Purple Penguins!

This week in our Education class we focused on all things diversity. This includes gender, sexual orientation, language, socio-economic status, and exceptionalities such as students with disabilities or gifted students. I was drawn to the concept of inclusive classrooms, meaning classrooms that cater to the needs of every student. At first all I thought about was rearranging the classroom, modifying assignments, etc. but inclusive classrooms are more than just that. My question is what contributes to an inclusive classroom??

I started my research with this article : 'Gender Inclusive' School District Says 'Drop Boys and Girls' and Call Kids 'Purple Penguins'.

This school in Lincoln, Nebraska was given information about creating gender inclusive classrooms to erase this particular facet of diversity in order to be able to cater to every student and to wash away educational 'norms' that pertain to the female and male genders. Some of these norms may say that girls are better in reading and writing than boys, or that boys are better at math and socializing. Teachers have been encouraged to separate students by preferences as opposed to genders. They were also encouraged tot give their classroom a name such as "Purple Penguins". By referring to the students in a general term it eliminated any barriers between genders and allows students to feel free from stereotypes on gender within the school.

However, inclusion goes far from just being 'gender inclusive'.....

What is wrong with this picture? It's certainly not the lack of creativity or the drab background. It's the cute-as-pie-wanna-pinch-his-cheeks boy in the right side of the picture craning his neck and smiling as if he's the sun incarnate. We have the entire class grouped together in a class photo with all warm smiles. However, Miles Belanger, the boy in the wheelchair, is being separated from his peers because they just HAD to sit on the bleachers. Tell me, why was it so hard to choose a different place for the photo to include Miles? I can already tell you he'd be my favorite.... look at that face. 

This article "Why Mixing Stuents With and Without Disabilities is a Good Idea" comes from the series I Am Education from takepart.com. It talks about Miles, and his disability which is spinal muscular atrophy. The article states, "The advantages of inclusion in the classroom by mixing in students with special needs, regardless of the severity of a student’s disability or socio-economic status, has been well documented, whereas special needs kids who remain in segregated classes fall further behind academically and socially." 

It has been proven that inclusive classrooms benefit students way more than being separated from the general classroom would. Students with disabilities are often taken out of classrooms to recieved specialized instruction. However, if the instruction was just geared for all students, then an inclusive classroom would be created and the teacher can implement a UDL, which is a Universal Design for Learning. 

This comic shows how easy paving a way for students with special needs helps to pave a way for all students to learn. An inlusive classroom is not just about genders or disabilities though. It is about making each and every student feel represented, welcome, safe and understood. 

Multicultural Classrooms

What do we do in a Multicultural Classroom?

In today's day in age, we are constantly being bombarded with diversity. Through our race, gender, sexuality, language, etc. In a world that is comprised with so many different cultures, how do we set up a classroom that caters to all of these different cultures? 

Multicultural Classrooms provide an atmosphere that each and every student feels represented in and respected in. As TeachHub puts it, "America has always been referred to as a melting pot, but ideally, it's a place where we strive to invite everyone to celebrate exactly who they are."   TeachHub provides a place where teachers can go to read articles on several different topics such as Multicultural Education. The article that is linked to TeachHub is about Multicultural Education and what you can do in your own classroom. Some of the suggestions TeachHub gives to start implementing Multicultural Education are:  

• Encourage community participation and social activism
• Go beyond the textbook
• Integrate a diverse reading list that demonstrates the universal human experience across cultures
• Creating multicultural projects that require students to choose a background outside of their own
• By supplementing your curriculum with current events and news stories outside the textbook, you can draw parallels between the distant experiences of the past and the world today.

The website also gives links to different books such as Becoming Multicultural Educators by Geneva Gay and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American Text Book Got Wrong by James Loewen. It also gives ideas for lesson plans that incorporate multicultural education. 

Another website geared towards building a Multicultural Classroom is edchange.org.

 "A teacher influences eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." -Henry Adams

Edchange.org focuses on multicultural education and creating a multicultural classroom. 

