both the low performing students and the high performing students in
various ways. In “Schooling Children With Down Syndrome” by Christopher
Kliewer, he says that “school citizenship rejects the idea of a gap between
normality and down syndrome, in the movement toward classroom membership, diversity
is viewed as normal, people are considered of equal worth, relationships are
of mutual benefit, and belonging is a central societal theme” (Kliewer, p. XX).
The last major aspect of this is to create a safe space in the classroom. When
it comes to children with disabilities, the classroom needs to be a safe place
they can go to and feel 100% comfortable to learn and socialize. I couldn’t
help but to think about Gerri August’s piece “Safe Spaces.” Though she mainly
focuses on creating a safe environment for LGBT students, her main point can be
applied to any classroom. Classrooms need to be a place where students can go
and learn, and be successful while feeling like they belong and are welcomed.
All of these things will make for a very successful method of inclusive
learning. After Buddy closed his remarks on station learning, we were then
introduced to Karen Oliveira and the work she does with the school of social
work. College students who are involved in the school of social work have the
opportunity to work with students who are suffering social/emotional problems
usually due to trauma. While working with the kids they get to develop IEP goals
and really just get to know the child and develop a personal relationship with
them, all while teaching them. I really enjoyed hearing about this program
because it seems like something that is really working for these troubled
children. It was interesting to hear the various benefits of it such as an
increase in school attendance, study habits and behavior habits.
The next workshop I made my way to
was Comedy in the Classroom. I was so excited to take part in this workshop.
It's focus was using comedy as a behavioral management technique. The description said that it would touch upon bullying, truancy, and multiplication. While waiting
outside of the location for the workshop, I noticed that there were kids in the
room – I was a little confused, but excited to see what was going to happen.
Finally, the doors opened and we were able to go in and find out what we were
going to be doing. The first thing I noticed was that the room was packed. There
were a lot of adults and a lot of kids, I didn’t know where to look or what to
think. We were then introduced to Corinne McKamey and Elizabeth Anne Keiser as
well as Tall University kids who pretty
much ran the workshop. Tall University, The innovative Transition through Arts Literacy Learning (TALL) project is designed to accelerate acquisition of English language skills for Central Falls English Language Learners and addresses students' English language proficiency through a variety of special events and activities. The district-wide TALL University project bridges the gap between limited language skills and learning by using teaching tools that integrate course content with the performing arts.The kids were hilarious, confident, and great at public
speaking. As the workshop progressed, I grew more and more confused. We started
by doing an icebreaker that took up the majority of the time and wasn’t too
useful for me personally as an educator. The next half of the workshop was just
as confusing and kind of wasteful. We were grouped with some of the students
from Tall University and had to come up with a skit about math. Some were about
dancing, some singing, and mine were sort of set up like a game show. For my skit, there were
students who had to ask another set of students a question about math, and the
students who were responding, had to answer in their own creative language. We
then had to translate what they were saying. This again, confused me. The kids
just kind of made loud noises and then we were left with trying to come up with cohesive answers to the questions. It just didn’t really make sense to me, and
I was confused on how it would make me a better teacher. As the workshop
closed, one of the speakers started to actually talk about education and
teaching. With two minutes left of the workshop, she did say something that
stuck with me, and that was, “It only takes one bad teacher to make school horrible.” I definitely thought that this was true, and I wish she started off
with this discussion and then used the activities as a way to ensure that we,
as future educators, wouldn’t be that one bad teacher. Overall, I just thought
it was really unorganized and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, there was also no talking about how to manage bullying in the classroom. I was very disappointed in that because that is a huge thing in schools today, so it would have been interesting to see how to handle this in a light and comfortable way. This video shows what TALL University is all about according to Elizabeth Keiser and what the activities and exercises actually do to prevent bullying in the classroom.
After we have completed our
workshops, we all had to head back to Donovan and listen to the keynote speaker
– Chris Emdin. Dr.Emdin is an associate professor in the department of STEM at
Columbia University. He was a great speaker and I felt like he was really
relatable because of the way he spoke to us. It wasn’t too formal or stuffy
which I really enjoyed. One of his major points that stuck out to me most was
when he spoke about keeping students intrigued. Teachers need to find something
that interests the students and incorporate it in the classroom so they stay
engaged. I absolutely agree with this. It doesn’t take much for students to
disengage and feel unconnected, so this is definitely something I will use as a
future educator. Overall, I did learn a lot from my day at the Promising Practices conference. Even though I believe the workshops were
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