Future Aspirations of Culturally Diverse Students

During my last meeting with T, I noticed she had the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown with her, which she told me she was reading for fun. This surprised me, as not only is the book advanced, but she was reading it as a hobby, which many students don't do as often as they used to. This lead to a conversation about her collection of books still back in her old country, which her family goes back to every so often and allows her to bring more of the collection back, a little at a time. She also told me about a special country-wide book fair that draws hundreds and thousands to buy books from vendors every year. Hearing about this interest in books completely changed my view on other countries. As a world power, we are told most countries have little educational opportunities, which may hold true in some places, but they have plenty of passion to learn and succeed. This eliminates the preconceived notion that students from other cultures have less interest to learn in schools, and that they have the same drive other students have as well. To drive this point home, T also discussed her intensions of becoming a surgeon, and to try and attend the best school she could possibly get into, and during the time of the meeting, that was MIT. These high goals set up this student for great success, and I feel that she has the potential to get where she wants to be simply because she is sincerely working hard to be the best she can.

Formative Assessments

I have attached a strategy log which is meant to be a resource for 5 different formative assessments that can be used within a classroom. Initially, I created a simple table with information organized into grids, but in order to create access for EL learners and students with reading disabilities, I included images for each assessment, slightly reduced the reading level for each passage, and attempted to allow for text to speech access. I was able to determine how to gain access to text to speech within my own word processing on my computer, but was unable to create audio files of the text to speech to allow for anyone who sees the document to use text to speech. My next goal will be to find how to do this and make documents even more accessible for students. By going over my document and finding multiple ways to create ease of access, I have learned any form of information being given to students within a classroom can be shaped to be easy to use just by changing subtle aspects of the material.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzxxG1w6ypN7UHFfOEs2YnRsNU0/view?usp=sharing

Culture in Education

In preparation for our upcoming placements at local schools, a number of our classmates and I attended a meeting to acquire information on what to expect. During this meeting, a piece of information stuck with me on educating students with a diverse cultural background. Students are often absent, or what we consider to be late to meetings and classes. As educators, our initial reaction may be to assume that the students doesn't care to learn. However, certain cultures determine that being on time means they will "get there when they get there". This shows as professional educators, we cannot accept students' actions at face value, and instead learn to understand why they act as they do, whether through cultural background or personal issues in their lives.

Blog Introduction

Hello,

My name is Patrick Martin and I am a History and Secondary Education Major at Saint Michael's College. This blog is being written to keep track of my progress, thoughts, and experiences in becoming a professional educator. It is also being written to show proof of my knowledge of Vermont's Performance Critieria for educators and my ability to demonstrate them.