The Ten Commandments of Multicultural Educators 

There are several building blocks to create a multicultural classroom. One of them is for the student to be open to getting to know their students inside and outside their class. Notions of certain cultures need to be put away in order to fully take into account the student to find out what his or her needs are. Not every student learns the same way and it is important for teachers to start by getting to know his or her students to be able to modify his or her instruction and classroom to include every student. 

"Teachers in multicultural classrooms must be open to their students and put forth the effort needed to get to know their students inside and outside of class. If a teacher is hesitant about being open, the class will reciprocate and the students will become estranged from one another and the teacher." 

From our readings in class we have found that students feel estranged and alienated when they do not feel represented. Such is the case in instances of sexuality or language barriers. Teachers have to be open in order for their students to be open and comfortable. 

I believe in Multicultural Classrooms. We need to move from the system that has been geared towards white males in the beginning, to a system where every group and culture feels represented and accepted. Only then will we start to make headway in providing quality education for each and every student. 

Native American Day

It's Native American Day, you fools.

I can honestly say hearing the words Columbus Day irritate me to no end. Granted I appreciate it for the days off, I just don't like the idea of "celebrating an invasion". Take everything you learned in school about Columbus discovering America and toss it out of the window. We glorify Columbus discovering America when really he took over America. He was not the first person to set foot on this land. Native Americans were in America long before Europeans got here and turned America into what we know today. In an interview with Suzan Shown Harjo, she says "The Europeans stole our land and killed our people". I also like how she says "We were in the way of Western Civilization and we were in the way of westward expansion. We suffered the excesses of "civilization"such as murder, pillage, rape, destruction of land, the destruction and pollution of the air."

Transform Columbus Day is a website geared towards gaining the respect that Native Americans Deserve. The home page says, 

"We've all been lied to about Columbus. 

Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, he was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Columbus initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Columbus, brother and son continued slave trading of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Europe, and from Africa to the Caribbean. Under his administration as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands, 8 million people were killed, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples. The Columbus legacy is steeped in blood, violence and death. 

The Transform Columbus Day Alliance believes public holidays celebrating Columbus not only teach children to honor a cruel and brutal man, but they also encourage people to ignore and possibly support racist practices that are embedded in social, economic, political, and judicial systems.

The research below will guide you in critically evaluating the role of Christopher Columbus and his legacy of his oppression and cultural domination."

A lot of people have strong feelings regarding Columbus Day, or "Native American Day" Therefore, we need to tiptoe around the topic when teaching it. The article on Elementary School Issues gives a lot of great teaching ideas and resources on Columbus Day. On of the resources is a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie called "My Country, Tis of Thy People You're Dying". The song goes as follows: 

These sources are excellent because we do not want to teach our children lies growing up. As a teacher, I want my students to know the real affect of Columbus Day and what we are actually celebrating on a day off from school. We tend to shy away from the truth because it is too gory. Educators talk about pilgrims and indians with an innocent flare. However, we can teach them that Columbus wasn't a hero. We can still protect them from gruesome truths, but we don't need to paint Columbus as a hero who discovered America. By teaching our children about Native Americans and their culture, and then teaching the kids that Columbus drove them out of their home land is a much better way of teaching Columbus day than dressing up as pilgrims. We don't want our children growing up with lies, but that doesn't mean that we have to talk about the extents he went to in gruesome detail. As teachers it is our job to educate kids. With a topic such as Columbus day we just need to stay true to ourselves and we need to stay true to those who loss their lives at the expense of Columbus. However, we need to do it in a way where children can understand te effect Columbus had on the Natives without having to know gruesome details. 

I hope as an educator I stay true to myself and my beliefs. I don't want to have to teach a curriculum based off of lies. Educating is about helping students learn, and we do not want them growing up with misconceptions about this "holiday" that we celebrate. Columbus Day should be a tribute to the true Americans that perished because of our "western civilization". It should not be about celebrating a murderer. 

Me, Myself and My Inspiration

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