Week 7. In-class writing

One thing that this week's readings have in common is that they take daily interactions that are normally conducted without a second thought and peel back the layers of culture and influence behind them to reveal almost infinite complexity.

When I as a teacher am talking to Takashi about his book review, the conversation is one thing to Takashi and quite another to me. My experience of the conversation is influenced by years of training and experience that have led me to see the information I'm offering as useful to Takashi. I'm influenced by my idea of what the relationship between student and teacher should be. I'm influenced by my opinions of Takashi himself - what kind of student he is, what kind of person, where he's from, what I know about his parents and friends, what interests we have in common, etc., ad infinitum. Takashi's experience of this conversation is influenced by his opinion of me, how much he cares about the assignment or class or subject, how he thinks he might be viewed by his friends and family, etc.

Human interaction is not only this complicated in the context of education, of course. Every interaction we have every day is this complex at its most basic level. If we thought about all of these things all the time, our heads would explode. All of us perform the function of sorting through these factors at incredible speed, though some are better at it than others.

I wish I could get the opinions of these authors on how exactly we should teach intercultural understanding/sensitivity/awareness (pick a word.) The ability to communicate across cultures is something that comes naturally to some people, in varying degrees. In order to create the kind of learning environment that Tharp and Gallimore describe or the kind that you might imagine Garcia would desire, all learners (kindergartener through superintendent) must have at least a rudimentary understanding what culture is. They also must possess a high degree of cultural tolerance and be eager to learn about other cultures. How do we make this happen?

The thing that is especially terrifying about all of this is that it is just the tip of the "cultural iceberg." Tharp and Gallimore spend a lot of time talking about all of the different ways people influence each other, and discussion of culture involves similar breakdowns of social and interpersonal influence. But culture is infinitely dynamic and too complex for anyone to sum up or map out. I guess what I'm getting at is that it seems like no amount of training or study can prepare you to look at a classroom full of thirty different cultures and get them all to learn with you.

Week 7 Readings

Really liked these readings. As I've mentioned, I spent a year teaching in Japan. It was basically the opposite of the problems discussed in this week's reading. In my case, the teacher in front of the class (me) was the only one who was not in his cultural element. Naturally, I did what I could to learn about the culture I was immersed in and teach accordingly, but often as not, I designed my classes much as I would have if I had been in a class full of South Dakota kids. I think this often people's natural reaction to cultural difficulty.

I particularly liked the discussion of the "product" of an activity setting on page 13 of Tharp-Gallimore. This isn't something I had really thought about before. We -perhaps especially those of us who belong to the dominant culture - come to red letters written on the tops of tests and papers as the desired "product" of our educational experience. This chapter took a while to get into, but I loved how fierce the authors were. Academic writing is usually characterized by impassivity, but I like it when people get a bit passionate about things.

The thing I'm having trouble with relates to the topic I'm working on for my paper. It seems to me (perhaps a bit conceitedly) that the issue of culture plays a particularly tricky and important role in the teaching of the social studies. I'm planning a unit on evaluating sources of historical information. I've worked in intercultural education ever since I left college, and I had a very hard time wrapping my head around a lot of this stuff. How do I teach my high school students what culture is and how it affects history? It's a big question, but if we are ever going to give our students anything other than the fairy-tale version of American or World History, we have to figure it out.

In-Class: Week 6

bias: a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice. dictionary.com

A bias could, for example, lead one to accept or deny the truth of a claim, not on the basis of the strength of the arguments in support of the claim themselves, but because of the extent of the claim's correspondence with one's own preconceived ideas. This is called confirmation bias. -Wikipedia "bias"

Example: Hillary Clinton and Health Care
Clinton Website: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/
Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/72229.php
Primary Source - Text of Speech: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=1789
CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/17/health.care/
FOX News "The Dark Side of Hillary's Health Care Plan - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297493,00.html
WSJ Health Care Blog (with lots of reader comments) - http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/09/20/hillary-clinton-health-care-polarizer/
Market Watch - http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/hillary-clinton-outlines-health-care/story.aspx?guid=%7BB6E9057B-93C8-4BFD-9AEF-A8C9995A4FE7%7D
"Lone Wacko" Blog - http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/007062.html

Week 6 Readings

Another week with an absolute TON of new information. I enjoyed it though. I was most eager to read about development in late adolescence, but that segment of the reading didn't go nearly as in depth as the others. For example, what strategies exist for dealing with egocentrism in adolescents? How does that egocentrism effect the learning process?

I decided to take notes this week on my Mac, since I used my studet loan money to buy it. Due to stolen Office software issues, I can't access them anymore. So I might get some of this wrong. But one thing that I found interesting was the Zone of Proximal Development. I'd like to learn more about how you assess what a child's Zone is. Also, we learned that the ZPD varies widely in different children. Why is this so?

So, if I'm designing a unit to teach students how to distinguish between and evaluate different sources of information, I will want to design it in such a way as to gradually give them less structure and guidance. It would be nice to see examples of class or unit design that does this sort of thing effectively.

Week 5: In Class Writing

Learning objectives for "Historiography" unit.

Students will be able to identify bias in source material.
Students will be able to articulate the difference between primary and secondary sources.
Students will identify the intended audiences of particular sources.
Students will differentiate between styles of various sources.
Students will know where to find different types of documents. (Photographs, Oral Accounts, Editorials, Video)

NYT Article on Laptops in Being Taken out of Classrooms. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Week 5: weekly assignment

For some reason, I enjoyed this weeks readings much more than any other's. Among many of the topics discussed, motivation piqued my interest. As in much of our reading, the authors reference studies as examples, and sometimes discuss what those studies concluded, but never in much detail. I suppose it's good to leave me wanting more, but I was tempted to look up some of the studies to learn more about how exactly you guage what students' beliefs about themselves are, etc. I also found it very interesteing that mild anxiety can aid motivation, but it was not discussed in depth.

I ran out of time and was unable to really dig into this, but I'd be interested in discussing the differences between general and meta- cognitive strategies and domain-based strategies. What exactly is a domain-based strategy? I plan to review for a couple of hours before class, and maye that will shed some light on it, but they lost me a little bit there.

I am planning to write my first paper on a basic "historiography" unit for high school students. The main objective is to teach the students (am I supposed to call them "learners" now? :) ) to evaluate the usefulness of source material. This week's reading gives me a few things to focus on. For example, I'm going to need to find a way to asses the extent to which my students already evaluate validity of the information they take in. Do they ever give any though to bias, for example? Also, I will need to find a way for this unit to allow students to focus on an area that interests them and which they see as having validity in their daily life (that's hard to do with history.) I could go on; this was good stuff.

Week #4 In-Class

I want to design a lesson or unit that teaches students of history to distinguish between different types of source materials and assess their merit. What I'm thinking of is sort of a "Historiography for Beginners" geared toward high school students.

I'd like the unit to be almost entirely internet-based and student-driven. I want my students to know where to look for sources and recognize bias in their sources.

I am assuming that most of my students will not go on to study history in any formal manner, and thus teaching them historiography is not my main objective. However, all of my students will have access to the internet and nearly infinite information. Regardless of what career or course of study they will pursue, being able to sort through and assess the value of the vast amount of information available to them will be essential.

That's really all I have so far, but I'm excited about this and would welcome your comments or suggestions.