Positive Classroom Climate

I usually give my students the same 5 rules, but rules 2-5 are more procedural, and are based on classroom etiquette and flow.  The only rule that really matters to me on a daily basis is "Rule #1: BE RESPECTFUL." There's the adage that "you have to give respect to get it" and this is something that is part of my classroom modus operandi.  I start every school year discussing what respect is, and how I am going to demonstrate respect to my students because it's important for me that my students know that I don't consider myself exempt from our classroom rules.  Even with 12th graders I will ask for verbal responses giving examples of what respect looks like and what disrespect looks like so that everyone clearly knows what's expected of them.

I think addressing behavior at the beginning of the school year by specifically laying out terms is important to creating a classroom culture of respect.  One activity that I find very effective is to give students some say in their classroom culture by having them collaboratively create a mission statement.  Below is an example from a algebraic skills course that I taught earlier this year.  Although I helped with the vocabulary and flow these are the words of my students and clearly lays out their expectations for the class, themselves, and their teacher.  The most important part to me is the "goal" because by having these mission statements posted it serves as a reminder that their actions in class are in service of the goal which they are striving towards.

"We as a class expect to learn skills that will help us to improve our SAT scores and to become more proficient with solving quadratic equations. We do this in hopes that at the end of this course we will be able to pass the course final and improve our SAT scores. Our goal as a class is to succeed in this class, with every member of this class receiving a B or better. In order to do this, we expect that everyone behaves in a mature and responsible manner at all times, and that we receive help from our classmates when needed. We also expect to receive any necessary assistance from Miss Chong to help us from feeling frustrated, and an occasional treat as validation for our hard work. It is also expected that every member of this classroom community treats one another with respect, and avoids any malicious words or actions towards another member of this classroom community."

I care about my students so much that I would stay in every day during lunch and after school with them.  I would make it a point to just chat with them and learn as much about them as possible.  In the beginning I thought having a positive classroom climate meant that I was the popular teacher whose students actually wanted to hang out with them.  However, I learned that this is not always the best way.  I ultimately realized that I was chatting with my students because on some level I was avoiding doing my own "work."  Then I would always be scrambling and pulling late night study sessions when grades were due because I wasn't taking care of such things.  It finally dawned on me that by neglecting my own duties is in some ways doing a disservice to my students.  So I think prioritizing and time management is something that I need to work on to improve my classroom climate.

Addressing cultural differences in the classroom is something that has always been something I'm passionate about because I highly respect others cultures.  I enjoy traveling and living in different places because I personally feel that I learn the most when I'm forced to adapt to another environment and I feel invigorated when I am experiencing this. In terms of cultures in the classroom I have worked in school districts where students are 97% white, and in ones where students are 97% minority, and if I were to be honest working in the predominately upper-middle class white school was easier in terms of classroom management because students were relatively homogeneous so from a cultural standpoint there was hardly any adapting needed on my part.  However, I personally could not see myself teaching in such a school district, and greatly preferred the diverse nature of urban schools.

Of all the videos and articles on race and culture in the classroom from my grad school program, none stood out more to me than the Blue Eyed-Brown Eyed experiment by Jane Elliot. She wanted to teach her 1st graders about racism by having them experience discrimination firsthand.  One of the concepts that she continually reinforced was that differences are an important part of who we are.  Below is a video of her recreated experiment with college students.  My favorite part is when she says, "They are as different on the outside as they are on the inside, and they have the right to be so. People, don't deny differences, accept them, appreciate them, recognize them, and cherish them because they are extremely important."

I hope that by recognizing and appreciating the differences of my students it will help them feel like a validated member of our classroom community. 

Future Trends in Digital Learning

The biggest change in digital learning for the future is all about accessibility.  Right now the education that we provide as teachers is limited to the classroom, but I would love to see technology take education to the next level by allowing students or teachers to be anywhere and still learn a lesson.  I would love to see the day where the "classroom" is essentially a virtual reality that is accessible from anywhere and (nearly) FREE so that those individuals living in rural, war torn, or impoverished countries can have access to this learning.  I think the high costs are the biggest challenge of futuristic educational technology, so I would like to see learning technology accessible for everyone.

