Weblog 7

Rethinking Mathematics by, Eric Gutstein and Bob Peterson
This book is a resource for teachers on how to teacher social justice through math. This is a very informative book with many great ideas for lesson planning. It incorporates many aspects of social justice by analyzing statistics and numbers. Included in this resource are many different aspects of social justice and many different math topics. For example, there is a lesson about making a graph comparing which presidents owned slaves and how many. There are also many lessons that get the students involved in their own community. I plan to use this book to create a webpage that gives other math teacher insight on how to incorporate social justice into their classroom. It also has many great ideas on how to get students to realize how power numbers are with issues of social justice.

Gutstein, Eric, and Bob, Peterson, eds. Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers. Milwaukee, WI, 2006.

Weblog 6

I think that there is a lot that goes into student achievement. I believe that the most important aspect is that the content is cultural and developmentally responsive. Especially with middle level children who are very egocentric at this point in life. If the content is not relevant to their culture and their everyday lives, they are not going to have the motivation to achieve. It is also very important to make sure that I do everything in my power to make my students understand that they can achieve. I loved the story in the book about the one candidate who gave a student a book to take home so his friends did not make fun of him for doing well in school. This also ties into cultural competence, the idea that the only intelligent black person on TV is Urkel and no one wants to be Urkel. It is very important as a teacher to understand specific practices in other cultures. For example, the story Dr. Storz told us last year. A Hispanic student at his school had been sent to his office for getting in trouble in class. Dr. Storz did not understand why the student would not look him in the eye when he was being reprimanded, and he became very frustrated. The student then explained to Dr. Storz that this is part of their culture, to look them in the eye is considered disrespectful. This is a great example of how not having cultural competence can get in the way of my teaching in the classroom. Lastly, with sociopolitical consciousness, I believe it is very important to get the students actively involved with their community. It is a very good idea to get students involved in projects that help with social inequalities in their community.

ED 350 Blog 5

What are the three ideas involved with Pedagogy?

The first idea is content knowledge. This is what the teacher is assigned to teach. For example my content areas are math and science. The problem with content area subjects, is that most of our education is focused on our content areas and not teaching. There is a belief that we need to have rich knowledge in our content areas, but this takes away from our knowledge of teaching. The next idea from the reading is pedagogical knowledge. This refers to principles that are used in the classroom. For example how we use classroom management with our students. That last is pedagogical content knowledge which is the knowledge that is needed to teach a specific content area. I believe that this is the most important since it incorperates both ideas.

What is TFD?

TFD stands for an attempt to Teach for Diversity. This is a program that was built to help prospective teachers to learn how to teach in a diverse classroom. TFD is set up into different Cohorts of students. The program strives to build a community among the students in each of the cohorts. Each member of the TFD program had to research an important part of the program. Each cohort was also assigned to work in a specific school. This program is a great way to effectively train teachers to work in a diverse classroom.

ED 350 BLog 4

What was the process of deculturalization when the African Americans first came over as slaves? And how did this affect the slave’s assimilation to the European culture?

The first step the plantation owner took to take away their slaves identity was to change their names. This was very hard for the slaves since they could not speak English and their owners would repeat their name many times so that the slave understood that was their new name. The next thing that Spring talks about is their harsh living conditions. Since the African slaves were from all different cultures none of them spoke the same language and they could not communicate with each other nor their masters. They also did not receive instruction on how to speak English. This forced the slaves to loose their native language and create one that they could speak to with each other and one that their master would understand. This lead to the creation of a new African culture, their left their old culture behind and produced a new culture practices. These practices did not model after the Europeans. On tradition that come from this was slave songs. These songs were a way for the slaves to “cope with their state of powerlessness”. These steps that were taken to deculturize the African slaves did not end here, this was just the start.

ED 350 Blog #3

Zinn’s ideology of the story of the Native Americans is very different than the one presented in “We Have a Story to Tell”. Zinn’s view of this story is very violent and he seems to sympathize with the Native Americans. This also goes along with his sentiment in the first chapter of his book. He seems to have a lot of harsh feeling towards Columbus and his feelings are more brutal and almost angry. It almost seems like Zinn is trying to get a reaction of shock from his readers. While in the reading of “We have a Story” it is more informative and the ideology is not so harsh. The authors tell it like it was, but they do not want you to have pity for them. They concentrate more on the struggle they had for power. I believe this sentiment is less harsh because it is something that is going to be taught to high school students. Not that they need a “watered down version” but when teaching one must keep in mind the views and opinions parents might have. I think this is the hardest thing about teaching “true history” from every view point. Many times parents do not think that it is appropriate. When trying to teach material like this, I think the first step that needs to be taken, is teaching to the parents first. This way they understand the material being taught and see how important it is to see the situation from another’s viewpoint.

ED 350 Blog 2

I believe that the Native Americans need to be civilized in order to be active member of. America. I feel we need to concentrate on the Five Civilized Tribes to civilize the Indians. I strongly believe the best way to do this is to create tribal like schools that are controlled by the whites (page 22). This would hopefully “civilize” the Native Americans in a timely manner. Unlike others, I do think that the Indians will be able to adapt to our culture through schooling if we go about it right. This is a great “experiment” that I am about to take part in. The experiment will prove if we can or cannot civilize the Indians with education (pg 23). I hope that the results will be positive for the sake of my beliefs. If we are going to try this experiment we need to do it now because there is a sense of peace between the tribes (pg 23). So, we need to act fast.

Until next time,
Thomas McKenney

ED 350 Blog 1

I think many times as teachers we forget that we do have the chance to make an impact on our student’s lives if we really apply ourselves. In this article the author mentioned that us, as teachers need to have a sense of mission. Well, my mission is to care for my students and to make sure that they know they can confide in me. I believe that when you care for your students everything else naturally falls into place. All the other aspect in this article can be achieved when you truly care for your students. For example the idea of “a passion for social justice”, as motioned by Sonia Nieto. When you care for your students you will also care about their rights and their safety.