Week 6: Cantu Ch. 8 and Loewen 6

This week we were discussing various lesson plan formats and how imperative it is to design one's lessons so that students start out with the basics and gradually make it to critical thinking and making connections to their lives. This is the best way for our students to learn and gain the necessary knowledge and skills they need in order to move on with their educations. In my Novice Teaching experience this week, I attended school-wide teacher's meeting and one of the core issues that they were discussing was how to improve student achievement and how to get the students to the appropriate benchmarks in order for them to be prepared for their ACTs and, ultimately, college. Pekin High School has this program in which the fourth hour teachers discuss with their students their grades across the board so at least they are aware of their current grades and can potentially raise them higher. They also have a huge problem with their students not completing their homework so they have designed a detention system so that the students are required to make up missed homework during their detentions in order to receive partial credit for the work they get done. If students do not attend their homework detentions they have to serve a disciplinary detention and then beyond that they are referred to the deans. My teacher has already referred four students to the dean in the four or so weeks that school has been in session for the year. Also in the meeting was a presentation on a online tool to track student progress that enables teachers to view their students' grades on their benchmark tests and determine where they are struggling and which ones are prepared for the ACT.

The one thing that I did not hear during the meeting was how teachers can improve student progress and achievement within the classroom. Understandably, the school could have discussed this issue at another point in time but in my opinion, it all starts in the classroom. My teacher and I did discuss how once these students reach their senior year, there is not much teachers can do to fix all of the problems of their educations up to that point. By that point, the students are pretty much stuck in their ways. Pekin administrators and teachers are trying to focus on freshman students so that by the time they become seniors, certain problems will not be as prevalent (hopefully). To return to my original point, I feel as though there is more that teachers can do in their own individual classrooms to raise student achievement such as better lesson plans! A solid lesson plan that includes a stair step type approach that engages students in the learning and approaches topics from different angles has the power to make a huge difference in these students' educations. I am not saying that every student can be an A student because one teacher steps up his/her game but if every single one of a student's teachers step up then something positive will result from that.

There are so many teachers that get stuck in their ways and forget their training. There is a teacher in the same department as my CT who lectures all hour and gives students worksheets. That is unacceptable! Even my teacher, who I love dearly and who is an amazing teacher, has a consistent routine that does not (in my opinion) effectively reach all learning styles and intelligences. This is one of the hardest things about teaching ... not getting stuck in a rut and repeating the same old thing year after year. I know teachers are busy and I know its so much easier to keep a lesson plan from the year before, but we need to find some way that teachers can devote more time to create solid lesson plans that get students interested in learning again. Most of the students that walk into the government classroom could care less about the subject and their grades show that apathy. It is our job as teachers to get them excited about walking into the classroom and learning about our subjects. My question then becomes: How can districts create more planning time for teachers and how can teachers be held accountable for their actions in the classroom on a daily basis?

Week 5: Cantu chapter 5; Loewen Chapter 5

In my novice teaching class this week I was surprised at the controversial topics that my teacher was allowed to introduce in her classroom. I grew up in an extremely conservative community which had a tight grip on the curriculum of its schools and therefore omitted many of the controversial issues in American society today. It was not until I reached college that I was exposed to the more uncomfortable topics and asked to take a stand on them. In a way I feel sort of jipped as a result of this censored curriculum and I think that this is a part of Loewen's argument in chapter five about "invisible racism". Luckily, I have a cooperating teacher who does not allow any form of intolerance in her classroom in any shape or form and she feels the need to introduce and discuss those more uncomfortable topics that many teachers try to avoid. In her classroom, the intolerance does not come from racial differences, since every student in the class is white, but more from socioeconomic status or gender differences.

Loewen seems to be making the point that racism is a sort of taboo topic that is neither directly nor indirectly taught in schools today. The kinds of stories discussed in classroom are the more rosy stories about peaceful resistance or African Americans fighting courageously in the American Civil War. The stories that are omitted from the curriculum are the tales of murder, torture, and abuse of African Americans by their fellow communities. That's the real story, so why don't history books include them? Going back to previous weeks the answer could be as simple as history textbooks try to avoid controversy. They want to present a history in which everyone shakes hands at the end.

