Reflection

Reflection

Of all the issues in education we discussed this semester, the one I felt most uncomfortable discussing was during the prejudice and bias unit. One of the groups we had the option of discussing was members of the LGBTQ+. At the time, I was afraid to comment about it because I did not yet understand it. I was very close minded about the hardships they faced and the significance of the movement and thus was unwilling to talk about it. My initial views of the movement were that "they're different from me and therefore they're wrong." After learning about prejudices and biases in general, meeting and befriending more members of the community, observing my friends' first hand accounts I think I understand it a little bit better now.  I think that reading Zaretta Hammond's Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, made me realize just how wrong I was. Whether I as a person wanted to show support for the community or not is one thing. Going into the field of education, especially adolescent education is another. Middle/high school is when students really start thinking about who they are and exploring what is important to them. As their teacher, I need to step up to the plate and be the one who acknowledges their struggles and insecurities; I need to be someone who can show them that whatever they decide is right for them, they will be supported. Therefore the most crucial issue in education that I will learn to defeat is prejudice and bias in both my own heart and in my classroom. Through my studies this semester, I have learned that it is not enough to turn a blind eye to prejudice. You have to acknowledge it is there and explore why it is there. Only then can you begin to prove to yourself why you were wrong.

Source: https://www.nationalflags.shop/Rainbow-flag











Reference

Krueger, B., & Anonymous. (n.d.). Rainbow flag - LGBT pride flag. Retrieved June 30, 2020, from https://www.nationalflags.shop/Rainbow-flag

School Violence Prevention Workshop

School Violence Prevention Workshop

Overview          

  I took the School Violence Prevention Workshop online. The workshop had 47 lessons to read through that were divided into 5 sections. Each section covered the responsibilities of different parts of the community in ensuring a safe learning environment. The longest sections were the roles of Administrators/Teachers/Staff and Law Enforcement.

What I learned

            This workshop has taught me that my responsibilities as a teacher extend far beyond educating my students in my classroom. It is my job to educate myself on how to identify students that are being bullied, students who are bullying, students who are depressed, the happenings in the community and anything else that may pose a risk to the school, students, or members of the community. By being able to identify those who are being bullied, I can try to provide them help or show them where to go to get help. By identifying bullies, I can monitor them more closely to try to avoid giving them the chance to pick on others and if necessary, take disciplinary action or submit a report to the appropriate place for it. By identifying students who are depressed, I can offer to try help them with problems they are having or direct them to the proper personnel who can do so. By staying updated with happenings in the community, I can warn students of things to watch out for, places to avoid, or career/job opportunities. In any of these cases, I can also work with their parents to outline concerns so that we can prevent any further issues before they can happen.

Summary

            The big takeaway from this workshop was that violence in schools of any kind can lead to serious consequences such as school shootings, suicide, or students ruining their futures. Another of the big points of this workshop was to not just punish the bad, but to promote the good as well.  As a teacher, and more importantly a member of that community, it will be my responsibility to ensure that my students feel safe and welcome in the environment where they are learning. By creating a classroom policy that promotes good behavior and enforcing school rules, I will make sure that at the very least, my classroom is a safe place to be in. By raising a class of respectful and positive thinking students, they will take that behavior to their group of friends and spread it throughout the school. Students also must take responsibility for keeping their peers safe and I that is how I will encourage it.

Source: Graphic I made in Microsoft Paint

Summary/Reflection of Board of Ed Meeting

I was unable to attend a Board of Ed meeting during the semester and the one I had planned on attending at my high school was cancelled due to COVID-19. I instead watched the recording of the Westbury Board planning meeting that took place on January 16, 2020. The meeting started around the timestamp 12:31, but there was no audio until 16:23. I believe that the meeting started with the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence.

