Math was something that I struggled in, in elementary school. Most of my teachers used other resources to teach math like, Khan Academy. In high school math definitely made a lot more sense to me and I improved drastically with my math skills. I think it was because the teachers actually were passionate about teaching math and cared to help the students in the spare time. I spent a lot of lunches in the math rooms to help build my skills. Looking back the teachers that helped me with my math were always kind and fun to be around, honestly me and my friends would hang out in their rooms without having any math problems. I always thought math was taught one way and everyone had to do it that way, it was not until later in my schooling that I figured out that math can be solved in so many different ways.
The main difference with Inuit math is the language differences. The development of the numeration system is influenced by the culture, language and environment. The difference between Eurocentric math and Inuit math is that we don’t focus on the culture, language and environment as much. Being able to solve equations and finding points on the graph seems to be the bigger aspect of Eurocentric math. The aspects of math is not a universal language, as many different country’s and cultures have developed different tools to solve math problems. Traditional Inuit teaching is based on observing an elder. This is different than what most of people are aware of where the teacher would teach from the front of the class and students would then listen and write, rather then observing. My upbringing and schooling played a role in how I view and read the world has it is around me. Growing up in the city there was a lot of diversity around me, but specifically at my school there was little diversity. Many of my teachers where white females and white males who had grown up also in the city. During my time at school we only really learnt about similar people to me, middle-class with a heterosexual family. Growing up I was definitely aware of other cultures and we did talk about them a little bit in my classes but only for short periods of time. As a community we worked together to create cultural fairs, that showcased the cultures in the surrounding community. One major aspect I see myself working against my biases is to first acknowledge that I have some and to be aware that other people may have the same ones and that is okay. With working towards a unbiased opinion this will take me to consider having an open mind to divers cultures and family structures in the community. When acknowledging ones biases, I can start to find a new path for myself and learn to teach students the importance of everyone’s culture even if it is outside my comfort zone.
In my elementary schooling I was never exposed to a great amount of citizenship. We may have briefly looked at the subject of citizenship but never went into full detail where I would have remembered anything from it. There was one time in 7th grade where we had jobs and we had to work as a team to pay for extra supplies, help others and fulfill our responsibilities as members of a certain job. Also, with this job we had to make decisions; one of the jobs that I was a part of was making a seating plan for every month and this took a lot of problem solving and decision making, with going back and forth with our teacher. When I got to high school, we had a group of students who led the school called the SRC, whenever spring came around, we had to participate in voting for the new school president for the next school year. During my 4 years of high school we never really talked about what makes a good citizen or how we can change to become better citizens for the societies, usually this topic only came up briefly for when the teacher or students got off topic during class time.
The three types of citizenship that are mentioned in the article are “the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen”. During my school I was never a part of groups at school where they would work towards social change. We had a group that was called RIA (royals in action), this group represented the justice-oriented citizen because they were set out to try to make environmental changes and social changes in the surrounding community and other parts of Regina. This focused on the doing aspect and how to change the society, which can be a big job to handle. As I mentioned earlier, I was not influenced in any way of citizenship till high school, but even then, it was very low key. It may have been more effective if we did learn about citizenship, so that we also know how to make a good citizen and what we can change to become better citizen for this society. I think its important for every school to touch base on all three types of citizenship so that we can all be active citizens of society. Dear Intern,
Part 1
School curriculum can be developed by many different people. It takes more than one or two people to achieve and implement a formal curriculum. The government has always played a major role in developing the curriculum's along side teachers, students, experts and companies. Many of these decisions to create curriculum come from a combination of local, national and school participation, but in the end any final decisions fall under national. Political views of the curriculum can impact how the design of the curriculum is made and have influenced many curriculum outcomes. Looking at past and data curriculum can affect the ways people look at building the new curriculum. The teachers play an important role in building a curriculum because they are the ones who are inside the classroom and spending the most time with what the kids are interested in and how they learn or don’t learn. Levin suggests that it is important to involve the community members because their views and thoughts need to be considered. It shocks me that experts and scientists have more of a say then teachers because they don’t know the teaching aspect of things and how it may work in the classroom Part 2 One connection that is made between the two articles is that it takes many people to produce a curriculum. There was never just one person who gets to be deciding these things it was always more then one and multiple different groups. Another connection that can be made is that they say experts are very important to have to be able to produce these documents. The treaty document states that they bring in elders to give their knowledge and views on the Indigenous community. Tensions can be brought up because the elders may have different views on Indigenous ways then the Ministry of Education. Also, teachers may feel that Indigenous culture is being over taught and decide on their own that they don’t want to teach it, which should not be the case. Although the Ministry of Education may have different views with the Indigenous culture and what to include might be something the community doesn’t feel the need to add and vis versa. Reinhabitation and Decolonization through…
As future teachers knowing that we are going to have a diversity of languages and cultures in the classroom is very important. Making the classroom a welcoming place where the can feel safe to be themselves and making sure that personal opinions are not running through our minds so that there is room for development of knowledge and inclusion for everyone. Having student talk about where they come from and their differences to other cultures may also be important in their development and always making sure that they can be heard and feel proud of where they come from. Being a good student means that you are quiet, paying attention and following rules and also being engaged in class discussions. To be a “good” student can also mean that they complete assignments on time and can apply what they have learnt in previous classes on an exam or paper. Kumashiro stated that when the student got closer to the right answer/idea they would receive a higher grade overall. It is important to accommodate everyone’s learning ability to a lesson or activity in ways that interest them.