I think discrimination, unfortunately, has to be included in every social studies curriculum. Think of how many examples and discussion questions that can be taken from history to teach about this issue. My CT showed a video in her class about an experiment in which a third grade teacher, Mrs. Elliot, conducted in the 1970s to teach her students about discrimination. The first day she convinced her students that blue-eyed people were smarter, better, and more deserving of an elevated status in society than brown-eyed people. The second day she switched and had the brown-eyed people on the top of the social hierarchy. The students who were a part of her class and who are now adults today consider Mrs. Elliot's lesson as one of the most important life lessons they have ever received in a classroom. I think that sometimes it is necessary to deal with the uncomfortable or the controversial in order to get a point across. We are not doing our students any favors by telling them fairy tales! If we teach discrimination now...hopefully one day it will be extinguished for good.

The only issue with controversial and uncomfortable discussions in the classroom is getting the school district to agree that it is necessary and vital to their child's education and life long learning. It seems almost necessary that the federal government should mandate that every school district deal with certain controversial issues in some shape or form, especially discrimination so that every child will become aware of it. So I guess the question is...Should the federal government require every school district to talk to their students about discrimination?

Week 4: Cantu Ch 4 & Lowen Ch 4

I find it interesting that James Loewen in his book goes to great lengths to expose the American public to the crimes and atrocities committed by Europeans and their descendants throughout history. He claims that education these day is completely one sided focusing on the white contributions to society and ignoring those of the minority groups entirely. Loewen suggests that history textbooks should be rewritten in order to include the contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, and so on and so forth. The problem with this argument, in my mind, is that the focus of history will once again be viewed from the perspective of one ethnic group. When talking about Native Americans, Loewen wants history teachers to talk to their students about how Europeans invaded this land and massacred all the Indians. Once again there is a bad guy and a victimized good guy. I think as history teachers we should present our lessons as Switzerland. There are no good guys or bad guys (or good or bad women)! There is only imperfect people prone to making mistakes. History should not be about good verses evil or right verses wrong, it should be about differing people interacting with one another.

This discussion of ethnic groups got me to thinking about the privileges I have experienced being born as a white person. The idea that my values and beliefs are consistently represented in the institutions that govern my country and the curriculum that is exposed to the country's children, makes it difficult to put myself in the shoes of a Native American who has not received those privileges. For example the caricature of the Cleveland Indian would not have crossed my mind as offensive unless I had not been exposed to it in the classroom. There are just some things that one does not think about until someone else points it out.  With this knowledge I think it is important to constantly be in check of those values and beliefs while in the classroom. I think without even realizing it, I could start teaching with a Euro centric standpoint and will continue doing so until someone alerts me to the inconsistencies in my curriculum. My question then remains...how can a teacher avoid this trap in the classroom? What could a teacher do in order to include every group, whether that be women or men, whites or blacks, Christians or Jews, into their classroom curriculum everyday? 

Week 3 (Cantu Chapter 2; Loewen Chapter 2)

This week's discussions and readings got me thinking about my role as an educator and what should be included in my curriculum. After reading Loewen's perspective, I started to agree with him that as historical educators, it is our jobs to teach our students the truth... but at what cost will this "truth" have on our students as citizens of the United States? I remember entering into college and having to basically re-learn everything that I had been taught "wrong" in high school and being legitimately disappointed to hear that some of my heroes growing up weren't the people I thought they were. All the individuals that I idolized growing up were slowly being revealed as racists, sexists, lazy swine. It made me question the rest of the subjects I was taught and what those teachers "lied" about too. Therefore, I think there is a line in historical teaching in which teachers do not necessarily have to "lie" about the past, but they do not have to go through all the nitty gritty details about an event either. The men and women who are so-called heroes in history textbooks were not perfect human beings. I think its safe to say that is a universal notion. Yet these individuals are in history textbooks because they accomplished some miraculous feats in their lifetimes. Their stories should be told without also including that they were alcoholics or bigots. Social Studies teachers really only need to include those details if they are important to the event being studied such as Columbus and his so-called "discovery" of America. It is necessary in this instance for students to know that the Native Americans were in America first and that millions died when the Europeans came across the Atlantic. So I suppose it is up to the teacher's discretion as to what nitty gritty details are necessary to include in the curriculum. Is this a fair solution? Are our students being cheated out of something by presenting history this way? In my opinion, sometimes less is more.