(screenshot taken of the meeting)

After formalities were taken care of, their appeared to be a bit of confusion between the two men leading the meeting about the first policy to be discussed. Initially, they proposed resolution 5-i: the approval of transportation agreement to Carle Place. They then took a second look at the agenda and corrected themselves. They then proposed resolution 5-o regarding the approval of universal testing and inspection. The resolution passed unanimously. The second resolution on the agenda was 6-a: the resignation of Linda Macias. This resolution was also passed unanimously. The final resolution on the meeting’s agenda was 7-f: The approval of NJROTC going on a trip. The trip was unanimously approved. After the 3 movements were passed, the appointment of an assistant business administrator, Mr. Reed, was proposed. Board President, Robert Troiano Jr., talked a little bit about Mr. Reed’s accomplishments and credentials before calling for a movement. After his appointment was unanimously decided, Mr. Reed was asked to stay to observe the rest of the board meeting. After attending to all of the items on the agenda, the board moved on to address any questions or concerns regarding the agenda for the following meeting.

First, questions were opened up to board members. First, Mr. Quintanilla asked about clarification of the reinstating of the bowling teams. Due to a budget cut in the previous year, not enough funds were available to support all extracurricular activities, so the bowling team was disbanded. The vice president of the board explained that this year the district had more funding, so they decided to re-establish the bowling team and that in the next meeting, they would appoint coaches. Later in the meeting, one of the community members expressed her gratitude for this because she personally knew three girls who received scholarships based on their bowling achievements. The next question for the following agenda came from the man in the navy shirt. He asked for clarification regarding the services of the Agape consulting (item 5-e). It was explained that they were setting up a pilot debate program at Powell’s lane. Based on the success there, they would like to expand it to all of the elementary schools. Specific details were to be added to the following week’s agenda. Next, item 5-g was discussed. 5-g was the acquisition and installation of new kitchen equipment from Elbe Kitchen Company. The equipment would be for their current cafeterias for higher end food production to keep up with their nutritional standards. One of the board members then asked if the after-school programs covered in 5-h would be for all of the elementary schools or just for Park Avenue and Westbury Middle School. The program is being funded by a grant from Espoir, so it would only be implemented in the aforementioned schools. Clarification was then asked for 5-d which was the Harvard Student Agencies Incorporated. The board member wanted to know how it would take place during the year, what content it would cover, and who was eligible. The program brought students from Harvard to tutor high school students in medical related classes on Saturdays and Sundays. A concern was brought up about the parent workshops in 6-m as to why they only covered Powell and Dryden Street schools. This was because those were the only two schools whose programs needed approval this month. The last question from the board members was why they were discussing 6-o now when it was about something from October 31^st. It was explained that there was a misunderstanding due to them waiting on information. After the board finished asking questions, the floor was opened to community members with questions. First was Ms. Brown who, as mentioned earlier, thanked the board for funding the bowling team once again. Another audience member asked about TA’s. The president said that this would be discussed in the next executive meeting.  Another community member asked about the partnership with LIU in L-5. It was explained this partnership was just what they labelled taking in student teachers from LIU. Another community member asked for an explanation about the BARR model in 5-f. The model is recognized by the Department of Education that provides support to students in social/emotional learning and career/college readiness. The schools partner with BARR for training their staff and it will be funded through a grant. There next question was about the building use form on page 11 of the following week’s agenda. The community member wanted to know if the event was a fundraiser and if it would be open to all students. They were told that it is a free event and was being held at Drexyl for the sake of convenience. A question that sparked laughter from the board was “Who is Lynn.” The President laughed and said that he had introduced her as the new business official twice already, but gave another introductory speech of her, speaking very highly of the woman. Another community member had concerns about the upcoming Census. She wanted to make sure that the schools would be open during the census as a place to participate. Her example of why this is necessary is for houses that may have 10 families living in them, only 1 hard copy is sent per household, but they all deserve a chance to participate in the Census. She wanted the schools to provide a place that these families could be free from the fear of ICE. She also suggested a robo-call to ensure participation. The president responded by calling an executive session to appoint personal, the motion passed.

