D169 Task 1 - Equity Pedagogy PDF

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Equity Pedagogy...

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D169: Essential Practices for Supporting Diverse Learners – Task 1: Equity Pedagogy Reflect on how each of the following aspects contribute to your personal culture and influence your effectiveness as an educator in a classroom with a culturally diverse group of students: A1. My family started teaching me about the importance of education at a young age. Mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa all expected my younger brother and I to perform at our highest level in school. My dad only has a high school diploma, and my mom has some college education. They’ve always pushed my brother and I to surpass their education levels so we would be fortunate enough to have better opportunities in life. Living in a very small town in the south, my family always knew who my teachers were personally, and my teachers knew the type of family I come from meaning they were very adamant on my success. I had access to various resources to lean on if needed, even while I was in college. Overall, my family put my needs and wants first education wise to I could achieve all my goals and aspirations. I learned the importance of education in your everyday life and how you honestly never stop learning. These are the kind of lessons I hope to teach in my own classroom one day. I know every student will not be as fortunate as I was when it comes to family involvement, but I want to be able to step in and be more than just a teacher for the students, hopefully a mentor as well. A2. Social groups to me personally include sports teams, colleagues at work, and friend groups. I participated in several sports teams from elementary school through high school, basketball and track & field were my main ones. I knew everyone on those teams because it was the same students I’d been in class with since kindergarten. I honestly didn’t experience much cultural diversity until I went to college away from my small town and was able to interact with different individuals. I observed different styles of communications and backgrounds, yet we all were united by the same goal, to graduate college. As a result, my personal values relating to teamwork, collaboration, and inclusion have further developed. I used the new things I learned from individuals in school to help me be successful in the workplace. These values will be beneficial to me as an educator working with students of all different cultural backgrounds, because I will now be able to accommodate students depending on their environment and communication style. A3. My upbringing was in a very small town in rural South Carolina. I didn’t experience much diversity at all between kindergarten and 12th grade. My schools were predominantly white with a small percentage of black students, and even smaller percentage of other ethnicities. When I started attend CCU I met people from all over the country with different backgrounds, languages, religious beliefs, and values. I think working on group projects during my freshman year were a little difficult for me, having to learn how to adapt to individual learning styles. I didn’t pay much attention to it in high school since it seemed like everyone was being taught the same way, but some topics that came easy to me were a struggle for others. Some students had language barriers, others had different communication styles, and incorporating it all with technology was a task in itself. In my experience, it was best to find everyone’s strengths, then use them to help the group complete the project successfully. This experience in particular will influence my

effectiveness as a future educator in a positive way, because I will be able to recognize the strengths of my students and use those to help them succeed in areas they lack in. Use one of the attached case studies (“Elementary Case Study” and “Middle/High School Case Study”) Discuss each of the following based on the chosen case study: Middle/High School Case Study B1. Hannah is an EL that has a Specific Learning Disability, as well as a Speech Impairment. These characteristics affect her learning, because she battles with reading in English and answering complex comprehension questions. She is able to read simple sentences but needs to replace words that she can not recognize with ones she knows. B2. One family and environmental factor that impacts Hannah life and affects her learning, is her native language mostly being spoken at home. Hannah’s father is the most fluent English speaker in her immediate family. However, he works out of state regularly so she’s not exposed to English as often as she should be, in order to become a better learner. She will not be able to improve her speech and reading skills without homelife practice. One specific example of how Hannah’s homelife can negatively impact her learning is, her continued struggles with answering complex comprehension questions, and recognizing words within a text. If she had better exposure of English language at home with her family, it would benefit her in a way of reliving pressure when trying to speak at school with her peers. B3. In this case study Hannah struggles with writing and reading in English overall. She is receiving outside support through her paraeducator and can announce verbally when she needs extra help. As Hannah’s teacher, I would use equity pedagogy in the classroom to help her learning outcomes in a positive way, by having the students do a small group project on a culturally relevant story. They would work together using the common words that Hannah is likely to have read correctly throughout the year in class. The groups would include students of different skill levels and diverse backgrounds, so they would be encouraged to share their culture in a creative and open way. The students would be helping each other and Hannah directly by peer modeling during the writing process....