All posts by Hui Jin

MVP#13 Put more efforts on our students, understand them personally!

Creating Classroom Community

Students’ self-esteem and resilience increase when they feel at home in a safe space with close, caring, and supportive relationship with fellow students and with teachers who have “got their back” (Goodman, 2018, pg. 132).

            Throughout the entire course of understanding and learning about the adolescents, teachers have to consider many different aspects about students to engage their learning in this inclusive classroom. We don’t exactly know what is(are) the thing(s) happen to our students when they enter the classroom with various emotional expressions, or attitudes. Sometimes, we also might neglect them how they feeling about the day since we are so busy to focus on planning curriculum and instruction. In other words, we are not building a constant relationship with our students, just because our job is to teach them academically; such as an excuse. In order to make students engage in our classroom, I believe we need to touch with them initiative. Consider about different characteristics of our students, student won’t speak to us if they are introverted, conservative, or inactive. Hence, for those type of students, we probably want to try different strategies which make them open their hearts willing to share their concerns with us. For instance, as Martens mentioned, students might feel engaged and supportive when we add something that relevant to students such as, hobby, favorite food, anything upon students’ interests. Making the connection with my teaching area, I would like to create math problems with the interests of my specific students who need more cares and attention. Personally, the big advantage of this lesson plan strategy is to build positive interdependence with the whole class, including ourselves. This way students feel everyone in this room willing to understand his/her personality, which comfortable to speak out loud either to his/her classmates or to us. Therefore, such an opportunity will increase the conversations with our students into more personally regard to their lives from outside of school. In addition, we probably want to visit our students’ community (even resident place) to recognize how well they living. Is the community that our students living to foster their learning? Is that safe? Any issues that influence how students perform in our classroom? I believe these questions might be answered when we push ourselves to get closer and understand our student individually. So as an educator, I agree this is another expectation for us to understand our students comprehensively. Or just even give them a warm simile when they come into our class!

MVP#12 One more expectation to us

Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond

…And the system must be ready to invite teachers into the leadership for systemic change, to empower them to chart the course for adopting MHL practices, and, most importantly, to make teacher well-being a priority in the process. Initially, however, teachers need to see themselves as having a critical role in mental health efforts (Weston and Ott, 2018, pg.114).

             As reading this article, I strongly agree that practicing the Mental Health Literacy in the school setting is significant to serve our students’ individual needs. Depending on the characteristics of a student, students willing to share his/her circumstance to their teachers if they are outgoing and open mind. Definitely, it does matter that have a good relationship with their teachers in order to bring out their internal issues. However, if teachers don’t have a trust relationship with their students, especially students who are conservative or does not willing to share their problems outside of school, teachers never understand why his/her student perform poorly in their classes. Goodman (2018) listed the possible traumas of students might suffer from the relationships with their siblings, extended family members, broke family bond, loss of family members, and drug addiction of parents (pg. 109). In order to access personal issues of the student, how would teachers to support or what strategies that teachers should approach? According to my personal perspectives, first of all, if I were the teacher of these students, I would change classroom atmosphere allows students to use the languages that they prefer. In other words, I expecting students treat me as their best buddy, not like a formal type of teacher (I mean the ideology of students always treat teachers in respect manner). I think this is a big step to walk closer to students because they would feel comfortable to communicate with teachers, as well as to share the common themes that students and teachers both had such as video games, sports, social networking platforms, foods, fashions, anything related to non-academic contents. If we, as educators could able to do that, I believe most students would share their daily lives with us because we are the buddies of them. Since we choose to treat our students as their best friend, we would eager and care about each student’s life outside of school voluntary if they do have certain problems. We would go visit student’s community that they spent the most of the time, even visit his/her house if there’s something wrong with the living condition, parental relationship, or anything that Goodman (2018) mentioned. Additionally, except caring students’ academic progress on the contents that we teach, I also believe we should have a free-period that spent times together with our students to make our relationship to be closest and tightest, as their siblings. Therefore, we would be more aware and serious about the traumas that students who experienced. Once they grow up as a young adult, they would able to understand the positive of the beauty of human nature, as well as to understand how to care the other.

Reference:

Goodman (2018). It’s Not About Grit—Trauma, Inequality, and the Power of Transformative Teaching, (pg.108-128)

MVP#11 Let’s make a positive learning environment for LGBTQ students :)

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality

…the prevalence of anti-LGBT language and victimization, such as experiences of harassment and assault in school…school policies and practices that may contribute to negative experiences for LGBTQ students and make them feel as if they are not valued by their school communities (GLSEN, 2016, pg.1)

As educators, we need to make sure our students are learning from each other through how they communicate and treat their classmates as a partner. Although we set up the tone of how students treat each other in a respectful manner, in fact, we don’t usually recognize how students treat their peers once they stepped out the class or the school. Based on our recognition, bullying, prejudicing, harassing, even fighting usually happened around to our students. What can teachers(we) do?