From watching the meeting, it seems that these meeting are about more than just making rules for staff to follow, but they cover a wide array of activities that take place in the school. They are not just in relation to policies but cover everything in the schools from extra-curriculars to equipment/supplies in the school. Board of Ed meetings are called to make improvements/adjustments to the school district and allow community members to see what happens “behind” the scenes.

Review of "White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy"

Summary of Article

The article "White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy" is an opinion based article written by Bettina L. Love. In her article, Love expresses her thoughts about racism in schools and how to fight it. She may not have realized it while writing the article, but her tone in the article was a bit racist herself. She generalized all white teachers by claiming that they cannot fight racism until they stop being racist themselves. Her exact words were "White teachers have a different task: Many must first win the fight regarding racism within themselves" (Love, B. L, 2020, February 6, para. 4). Another of Love's propositions is that "White teachers need a particular type of therapy. They must learn how to deal with what Cheryl E. Matias calls 'White emotionalities' and what Robin DiAngelo has termed 'White fragility.' Emotions of guilt, shame, anger, denial, sadness, dissonance, and discomfort boil up when issues of race and racism challenge their sense of self" (2020, para. 6). With her tone being counterproductive to the points she was making I think that the ideas she was trying to express may have been lost to many. Overall, it seems that Love wants to make schools a racism free zone. Love believes that before teachers can enforce anti-racist ideas and actions, they first must look inside themselves to make sure that they truly understand what this means. Her proposed method for reform is to employ therapists in schools for teachers to help treat them learn to promote anti-racism.

The Message of This Article

Earlier in the semester we took a look at what prejudice and bias look like in schools. Racism falls under this category. In an environment where students are judged based on their appearances or backgrounds, it is easy to be intimidated and often times students suffer both mentally and physically because of it. In her article, Love tries to express that teachers need to turn schools into racism free zones. This can only be done by working from the top down. Educators must first free themselves from bias before they can pass the message onto their students. Once this is achieved, then progress can be made to promote anti-racist behaviors. By promoting anti-racist behaviors, schools will have taken a step towards true equality for students. If students come out of school with anti-racist morals, then that means they will have a better chance of creating a better society where everyone is truly equal.

(Quick Palmer, 2019)

References

Love, B. L. (2020, February 6). White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/02/07/all-teachers-need-therapy-white-teachers-need.html

Quick-Palmer, A. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.verveup.com/shesaid/diversity-is-not-equality

Prejudice, Bias, School Violence, and Media

Introduction

 
   In these two modules, we looked at the causes and effects of prejudices and biases in schools. Social media, news reports, and the internet in general play a large role in these areas. Lately, it seems like media is less about reporting and more about dividing the nation. It is partly due to this division that we see such hateful acts committed in not only schools, but in the community in general.

How does the media cause prejudice and bias?

      Many people today blame racist behaviors on our current President and paint hose who support him as racists and fascists. To say that this is all people would be incorrect and hypocritical because you would just be using the same logic as them. The media (on both sides) has divided our country lately by trying to slander the other side rather than promote its own beliefs. This divide creates more stereotypes than had already existed. Racial/cultural stereotypes have always existed, but that does not make them true. These stereotypes often cause people to treat each other differently, usually in a negative way, and often turns into a form of racism. 

      PEW Research Center did some research as to how concerned different groups are about a possible school shooting. The results were not very surprising. With how the media portrays the different groups that were studied, the numbers seem accurate. The media portrays that women are thought of as inferior or weak and therefore they are more scared of possible shootings. African Americans and Hispanic people are painted as the main targets of gun violence so it makes sense that they would be more afraid of a school shooting than white students. Higher income households can afford private education where their children may be considered in a safer environment so its no wonder that they show less concern than people who come from a lower income household whose children go to public school. The media does not realize the affect that their constant slander has on the youth. 

So what else factors into violence in schools?

