Teaching ELA: Reflecting on Culture

What is the role of culture?

• Culture is everything you believe or do to identify with people who are like you and what also distinguishes you from people who differ from you.
• Aspects, such as race, citizenship, dialect/ language, dress, customs/ traditions, habits, beliefs, class, education, and other experiences make up our view of self and perceived culture.

What are the effects of culture?

• Culture can help people feel safe or give a sense of belonging when included in a group. It can keep people working together.
• It’s generally easier to start from an inner perspective or cultural origins when interacting with others, but reflection questions can help expand our view to include others’ values.
• It takes dedication, education, and desire to learn to look beyond self-interest and lead by holding each other accountable for group values.
• We have the need to assess perspectives and beliefs so as not to silence other voices around. This is especially true in our position as educator in society.

What is the importance of culturally responsive teaching?

To benefit from language diversity by using one’s first language as a resource

To access. value an connect with our students background knowledge

To build off our collective strengths as a class by listening to our diversity of perspectives and experiences

To learn from one another so that we are more aware and mindful to respect others’ values

To break down the barriers between “us” and “them “to create a “we” consciousness of collective learning

To have norms and expectations present in the classroom (give the illusion of student brainstorm – ownership) to create an positive climate or open space where students feel comfortable enough to be themselves and share their thinking with each other

To have empathy and flexibility to change and adapt to needs of group

To have inspirational motivation to see what the community can accomplish together

To have intellectual stimulation

To be aware of linguicism  - ideologies and structures that are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of power

To understand how language is learned, to be sensitive to the acquisition process