The students who are usually the “good” privileged students are the ones who are always engaged in the discussion and speak up and ask questions. With schooling in the past, I have found that people who are more privileged tend to question the teacher more about assignments and are willing to put in any extra work to make sure they are engaged in the classroom. Commonsense can be made impossible for many students if they don’t know what is being talked about in the class discussion and don’t want to be seen as “dumb”. Many students have different perspectives on a topic, which can make it almost difficult to understand or grasp the idea of commonsense. As future teachers go into classrooms it is important to remember that everyone will learn different and nobody every wants to feel excluded from the topic/discussion. There are many ways teacher can incorporate all learning and to make sure no one is struggling in the class. For my critical summary I chose the concept of disability in education because I feel that it is a concept that doesn’t get enough attention and the students with disabilities either get the attention, they need of do not receive enough. For the first article I had found is called “Teacher counternarrative: transgressing and ‘restorying’ disability in education”. This article aims to explore the disconnect between the disability studies in education perspectives on inclusive schooling help by a group of dually certified inclusive educators and the everyday, lived experiences of these same teachers who find themselves teaching students with labelled disabilities within the confines of the special education bureaucracy. Throughout this article we can hear about dominant narratives about disability in education and illustrate some of the ways in which teachers do resist and transgress the broad structures of schooling in ways that enable them to “restory” disability in education and lastly it will explore the implications of this work for preparing teacher to be dually certified, inclusive educators of all children withing schools.
It continues on to talk about how some universities in different countries prepare their future educators to be dually certifies as general teachers and teachers working with students with disabilities. This concept really helps teachers in the future because the are able to deal with changes to their classroom if they had a child with a disability. In the article they state that “inclusive education is not just about students with labeled disabilities, but rather is fundamentally about all students, and more significantly, about the cultural practices of schooling” (Elementary Inclusive Preservice Education Program 2008). The system actively critiques the dual systems of ‘general’ and ‘special’ education that currently serve to stigmatize, segregate and deny equal access to academic education for students identified as disabled. The authors state that they hope that with making this curriculum central to their inquiry through exploring teachers’ navigation and transgression of this often unfaithful ground raises questions not simply about what it means for inclusive educators to teach for social justice, but what additionally what it means to engage in socially just teacher preparation of inclusive educators. To further my concept, I will look into how educators today are making their classrooms more inclusive and how they might deal with the struggle of change. Also looking at what needs to be done to help students with disabilities feel like they are apart of the school’s community. I will also look to continue broadening my own learning and understanding on disability in education, while trying to help others understand it as well.
There are four questions that are in Tyler’s rationale. They are as follows; What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? How can we determine an emphasis on the formulation of behavioural objectives? With theses question I can look at my own education and connect it to my experiences throughout my schooling. Throughout my schooling from k-12 I have experienced the Tyler rational because we were taught to study what was given to us and that we would be tested on the materials in future time. It was always the teachers planning the activities, us students had to participate in, so it was always what they had wanted, and we had to adjust to them, they never seemed to adjust activities towards our interests/ideas. My school was so big that the students usually ended up with no voice because the teachers seemed to want to make things easier on themselves. The teachers always expected us to emphasize our behaviours to show that we could be a functioning member of society. Throughout my school years teachers taught us to respect what wasn’t ours and to always treat people with respect. Although at some points the teachers often didn’t show us as students respect because they expected us to know what they expect of us and to basically read their minds. The teachers are taught to see objectives and teach them, but the article states that it is important to work with the objectives. Many teachers at my school I think just looked at the objective and taught a lesson on it. From this statement in the article I think it is important for teacher to realize that yes there is an objective, but they must be willing to take that objective and work with it to the students interests/ideas and not just through something random at them to get tested on later; make it interesting for the students.
There can be a variety of different limitations found in Tyler’s rationale, many can include limitations to the students learning. With limitations students may find it hard to really learn because they are being taught something that the teacher is getting from a textbook and using specific objectives. This may limit their creativity, not allowing the students to work through problems in their own ways and creating abstract ways to represent their works. It forces them to do what the teacher is wanting and doesn’t leave room for originality. This takes away the students’ voice and they will not be heard by teachers because teachers feel that everything should be taught to a specific objective without changing it slightly for the students to enjoy better. Although teachers do know what it probably best for the students learning they still need to be aware that every student is different, some need more structure and others need less structure. Tyler’s rational provides us with an easier way to organize the curriculum and thoughts in ways that we can evaluate the written content. Students will be aware to the marks they are receiving and how they are being evaluated throughout the semester/year of school. Exams at the end of units can benefit the learners/teachers to help evaluate the class setting to see if the teaching styles are working and the learners are coming out on top. Frequent discussions in class can help learners be more involved in the topic because it is almost like an unplanned lesson. This allows the learners to stay engaged and grow their knowledge.
Smith2000CurriculumTheoryPractice.pdf
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Hannah MagnussonWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2020
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