5. Neither agree nor disagree. I agree with the first sentence to the degree that any young, impressionable person models what they see most. I disagree with the second half because only I can undermine my efforts.
Though it may be true that children from families whose elder members spurned or were spurned by formal education have a statistical tendency to devalue teaching and learning, that really amounts to a bunch of hooey when the kid is in front of me. The power of tenacious care and love is bigger than that.
The family and community and neighborhood and psychic vultures and culture vultures and the glitter of false power can undermine my results as manifested in the kid-as-product, but it is only when I lose sight of my commitment to love that my effort suffers.
6. Disagree. Students of every ability level can be challenged according to their needs, irrespective of ELL status. It is what the families who relinquish their children to us expect. The students look for it, too, and relish the opportunity to perform successfully in their own ways. If a student struggles with language proficiency, that IS their academic challenge. You gotta help.
7. Neither agree nor disagree. If the kid needs their effort to be rewarded, reward it. If not, leave it alone. “...because building their self-esteem is important” seems a little too mawkish, so I’ll just stick to writing that motivating students is tricky and fun. Sometimes we have to holler at them and break up their pity party, and sometime we have to stand along the marathon route and hand out water. It’s not about the kid, it’s about us.
8. Neither agree nor disagree. I think it’s bad business to make decisions based on negatives, eg, “...so that they do not become discouraged.” If I speak about negatives, they will think in negatives. Sort of like what Ray said in this week’s blog post about his syllabus.
9. Agree. And this would be just as true with the words about race and ethnicity removed. I guess the way I feel about it is that if there were no linguistic construct for referring to race, teachers would just say, “The only way that kid will learn parts of speech is by writing little songs about them. It’s the damnest thing... Fascinating, though, I tell you.”
10. Agree. Although I agree, I think this question presumes a bit too much. Namely, not all the turtles are slow in the same way, and not all the rabbits are fast in the same way. It’s been my experience with the more vociferous proponents of this theory that they assume that all impediments to learning are removed when teaching a homogeneous group of high speed students.
11. Disagree. It seems to me that if a creative teacher is doing an admirable job of teaching ELL students, they will be involved in complex learning tasks as a matter of grasping the basics.
12. Disagree. What matters more than your students?
13. Neither agree nor disagree. I agree with pt. 1 and disagree with pt. 2. I think I remember reading something that said that the collegiality of a faculty is increased when they readily discuss sticky issues. Everybody who teaches has an opinion on the role or effect of race, and it would do well to talk about it. The same article may have also said something to the effect that students behave more genially around each other when they perceive a healthy relationship among the faculty.
No comments:
Post a Comment