4wright

I watched “The Freedom Writers” earlier today. That along with the class I am presently taking, Principal as a Diversity Leader, caused me to think about how little we as educators do to truly meet the individual needs of our students. If only we could all be as affective as the teacher in that movie when it comes to understanding where our students are coming from and helping them to know that we accept them for their differences, not in spite of them.

Diversity training I have typically experienced has not really addressed the true meaning of the word. Diversity is more than just ethnicity just as culture is more than ethnicity. What identities do our student come to us with? Aside from their ethnic group, their is their gender and their concept of what that means about who they are. Their is the culture of their home. They have the culture developed within their groups of friends and that from their previous school experiences. Even within their own ethnic group, their are a myriad of beliefs, not just the stereotypical. We can not expect all students within any one group to come to us with the exact same culture.

All of these factors blend to create their beliefs and behaviors.  It is up to us to learn how to understand each of our students and accept them among all of these vast differences and to help our students feel that acceptance. The question is, how do we accomplish this goal?

I moved to a new district this year. After working in the same school for 10 years, I was a little nervous. Things had become very difficult where I was though, and I needed a change. I’m glad I did. There are districts out there that let you actually “teach”. The past few years have been years of dictatorship type leadership full of curriculum that could be distributed by robots with no consideration for differences in teaching styles or diverse classroom needs. Being a teacher who is very creative and often comes up with AHA ideas in the midst of a lesson, this did not work for me. I felt constant frustration and spent a lot of time defending the fact that I could not follow a pre-written script of lessons.

This new district is just the opposite. Teachers are provided instructional freedom. Yes, we do have curriculum and time lines along with scope and sequence, but we have the freedom to make changes based on the needs of our students and to teach the information our own way. It has been wonderful. Foldables, art within math, projects…fun in the classroom. I’ve gone from “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” to “Teaching is fun.”

This is just a reminder that change can be just what a teacher needs to jump start her passion in the classroom. Don’t give up, make a change.

I am really interested in blogging with my students. Most of them don’t have computers at home. I would like to have time for them to blog in class. Maybe a center. I’m not sure. I’m still thinking about how to do that. I just think that posting blogs in response to literature or anything we are learning would be a great way to draw more students in. Those who don’t speak up in class, might love to blog. This would also give them a real audience. I’m very excited about the whole thing, but I just don’t know to get it all to work yet.

I’m new to blogging but excited to see how this all works. Technology is exciting and there is so much to learn everyday. I would love the time to really explore everything that I am introduced to each year. Being the tech coordinator, I really have an opportunity to learn a lot. I use as much as I can with my class and try to find ways to do more with limited computers and even more limited time. District and state requirements, although understandable, really control so much of the day. It is harder every year to get in computer time for the students . I have ideas, I just need help working it in. If anyone has any ideas out there, give me a clue.