Teachers are often White women whose own educational and life experiences are considerably different from the students in urban schools, and teacher education may not include developing skills that prepare them for racial and cultural diversity (Wiggins, Follo, & Eberly, 2007).

Cited from Yull, Blitz, Thompson & Murray, 2014, pg. 13

I read this particular quote, as I have read many others of a similar nature, and I just feel so crushed. I am a White woman whose personal and educational background, in many ways, should “disqualify” me from being able to educate brown children. I didn’t grow up in an urban community and my parents admittedly sheltered me from any diversity they could. “On paper”, so to speak, I have no reason to possess any skills that empower me to teach children from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds. However, somewhere along the way, Continue reading I hate that I’m white →

“Our students’ behavior will begin to reflect these positive assumptions. What shifts is the how-the manner in which we communicate”.

We recite little empty sentences to ourselves and repeat them to our kids everyday: “you can do anything you want to do”, “you can be who you want to be”, “search your goal and seize it”, “you can change the world”, “all it takes is perseverance (grit)”. These are like the no-words: important, difficult, thing, some, …. little fillers we like to fabricate to stop voids from expanding and lies to unfold. The movement from the ethereal of these words and expressions toward the hands on dough mixing deal, now that’s tough. The strategies in this reading do exactly that. They fill the void with yummy Nutella, meaning actual meaning, actual doing, actual actions. These practical guidelines as well as the focal learner project, are exactly what teachers need to see and live in their process of learning and becoming school community builders. This is me looking at their humanity and therefore mine in the face, accepting that we have a purpose that shares the same space and we should therefore care for each other every second until dismissal and beyond. That’s the life skill that should be modeled, concluded and practiced daily.

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!