All posts by Shirlyn Liu

Students in poverty

Urban Adolescents

It is interesting that for students in poverty, I always think about how to help them from a teacher’s perspective, but rarely think how can we bring the topic of poverty to school. I believe it is not only I’m in early childhood and young children may not easily get this concept–It’s also about culture. I think that in my culture, people in poverty are embarrassed with their financial condition and it is not a comfortable topic to be talked in public for them. I love the way how did teachers integrate this topic to their curriculum, I think it is an excellent social studies topic, yet it builds up students’ empathy on people in poverty. However, I do think that educators should be more thoughtful about this topic because I’m sure there are people from other cultures that not quite comfortable talking about their financial situations.

“Teaching students about this history helps them understand the discriminatory housing policies and practices that created conditions of poverty and segregation in public housing and elsewhere in their communities while also learning about those who fought to resist them.” (Goodman, p23)

Goodman, S. (2018). It’s not about grit: Trauma, inequity, and the power of transformative teaching. New York: Teachers College Press.

Instagram as a tool of social studies

Media and Technology Critiques

I found that there are fewer young people choosing to use Facebook these years. Probably it’s because their parents and grandparents started using this social media platform, and they are trying escaping from their family’s eyesight on the internet. Instagram, a platform that you don’t have to show your real name, is becoming more popular. It is very interesting to realize that a lot of adolescents are using more than one accounts on Instagram. They will use the different account to present different aspects of themselves; they also use it to see the new trends among young people and those trends influence them a lot.

As an educator, I think no matter which social media modality we want to introduce to our students, the first thing is to let them know that people always “Discourse” themselves in the way they want. I read Plato’s Allegory of the cave in my undergrad, and I found this story was particularly giving me a lot of thoughts on social media when I was an adolescent, and I believe it can also help today’s young adults to learn about social media. The allegory is that a group of people was sitting in a cave, facing the wall, and seeing nothing but shadows that cast by a fire behind them. That’s the way they learn about the world–they might think that was the real world, but it is just the world that being projected on the wall in front of them. As long as we see this world thru a lens (media), they are modified by a filter and are presented in a way that not necessary they original like. I will help my students to understand this and let them know that there is always a real world beyond this “projected world” on the internet, we should never be fooled by those filter, and we should have the courage to walk away from the wall and see what’s really happening in the world.

In terms of the merit of Instagram, I think this app can be a tool to find the same group of people. By typing a tag that you want to research, you can easily find the related pictures and videos. If a student is struggling with some issues and also want to know how do other people like them dealing with that issue, they can search topic like #ADHD to figure out how other people with ADHD deal with this, and maybe some professional accounts giving advice to issues related to ADHD.

I also believe Instagram can be a useful tool for community learning. By searching “near me” in their searching engine, young people can figure out what’s happening in their community. Or if they want to learn somewhere else in the world, they can search the name of that specific place and see what people are doing, what is happening in that place.

Students are always more capable than we thought

Differentiation as an Approach to Teaching Diverse Learners

As I read Brown’s article, I recalled my memory when we talked about Reggio pedagogy in an early childhood education classroom. I think curriculum integration is very similar to Reggio style class, that students are having their voices to decide what to learn from their teacher. We discussed whether or not it is possible to have students getting this kind of education all through their school life. At that point, we all thought it would be an idealistic picture. But after learning more about children and student teaching in a progressive school, I started to think about whether or not we as educators underestimate students’ capability. I found that the more responsibility to put on your students, the faster they are going to grow.

I also noticed that the author suggested that the NCLB policy is an obstacle of progressive education. However, I think sometimes policies, just like standardized tests and common core standards, are being stigmatized. I believe that if teachers have a lot of choices to make if they can be braver in the classroom.

…“In adult life you have to learn how to agree and disagree and how to make good choices if you want to survive, just as we do in here” (from Isabel, eighth grader)…(Brown, p12)

Is new generation youths still the protectees?

eLiteracy and Social Media(tion)

This article talked about media literacy and its impact on young people’s well-being. I found the most fascinating part of this article was that while traditionally we think adolescents as a vulnerable figure that need a lot of protection, the new media era is bringing adolescents more possibilities on the internet. They might be able to pick up media literacy better than their parents and know more than parents with the help from the media. Even though their “puberty” is longer than the previous generation (due to the fact that it is harder to be financially independent than their parents), they still actually can be independent, since they have more choices on media. I am also thinking that this opportunity is turning their figure from protectees to a more mature, and independent figure. I also see a lot of young people are getting financially independent by taking advantages of the internet. That is a nice piece I realize after reading this article.

It is also very interesting to know that children do not learn more because of technologies. Probably because the nature of our brain decide that we only have a certain capacity to hold all the knowledge? I’d love to learn more about this issue in the future.

“All research does not show children learning more because of technologies.”(p.71)

How do we help students with parents that are not willing to grant autonomy?

Socioemotional and Psychological Development in Adolescence

I love the adolescent development in interpersonal context because there are so many interesting points! My major is early childhood education, which seems has little to do with the adolescent, but this article reminds me about how important is the parent-child relationships, as it is always consistent in a longitude matter.

I have this boy in my classroom who comes from an Asian American family. He is doing excellent in so many aspects but meanwhile, he is super hard on himself. He always hesitated to do his work, and keep asking what should he do during math, literacy and arts center. I am concerning that he might have this issue because of his family but has no idea how to support him and his family. I myself is a Chinese, and I’ve been seeing this issue going on among Chinese community all these years, but not willing to give up this traditional relationship with their children–they are tending to model a normative behavior to the children and always give very limited autonomy to them. On the other hands, this article also shows that some minority ethnical group young people tend to be more willing to support and help their family, which also means potentially, they are more willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of family harmony. Then they would have even less chance to have autonomy. I am wondering as teachers, how can we support this type of children and their family.

“Theory and research recently have shifted toward the idea that emotional autonomy results from a progressive negotiation between adolescent and parents over issues related to the granting and exercise of adolescent autonomy” (Collins and Steinberg, 2008, p563)