My current job consists of taking tourists of private custom tours where we show them the various cultural and historical sites on the island.  I would love to share some of these sites with students but realistically the cost of transporting a class full of students to take a field trip is a pain and not affordable on the day to day. However, I see virtual reality and virtual tours as being a part of education in the future.  I'm a big supporter of experiential education and I think it would be great for a student to able to immerse themselves in different locales around the world as part of their learning because the multi-sensory experience is far more than they'd ever get from a book or video.  To learn about the Great Wall of China while actually walking the Great Wall, or learning about volcanic islands while taking a virtual helicopter tour over an active lava flow all while not physically having to leave home.

It would be a safe and cost free way to try out different experiences.  We could learn to grow crops by virtually doing so, and think of how helpful this will be for drivers ed if students fully experience driving in a real world scenario without the possibility of actually getting hurt.

I'm talking simulations similar to those of the divergent series where students get to experience an alternate reality and truly interact with their environment because it is seemingly real.

Or if anyone is thinking about creating a teleporting machine that would be freaking AWESOME as well!

Personal Learning Goals

Professional Goals

• My professional goal is to become a highly qualified teacher certified in Secondary Social Studies.  I plan to do this by January 2016.  

I will do this by completing the TEACH-NOW program and completing my background check and clinical requirements.  I have already completed two undergraduate degree programs one in History the other in Global Studies, and taken and passed my PRAXIS I, PRAXIS II:Social Studies Content Knowledge, and PRAXIS: PLT 7-12 exams.

• I would like to acquire cross endorsements in Secondary Mathematics and TESOL by March 2016 

I will accomplish this by taking at least 2 upper level math courses to expand and maintain my skills I have already passed my PRAXIS II Exam for Secondary Mathematics: Content Knowledge.  I have also taken Oxford Seminars TESOL course and will study for and take the PRAXIS exam for TESOL by December 2015..  

• I would like to create write at least six culturally responsive units that incorporate project and or/inquiry based learning by the end of my first year as a certified teacher (approximately January 2017).

I am particularly interested in project based learning (my favorite types of lessons as a student) and inquiry based learning because I love to see students who are intrinsically motivated to discover answers to their own questions. Witnessing that natural curiosity and desire to learn in my students is something that I find extremely validating as a teacher.  Also it is my hope that all of my teaching is culturally responsive because I want my students to know I value their unique cultural identity. Curriculum writing is a goal of mine because having well written curriculum to pull from makes the job much easier on a day to day basis, and would help me eliminate a lot of stress.

Planning for ELL Learners

As I am not actively a classroom teacher I decided to base this future unit on a culturally responsive unit that I co-wrote but have not yet had the opportunity to utilize in my own classroom. I would like to use this high school Global Studies unit on the development levels of two different countries such as The United States and Morocco through an analysis of the Human Development Index for this task.

Sylvie speaks French and Chadian Arabic, she and her family immigrated 3 years ago from Chad and she has an intermediate-low English proficiency level.  Some modifications for her would be to allow her to do her research on Morocco exclusively, because of the fact that she can find many articles in French since it is an official language in Morocco and the language of academia there. Perhaps giving another student the same topic to research about America and having them work together to help encourage her to verbally discussing her findings. Allow her to read off of her slides for final oral presentation and do not grade on grammar and spelling, flexible time limit.   Focus for Sylvie would be to work on proper research and citation skills by using a model.  So instead of quantity of information, she will be evaluated on quality/reputability of sources and whether she cites them correctly.

Antonio's L1 is Spanish and he is an emergent learner who migrated from the Puerto Rico last year.  He likes to participate, but can get sidetracked by social scene and is often too chatty with his other Spanish speaking friends.  I choose small group interactions over whole class discussions and would pair him with one Latino-American friend who can help translate if need be and two other non-Spanish speakers to encourage him to communicate in English.

Hoang is an immigrant from Vietnam a couple weeks ago and is not yet comfortable communicating verbally in English other than basic yes/no questions. I would have another student demonstrate how to input the global Human development index data into a spreadsheet (when provided with website to find data) and create graphs. Her project will be to present statistics via graphs and have her practice saying the numbers out loud (and perhaps the labels too). I would also have her write definitions for each label in Vietnamese so she knows what each word means. I would require the rest of students to note and turn in these figures in a formative assessment so that they pay attention to the information that she gives.

