I find Standard 3, Contextualization to be a little difficult in my situation. Looking at the Checklist for Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices from the CREDE website, I realize I am not sufficiently “[assisting] students to connect and apply their learning to home and community” nor am I “[providing] opportunities for parents or families to participate in classroom instructional activities.” As I have stated before, I don’t know how to effectively do these things with the time crunch under which I operate. To involve the families, I could establish a computer class after school, but I don’t know when I would do this. Maybe a better idea would be to set up a computer lab show-off night, like an authors’ tea, and allow the kids to invite their parents to come see the projects they have worked on in class. I could also create a survey to find out what skills our families might have that they would be willing to share in the lab. With the pace I work under, parent volunteers would be a wonderful help. I just have to find them. There certainly have been none forthcoming.
As far as connecting and applying learning to home and the community, I try to do this by allowing the students to tell me about themselves in their projects, but I know I need to provide more of these opportunities. One thing I have tried to do is find a grant that will allow me to purchase a class set of digital cameras. This would be a wonderful way for the students to share more about themselves. I visited an elementary school in Aiken, SC (I forgot the name of the school) that had a photography club, and it was wonderful. The kids took pictures, wrote narration to go with them, and compiled this into a PhotoStory. Sometimes, the narrations were fictional, but sometimes they were autobiographical. What a wonderful medium for the children to share their stories!
I have written a grant twice for the funds for this project, but I was turned down both times. I will continue to look for funds because I think this would really be a wonderful addition to my technology class. It would also be a wonderful after school club. If anyone has any ideas for a grant for cameras, please let me know!
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I will be referring to the Center for Research, Diversity, and Excellence pedagogical standards as found on the CREDE web site: http://crede.berkely.edu/standards/standards.html. I will also be referring to Dr. Eugene Garcia’s 5Rs and T of Culturally Responsive Teaching.
About Me
- NancyJ
- SC, United States
- I am the technology teacher at my elementary school. I teach all of the students in my school for about one hour each week. This is a new position for me. Previously, I taught 4th grade for three years and 3rd grade for four. I am finding many differences in the regular classroom and my new position. To better meet these challenges, I have been working on my masters degree in Integrating Technology into the Curriculum through Walden University.
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