What I love about Twitter is that I am constantly exposed to questions, advice, and reflections from educators around the globe. It’s both a fishbowl and a mirror.

The tweet that you see to the right came across my Twitter feed a few days ago and it resonated with me in light of the book I’ve been reading Cultural Diversity and education: Foundations, Curriculum, and Teaching by James Banks (2016). 

One of Banks’ (2016) five dimensions of multicultural education focuses on an empowering school culture and social structure which is defined as “grouping and labeling practices, sports participation, disproportionality in achievement, and the interaction of the staff and students across ethnic and racial lines” (p. 4). And then it dawned on me…what is the non-verbal story of my school?

When students walk through our gates, what do they see besides an immaculate campus? Do they see evidence of the cultural diversity that exists on our campus? Are there images or media that reflect the multicultural makeup of our local community? What about the MPR? The library/media center? The individual classrooms?

And then I thought…what do our parents see when they walk through the doors of our front office? Our school was newly modernized so parents will see a clean layout in the front office. Our front office staff is super friendly (and represent a variety of ethnicities and races to boot)…but is there anything else that represents the diverse and multicultural makeup of ALL our stakeholders? Are there any connections to local businesses and the community?

I’m not proposing that we hang up posters that represent the various nationalities, ethnicities, and races of our faculty, staff, and students and leave it at that. Because that’s just cosmetic (Nieto, 2008). What my school needs to consider is what is the non-verbal story our school is telling students? What is the non-verbal story our school is telling parents? What is the non-verbal story our school is telling the community?

To foster an empowering school culture and school structure, we need to put our heads together to figure out how our current school structure and physical environment can reflect our multicultural and diverse student body. Because right now, the non-verbal story of our school is pretty benign. I mean, the campus is certainly pretty, but the story is pretty benign.

Looks like we have our work cut out for us.

References

Banks, J. A. (2016). Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum, and teaching (6th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Nieto, S. (2008). Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in education. In E. Lee, D. Menkart, & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Beyond heroes and holidays (pp. 18-29). Washington, DC: Teaching for Change.

I work at an urban school. The students who walk through my doors come from a variety of cultures, ethnicities, races, and geographic regions. I have students who are immigrants and those who were born here to immigrant parents. Most of my students qualify for free and reduced lunch. My school is surrounded by a concrete jungle, jam-packeted between single-family homes, apartments, and strip malls. We are located in an area that used to see quite a bit of violence due to gang warfare (which has luckily died down in the past 10 years #knockonwood). With all that, I have to say that I was unaware of the concept called pedagogy of poverty…but apparently, this is something I have be unconsciously supporting with my teaching practices.

That bites.

What’s the pedagogy of poverty, you ask?

Here’s the cliff notes version:

1. Teaching is what teachers do (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)
2. Learning is what students do (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)
3. Compliance is an expectation for students
4. Ranking or tracking is unavoidable due to the wide disparity in academic achievement
5. Basic skills are a prerequisite for learning and living (Haberman, 2010, p. 83)

The pedagogy of poverty rests on the idea that compliance is what students know how to do. It’s easy. All students have to do is follow the directions of the teacher. And let’s be honest, it’s also easy for teachers because it means we are in control. But that does not mean that students are learning and it certainly does nothing to empower them in their learning process.

How do we break this cycle?

While, I cannot claim any type of expertise on this matter, I do have an idea of what we can do to empower our students in their learning process. As educators we need to equip our students with the knowledge that they (students) are in the driver’s seat (Haberman, 2010). The extent of their learning and the personal growth they achieve is entirely up to them. But it’s not enough to just tell them that (in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, right?). They have to be reminded of it. Like, a thousand times.

So here’s my plan. Since student blogging is something I plan to add to my curriculum next year, I think I’ll have my students blog on ways that they can develop a mindset for empowerment (see image at the beginning of this post) or maybe it’s more a reflective piece about how they were empowered. Whatever the case, the pedagogy of poverty cycle needs to be–must be–broken and it begins with a mindset change. Both for me and for my students.

Challenge accepted.

Reference

Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 92, 81-87. doi:10.1177/003172171009200223

 

I had to take a multicultural course as part of the credential program at California State University, Long Beach (#gobeach). In that class, we read the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. It was an interesting read and as a bibliophile, I naturally kept the book as I figured at some point, I’d go back and reread it.

I find it funny how the universe seems to circle back.

When looking at lesson ideas for my student blogs on the Facing History site, I came across a lesson that I think would be the perfect first day of school activity and one that would serve as the starting point for their blogging project. The lesson is called What Shapes Your Identity? This lesson has students reading an excerpt from Cisneros’ book called “My Name” which chronicles the story and feelings about what one’s name truly means. I found the excerpt from the book online and a couple of writing prompts from two different teachers. While I don’t know that I would have students answer all of the prompts, I think that giving them a few of these would be a good segue to getting them to think about their cultural identity. I was also thinking that this might be a great way to connect school and home because several of the questions require students to ask their parents about the origin of their name (Borba, 2009; Lam, 2013).

A springboard assignment is a Bio-Poem which has students creating a structured poem about their identity (also from the Facing History website). I’m always looking for fun things to do on the first day of school and I think this lesson ties together my goals of developing a culturally responsive learning environment and incorporating student blogging. The bio-poem is something that students can include on their About Me page and if they are so inclined, they can do their first blog post on one of the writing prompts or they could simply do a reflection about this activity.

Though I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do on the first day of school in August, I do know that I’ll be keeping this as one of the front-runners. Meanwhile, enjoy my bio-poem:

References

Borba, M. (2009). Caring closes the language-learning gap. Phi Delta Kappan, 90, 681–685. doi:10.1177/003172170909000915

Lam, W. S. E. (2013). What immigrant students can teach us about new media literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 94, 62–65. doi:10.1177/003172171209400416