Katerina is a Russian native who has lived in several countries throughout the world due to her diplomat father’s position.  She is fluent in Russian, French and German, and had studied English on and off for a total of 5 years in her previous schools. Verbally she is an advanced learner and she has an expansive English vocabulary, but she struggles with writing and maintaining accuracy in English grammar.  Unlike the previous ELL learners Katerina will complete the full argumentative essay assigned like her non-ELL peers but will be given a graphic organizer with prompting questions and a shorter minimum page requirement.

Special Education Referral Process

In general the teachers I interviewed stated that they typically make recommendations for special education only in somewhat extreme circumstances.  The interview teachers stated that when they made recommendations it was based on witnessing common symptoms of various disabilities that they recognized from their students with special needs courses.  They expressed that if they were concerned about the a student in their class their first reaction would be to try alternative methods to teach the student.  One expressed that if this did not work she would then turn to the student’s other teachers to inquire as to whether they see the same issues with that student and what might be their strategies for dealing with it. However, when concerned for a student both suggested asking the student in private and calling the child’s parents to talk with them about behavioral traits without suggesting that the child has a disability.. Because special education encompasses a plethora of different issues from gifted students to the lowest functioning students with severe intellectual disabilities it is not possible for anyone except a medically trained professional to “diagnose” a disability.

At James Hillhouse High School teachers and other staff members can refer a student for special education services by using a special form for this purpose.  It requires the referrer to sign off that they have already checked the system to ensure that the student isn’t already receiving special education services.  If the student is already receives special education services and has an IEP the referrer should get in contact with that student’s case manager and discuss any issues in the classroom and try to determine any possible interventions. Similarly if the student has a 504 plan, the referrer should discuss any issues with the student’s counselor first.

If the student does not receive any services, the referral then goes to the child’s counselor who is the one to contact the student’s other teachers to see if they notice the same behaviors or issues that are detailed on the form by the referrers.  At this point, the counselor can recommend that the student be evaluated which is done onsite by the in-house Clifford Beers Clinic with help from the school social worker. In order to complete this evaluation the school must acquire parental permission.  At Hillhouse one of the three academy principals is designated as being in charge of Special Education and she is responsible for overseeing the evaluation from Clifford Beers and ultimately deciding if the child will be given special education services based off of the recommendation of counseling staff and evaluators from Clifford Beers. At this point if a child is to be receiving special education services they will be assigned a case manager who with the help of the school’s PPT (Planning and Placement Team) chairperson will organize a PPT meeting.   

A PPT meeting must include the following parties the child’s case manager or counselor, the PPT chair (serving as an administrator), a teacher who can report on the student’s behavior and achievement, and a parent or guardian of the child (and/or the child themselves if they are 18+).  This team collaboratively creates the goals and accommodations that appear on an IEP and try to identify areas that need to be worked on or adjustments that need to be made to ensure the student is in the least restrictive environment.

National and International Organizations

Since moving back home to Hawaii I have become particularly interested in Hawaiian language schools and bilingual education in general..  A couple weeks ago I watched the Kamehameha Schools Annual Song Contest and was blown away by the level of linguistic and cultural knowledge that these students displayed. Check it out below if you're interested.

I think the teaching of native cultures and languages is something that is very important and I would like to see more of an effort to maintain this heritage.  While the Hawaiian language is an official language of the state of Hawaii, most residents of Hawaii, even Native Hawaiians, do not speak Olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian Language).  The one exception is the island of Ni'ihau where Hawaiian is the primary spoken language and is the formal language of education. To me, the issue of teaching the Hawaiian language in schools is a bit of a different situation from typical bilingual education which usually focuses on using a student's mother tongue to help them learn the common tongue, so it's hard to find a lot of comparison.  However, educational organizations such as the NEA generally seem favor bilingual education because of research that suggest that bilingualism improves an individual's cognitive ability. The NEA featured an article on their website which explains that due to the code switching ability that people who speak more than one language often use, bilingual or multilingual individuals tend to exercise better "executive control" because they have better focus and selective attention which allows them ignore "salient distractors."

I would like to point out that though it is not the common tongue, there are a total of 18 public and charter schools throughout the state of Hawaii that offer a Hawaiian language immersion program where students attend classes taught in strictly in Hawaiian.  The programs do exist but I would like to see them integrated into general public schools by offering Hawaiian as a foreign additional language course option.  I would also like to see a greater integration of the Hawaiian culture in schools throughout the island.  I am grateful that least one semester of Hawaiian history is part of required curriculum of public high schools here, but I would like to see a cultural education of the Native Hawaiians as a part of schooling here as well.