All posts by Clarissa Karantzis

Students Taking Control to Make A Change

Blurring the In-School Ouf-of-School Line

“An implication for teaching is that understanding individual students’ life histories and goals through tools such as lunchtime focus groups, unit evaluations, and teacher action research are important aspects of cultivating classroom agency” (Basu, 2007, p. 275)

I really liked this piece in talking about student agency and how it develops in and through the classroom. What I found interesting is the interplay between the agency that develops in the students themselves tied with the role of the teacher. Basu (2007) defines agency as “a young person’s desire for or action toward changes that can range from the personal to the global and contain an element of identifying and transforming historically oppressive and marginalizing power structures” (p. 254). Continue reading Students Taking Control to Make A Change →

Teaching to Diversity

Differentiation as an Approach to Teaching Diverse Learners

Because of the diversity present in the middle or secondary classroom, teachers must address the individual characteristics and needs of students in order to enhance the chances of their learning success” (Smith, Gardin, & Murdick, 2012, p.166)

This chapter addressed so much relevant information, but I think this quote does a good job of grasping the main take-away. Our classrooms are a melting pot of unique individuals who come from a multitude of cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, have various likes and dislikes, interests, each have their own characteristics, are at different stages of development, and of course, learn in different ways. Continue reading Teaching to Diversity →

Seeing, Hearing, and Watching Math–A World of Learning through YouTube

Media and Technology Critiques

My first experience with YouTube happened when I was 11 years old in my math classroom. We were learning about the area and circumference of a circle, and in order to help us remember the formulas, my teacher put on “The Circle Song,” a 3-minute-long YouTube video where someone sings a catchy song that explains the formulas for area and circumference, while images of circular objects flash across the screen. Since that day, I have consistently used YouTube as an educational outlet, and as it has grown tremendously in popularity within the last decade, it is a media platform that is used ever increasingly for educational purposes. YouTube consists of two roles—the viewer and creator, but for this piece, I will focus on the role of the viewer. Continue reading Seeing, Hearing, and Watching Math–A World of Learning through YouTube →

A Most Impressionable Age

Socioemotional and Psychological Development in Adolescence

“(1) Adolescents actively create their own identities through their social interactions, (2) the nature of the social interactions they can have are influenced by the worlds they inhabit, (3) these worlds are shaped in part by external structures in which they are allowed to participate and in part by their own choices, and (4) these identities have implications for all aspects of their intellectual and social – emotional development” (Eccles & Roeser, 2011, p. 236)

This article had so many interesting and important points in it, that I feel like I had to find a quote that captured the gist of the entire piece. Reading this article made me realize how confusing, difficult, but important adolescence is. This is the time when kids are the most impressionable, vulnerable, and malleable. Continue reading A Most Impressionable Age →