It is not always easy to be a culturally responsive teacher in today's classrooms. With the growth of the changing cultural landscape in America, the number of cultures represented in our school has increased. According to Wikipedia, there are now nine major languages spoken in Texas,these include Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean and Tagalog. It is imperative that teachers learn and understand the diversity in customs, beliefs, values and communication skills of their students. With so many students learning English as a second language, assessments are now taking the form of portfolios which can include work from the arts and visual fields in order not to limit ELL's to written content which they may not yet have the skills to interpret and master.
In the classroom, it is important for the teacher to facilitate the learning of her students so that they can learn to make connections on the lesson through reflection and meta-cognitive thinking. Meta-cognitive thinking is the ability to learn to think about thinking. This higher level thinking helps the student to integrate the lesson into their learning process and then be able to generalize it into other areas of study.
One aspect of the ISTE standards is that teachers become more and more capable in technology integration. In a sense, teachers are to become "computer experts" as they employ the newer technologies. This will enable the teacher to demonstrate "leadership" and be seen as the "go to" teacher to the students. It is important that teachers become well versed in the immense variety of resources available to inform technological learning in the classroom. These range from fellow teachers in one's school, to continuing education through universities, to professional conferences that will not only give a great amount of technology information, but with the right networking skills, will create a vast network of contacts in the technology world. Additionally, a teacher can create their own research and build a technology base that they will add to through the years as the technology expands.
I agree, it is definitely not easy for teachers to be culturally responsive to individual students because of the immense diversity of cultures. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI never even thought that by attending these conferences you can meet a network of people that can help you later in you technological research. I agree that ISTE is making teachers become more and more technology capable. I think in the long run this will help us. Great Blog this has me really thinking.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is important for teacher to be aware of technological resources. Having a means to learn more is always a good idea. Great blog!
ReplyDelete