Standard #12
Foster respect for individual’s abilities and disabilities and an understanding of and appreciation of variations of ethnicity, culture, language, gender, age, class, and sexual orientation.
In order to suffice standard #12, it is imperative that educators implement lessons that promote diversity amongst ethnicity, culture, language, age, class, and sexual orientations. Educators must be open-minded individuals in order to cater to the multiple needs, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and learning goals present in our classrooms. We must embrace, respect, and sympathize with our students, encouraging them to disclose personal matter in order to enhance daily lessons. During my first placement, I was in an English and Special Education collaborated class; therefore, I had to be aware of the "special" needs of these students. Many of them had extremely sensitive emotional problems, as well as different learning disabilities, such as Aspergers. I demonstrated patience, compassion, and respect to each, and every individual. However, all of the students at Locust Valley were Caucasian, or Hispanic, and their socio-economic statuses were not "below poverty".
In contrast, when entering my second placement at Westbury High School, it was an entirely different environment. The school was almost double the size in population, and it was a "high needs" district. An extremely high percentage of these students are not native-English speakers, are immigrants, and live either right around the poverty line. These are not "wealthy" students, to say the least, and many of them come from broken home, or do not even live with family members at all. In addition, I have four students who are actually parents themselves.
During my time as a student teacher, I have strived to implement lesson that promote such diversity, respect, and understanding for different cultures, languages, socio-economic statues, and races. All of my students are either Black, or Hispanic; therefore, I have attempted to incorporated lessons that spoke to them personally, and provided engagement. While studying literature in the classroom students should be probed to question the purposes, and meanings embedded within such texts. So, what defines a student's brilliance? It is not grades, wealth, power, skills, or thorough a student’s funds of knowledge are. In reality, educators should be providing ample opportunities for each and every student to succeed, in some area of their education. Of course, teacher's will not be able to "reach" every student they have, but what they can do it TRY. Guess what? All students are capable of brilliance, and it is a teacher’s prerogative to “coax,” the brilliance out of his, or her students, thus allowing them to recognize they have the necessary tool kits needed to succeed.
An an ELA educator, I have strived to create opportunities for my students to celebrate the joys in their lives, thus honoring and establishing writing assignments that call upon their experiences. This is where the Where I Am From poems came in. I already knew that a majority of my students had difficult home lives, and I wanted to bring "what defines them" into the classroom. I also wanted to become familiar with their interests, goals, thus what is important to them. This lesson plan allowed students to participate in transformative acts of writing, whereas teachers are inevitably helping students acknowledge that while writing they are not only enhancing their literacy skills, but creating a purpose, definition, and location for themselves in the world. Through writing, students are capable of finding themselves, both literally and physically.
Dialect (language in Huck Finn) lesson plan
Dialect lesson plan handout for The Huck Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Dialect lesson plan handout from Invisible Man
Handout for Exploring Language
Gallery Walk (real-estate prices) eliciting the acknowledgment of societal classes in LI
Senior Class Final Project
Student Sample of final project: Budget
Student Sample of final project: Journal Entry Essay part I
Student Sample of final project: Journal Entry Essay part II