In order to avoid these negatives consequences, we can influence the climate of our classes and make sure our classrooms are the places where our students feel welcome and comfortable as their homes. Particularly, students who are part of LGBTQ community have more personal experiences regarding those negative consequences in school. In order to support these students, first of all, teachers have to understand these students (I mean to respects/accepts students’ identities). We probably want to ask the questions that are personal such as: How do you feel being part of LGBTQ in the school environment?; How do you think your peers think about you as LGBTQ student?; What is your expectation in your classroom, including the teacher?; What is(are) your struggles that impact your learning, etc. According to GLSEN (2016), the survey indicated LGBTQ students feel not belonging in the school community because the isolations of teachers and peers regard their sexual orientations and identities. This is one of the reasons why students drop out the school community. Another main reason is about safety. According to GLSEN (2016), the survey showed LGBTQ students treated through verbal and physical in negative perspectives (pg. 3). For instances, verbal harassments (i.e so gay), physical assaults (i.e. punched, kicked) and the negatives of social diffusions (i.e. comments on Instagram, Facebook). Therefore, teachers and school staffs should provide an environment where LGBTQ students feel safe. Teachers might plan curricula that related to the theme of LGBTQ to make understanding to the whole class. According to GLSEN (2016), the survey summarized the involvement of the inclusive curricula/programs (i.e. Gay-Straight Alliances) increase LGBTQ students’ participation because the curricula relevant to their personalities. Moreover, for students who are not belonging to LGBTQ community, they could able to learn the history of this minority group of people, as well as to understand the feeling of how their LGBTQ peers feel in the school community. Don’t you think such inclusive curricula are meaningful?

MVP#10 Be respect 100%

Gender Socialization & Identities

Social relationships cultivated from feelings of safety, support, and belonging have been shown to directly impact academic performance in all students, yet safety, support, and belonging are aspects of the educational experience that are consistently inadequate for gender expansive students (Kurt, 2017, pg.8).

As previous reading that I touched through this course, I realized students’ underachievement related to various factors from each students’ background (i.e. house condition, parental issue, family economic status, etc.) As teacher’s position, some strategies and improvements discussed to motivate these students in an inclusive school setting, and I acknowledge it’s inevitable. However, another obstacle raised after I read Kurt (2017)’s piece about transgender students. What if transgender (or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer) students in our class? What about “Double Jeopardy” students? How would we respond and engage their learning?
Students who belong to the category of LGBTQ are hard to dissolve in the majority group of people (such as heterosexual students) because the society still exists the prejudice of their identities even the same-sex marriage legalized by Supreme Court. Goodman (2018) mentioned such students being bullied and beaten up by their classmates, which result in the endangered situations like joining gang groups, isolating from the school community, or even worse, dropping out school (pg. 83). Likewise, Kurt (2017) narrated about school experience of a transgender student Lila, as being treated different either from not girls or boys (pg. 9). As the reflection of teacher’s perspective, I am thinking the school community should support these students initiative. Especially, the separation of the restrooms, school should avoid such regulations because just being transgender that doesn’t mean these students should use their own restrooms as being segregated. The only way to preserve these students in school community is to understand their perspectives of being transgender (or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer) and make them feel safe and comfortable to being part of the community. In order to have that, I strongly believe there should a curriculum about the recognition of LGBTQ group, so every student have chance to learn about the history of this group and able to understand the struggles and difficulties if students were them (we need to encourage students to understand being transgender or else are NORMAL). Personal recommendations such as extra-curriculums or afterschool programs might help to bridge these students into school community because apparently, it shows every single person care about their circumstances. Not just students, teachers also need to show the same respect as their students. Therefore, all students will learn in a comfortable environment without any biases, which increase students’ academic achievement positively.

Reference:

Goodman (2018). It’s Not About Grit—Trauma, Inequality, and the Power of Transformative Teaching, (pg.81-107)
Kurt (2017). Creating School Climates—Gender Nonconforming Students, (pg, 1-20)

MVP#9 How would we (teachers) build a trust relationship with students, as well as their parents?

Newcomers & Perpetual Foreigners

A related line of research has shown that when the race-and class-informed expectations, practices, and values of school align closely with those of home, parents are more likely to feel comfortable at school and with school people, and therefore to be more visibly involved in school life (Fabienne, 2011, pg. 2708).

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