All posts by Xueying Lu

Tradition milestone or stereotypical restriction

Urban Adolescents

“Marriage and parenthood- once seen as prerequisites for adulthood- are not viewed more as lifestyle choices, according to a new report released by Princeton University and the Brooklyn Institution. ” Cohen, P. (2010, June 11). The long road to adulthood is growing even longer. The New York Times.

It seems like there is a social or stereotypical milestone that once you have finished certain activities, you are automatically tagged with a new label. The stereotypes in our society have been trying to order, or restrict, people’s life status. For example, just like Cohen has mentioned in her article that it was supposed, people should finish education, start a family, have stable jobs before they reach to their 30s. However, as more and more women want to establish their own career, or chase personal life goals, they have decided to postpone the idea of marrying someone as well as having babies. Plus, the whole society is becoming more tolerant to a longer preparation time to enter adulthood. I personally quite agree with this trend because according to Lerner (2009), the term Adolescence only has a short history of 20 years. The social definition of this term is still developing, and maybe someday we would come up with “post-adolescent period” to describe the gap years between adolescence and adulthood.

I think it’s really difficult to give a precise definition of either “adult” or “adolescent” because our world is progressing, and our perspectives are changing accordingly. The stereotypical definition should not be the restriction for our lives.

MVP #2

Observing to Learn and Learning to Observe, Urban Adolescents

I would like to share my own experience of observation and my concerns towards it.

Last semester, when taking the class of Inquires Into Teaching, I was required to attend at least 3 courses in PS 42 and complete observation logs to keep track of the class. Our professor asked us to record only the general procedure and major student activities in the class. Even though my observation is not as “professional” as Knoester and Malley &Hawkins have suggested in their articles, I still learned something helpful to my future teaching. I agree with Knoester’s opinion about observation notes, that they can be very helpful to polish your teaching strategies.

However, the drawbacks, or “limitations” (according to Knoester), are also obvious. Observing would take out too much time from teachers, which should have been used for class preparation or homework checking. On the other hand, it would be very difficult for facilitators to avoid mixing in subjective interpretations while observing students’ behaviors. Teachers’ bias come from various ways, like stereotype, ethnicity, cultural manner etc, which will lead to misunderstanding between teachers and students. For example, last class Prof. Doucet mentioned the stereotype of Asian kids like being quite in class, whereas, the kids might have other issues so they don’t feel like to talk that much in school. Therefore, it requires teachers to obtain sharp perception to cognize students’ thoughts under their behaviors. If teachers fail to do so, the practice of doing descriptive review would become meaningless.

Personally, I think taking field notes is very helpful, especially to student teachers, who haven’t acquired much teaching experience. By looking at real class setting, and collect students’ reflection and response in class, they would be better prepared for the start of their future teaching career. As for experienced teachers, taking field note can help better know your students, and find out good approaches to reach to students effectively.

MVP # 1

Culturally, Linguistically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Adolescents in Urban Contexts: Framing the Conversation, Urban Adolescents

I enjoyed reading the article “Poor, Black, learning disabled, and graduating” (Remedial and Special Education, 145-160, 2008) from Murray and Naranjo, and I think their finding on protective factor in terms of teachers that correlates to the drop-out rate of students with learning disabilities is quite helpful to future teachers like me. Besides some common characteristics of teachers, such as caring and consistent involvement, students under investigation concluded two additional qualities that they expect. Firstly, they expected teachers with ability of breaking knowledge into pieces which helps students’ understanding and digesting the details. This expectation requires teachers to not only fully understand the academic materials but also be able to flexibly reunite the content according to students’ proficiency level. I used to teach in a private TOEFL study school, which customized study plan for students with different needs as a stunt, just like the students under Murray and Naranjo’s article had expected. From my experience, “breaking things down” teachers are absolutely helpful for students more than any other methods. But, the problem is that it requires time and experience to polish this ability from teachers, and most public schools do not offer enough payment or resources to encourage them to do so. That’s why it makes disabled kids more difficult to catch up with class. Another characteristic expected by kids from Murray and Naranjo’s research, which surprised me, is “powerful presence”. I used to think kids would prefer an easygoing teacher who treats them as friends, but it turned out, kids themselves have realized the impacts of being to close with teachers. It seems that kids need a strict and demanding teachers to push them forward with their study and be responsible and critic as well.