Excerpt from MA Reflection Essay

            I entered the MA in Secondary English Education program at the University of Colorado Denver in the Fall of 2009 through the Initial Professional Teacher Education (IPTE) program.  Before moving to Denver for graduate school, I received a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Florida and wrote conversational English curriculum for collegiate summer camps while living abroad. My interest around current issues in education grew while working at a small classical charter school in Colorado Springs. As a result of these experiences, IPTE’s focus on urban education and community partnerships interested me. Most of my best memories from the program have less to do with sitting in on-campus classes and more with teaching/ field experience at my site school, Denver Center for International Studies (DCIS). However, that internship would not have been impossible if it hadn’t been for the university’s collaboration with local schools. It was that partnership with authentic school environments that most motivated me in the program.
              Because I wanted to teach as soon as possible, I decided upon the 12-month track of the IPTE program, which translated into a hectic schedule of five classes in the Fall with an additional four in the Spring, on top of the internships in both of those semesters. The beginning half of the program consisted of many influential foundational classes, the first being Exploring Diversity in Content Pedagogy. This course’s emphasis on Understanding Backwards Design (UBD) provided a referential framework from which I plugged instructional strategies and content learned concurrently in other classes. Even in Denver Public Schools ELA training this summer, professional development coaches reference UBD and require teachers to use its form.
            In my first semester internship with DCIS, I implemented lessons created as a result of coursework in Secondary Adolescent Literacy with Dr. Susanne Arnold. I learned how to analyze books for readability, along with how to implement pre-reading, write-to-learn and reading comprehension strategies. Unsure of what to expect from a class addressing literacy needs of all content area teachers, I was pleasantly surprised to learn strategies applicable across various types of texts. It helped me to break down misperceived barriers between who teaches language and who teaches content and to show that all teachers instruct students in both areas.  As an English language arts teacher, I can support the exposure of other content areas in the texts I select for students to read and process. That lesson became particularly applicable at DCIS where social sciences have a large emphasis.
             In tandem, I also wrote some of my best papers in Negotiating the Classroom Culture with Adolescents. I found the textbooks and class activities easy to understand regarding student management theory and now reference educational philosophers whenever I can find someone else with an appreciation for Gardner, Driekurs, and Gordon. They’ve become my go-to guys for thinking about the classroom environment. DCIS allows teachers a lot of freedom in setting up classroom structures and expectations and it’s been good to think about different ways of implementing more democratic educational moments in my teaching, whether that’s providing student choice in creating and evaluating curriculum.
            I found Theory and Methods of Teaching Secondary English with Professor Rich Argys beneficial to my basis for writing content specific curriculum. He provided students with knowledge about professional affiliation resources, and I joined and attended the Colorado Language Arts Society (CLAS) conference to ‘steal from’ and connect with other local teachers’ expertise. The Body of Evidence Unit Plan posed a satisfactory challenge in scale and scope, reiterating strategies from Dr. Arnold and the ‘how-to’ method of UBD.
             All my Internships and Site Seminar credits took place at DCIS under the guidance of Leslie Prock as site professor, and Marjorie Larner as site instructor. Both of these ladies encouraged me with unfailing confidence in my abilities to teach well. I was first placed in a 7^th and 8^th grade language arts classroom with Dr. Karen Fernandez. I can remember how nervous I felt the first day about how to interact with 12 and 13 year old students, and yet Karen let me try whatever idea I wanted. For a mentor, I couldn’t have asked for someone more open, flexible, or supportive of my ideas. I also had the chance to observe and work with 11^th grade British Literature students and Dr. Susan Marion before deciding to I enjoyed middle school students more than I originally predicted.
            Moving into the second semester of my 12-month IPTE experience, I prepared for my full-time internship with 7^th and 8^th grade students at DCIS. Exploring Diversity in Content and Pedagogy II met every so often to discus our final clinical experience. I also continued learning instructional strategies for language arts through taking Adolescent Literature with Professor Argys. It built on my previous content theory class by adding more experiential study of YAL books, 24 titles of our choice along with instruction on how to implement student lists, book talks and literature circles in the classroom. Since then, already in my first year of teaching I’ve used those structures to create a culture of reading importance.
            At the end of May I ecstatically accepted the opportunity to continue at my internship site school, DCIS, through employment as a UCD Contract Teacher for 8^th Grade English language arts. I continued my coursework during the summer with Denver Writing Project and immediately implemented lessons of poetry, model/ genre texts, and various engaging writing prompts when school started the following year. Because nine hours of course-work was compensated under the UCD Contract Teacher position, I took a class during the fall and spring semesters of my first year of teaching. Critical Issues in American Education was offered online and fit with my busy schedule, while Research for Teachers required some more time management as I conducted research in my classroom around student engagement and evaluated the data. Similar to Integrating Media in eLearning Environments, I found the research and tech skills especially practical to the 21^st century classroom in improving and defending one’s teaching practice, something teachers will have to do more and more in the coming years. Choosing Language & Literacy Across Curriculum with Dr. Nancy Shanklin as my last class was also a wise decision because it brought back to mind Dr. Arnold’s class which had such a profound impact on me at the start of the program. My overall take-away from these two literacy classes is as an accountable teacher desiring growth, it’s important to know the research and rationale behind the strategies one uses with students.
             In reflecting on my MA studies experience, I feel that the mix of courses that I took offered both a locally specific view and larger national contextual view of education, as well as pragmatic approaches to teaching. However, there were moments when I felt the teaching of ‘best practices’ was not modeled but rather lectured on in length when college students also have diverse needs as learners. Still, as a result of my time spent in the program at UCD I’ve gained knowledge and confidence in the areas of planning curricula, delivering effective instruction, creating an educational and social climate, providing for student advocacy, continuing in developing myself professionally, and being an agent for change in my immediate surrounding environment and beyond. I’ve set professional goals for myself outside of the master’s program and will continue to develop my understanding of political and social changes coming down the line in education. Already I’m participating in piloting the new evaluative LEAP framework for teachers and adopting the new common core standards into my classroom planning of literacy lessons. Because of all the impending changes in the field, I think the university’s IPTE program will be required to continually adapt and instruct new teachers about more of the politics and implications of their practice so as to really prepare them for the realities ahead.