    The main source of learning during early childhood is the home. Kids learn how to speak, how to act, and how to think from their parents. If parents are not careful to keep racist behaviors out of their children’s lives, it leads to bad behavioral habits in the children. These bad behavioral habits are often the cause of bullying, hate speech, and violent acts in school. These behaviors may not be passed just from parents to children, but also children to other children. When many children succumb to such ideas, they begin to gang up on the targets of those ideas. 

    This is not always the case though. Sometimes students and adolescents reject what they learn form their parents and have completely opposite values. What I found surprising about the PEW research was the support for gun policy proposals. The media leads us to believe that the majority of Americans support a ban on “assault weapons” yet the ban on “assault weapons ranks second to lowest on support for gun policy proposals.” It instead seems like teens are worried about who can obtain firearms and how to prevent people from bringing them into schools. I believe that teens are more educated in this case than many adults and policy makers. As students, they witness firsthand that “rules are meant to be broken” and how easy it is to get around the rules. They know that a ban on firearms is pointless because just because something is banned, does not mean it is prevented nor will that ban be effectively enforced. Metal Detectors in schools are a much more efficient way to prevent school shootings than a ban on “assault weapons.”

What can I do about it?

As an educator, it is important to enforce equality in the classroom and make sure your students to do treat each other differently based on race, gender, background, sexual orientation, or any other factors that that student cannot control. This should not be done explicitly in the sense of calling each student out for what they are and explaining that it should not make a difference. It should be implicitly modeled by showing all students the same respect and ensuring they are in a safe environment where they can come to you if they feel uncomfortable. If acts of discrimination do occur in your classroom, that is when you should explicitly address the issue and explain to the child that they need to keep those ideas to themselves.

References

Graf, N. (2018, April 18). Pew Research on School Shootings. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/18/a-majority-of-u-s-teens-fear-a-shooting-could-happen-at-their-school-and-most-parents-share-their-concern/

Vara-Orta, F. (2019, July 19). Hate in Schools: An In-Depth Look. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/hate-in-schools.html

The Struggles of Being a Teacher and Burnout

Causes of Burnout

     After watching the documentary "Teach," and reading the article “Empirically Derived Profiles of Teacher Stress, Burnout, Self-Efficacy, and Coping and Associated Student Outcomes,” I developed an understanding of what burnout is. "Burnout is the accumulation of responses to extended stressors caused by one’s job" (Herman pg. 91). Some causes of burnout observed in the documentary are: kids failing, students not understanding your lessons, judging themselves too hard, or over planning. Burnout is often not caused by a single one of these factors alone; it is when many of these factors happen all at once that teachers get burnt out.
     Joel Laguna, an AP World History teacher in East Los Angeles, was shown to have experienced burnout in the documentary. He had little time to himself because in addition to teaching during the day, he went to school at night to pursue his Master's Degree. On top of the stress of having little down time, he found that his students did not know how to write papers. As a result he had to reassess his lesson plans and add in a new unit on how to write a paper.  Additionally, his students also were not grasping the concepts that he was teaching. This really got to Joel and caused him to doubt his abilities.
     Another case of burnout observed in the documentary was in Idaho elementary teacher, Shelby Harris. Shelby's school implemented a new system of learning that heavily relied on technology for teaching. At first, her students were very excited about having laptops in the class. After the initial excitement began to die down, the students began to struggle and Shelby was not entirely sure how to help them. She was still learning how to use the new program and so she had to teach herself before she could teach the class. This led to her beginning to doubt her ability to teach and her class suffered for a bit as a result. This idea is backed by the research in the article; "lack of confidence or efficacy may interfere with a teacher’s ability to be effective in meeting the needs of students" (Herman pg. 91). If a teacher is putting themselves down, they will reflect that energy onto the class.
    Lindsay Chinn, 9th Grade Algebra Teacher at Martin Luther King High School in Denver, also used a new method of teaching. Where a traditional classroom has a board at the front of the room for the teacher, her classroom had whiteboards around the classroom for the students. The idea is for the teacher to be observing every student's thought process and problem solving abilities. This method of teaching is highly taxing on the teacher because it forced her to constantly be moving around the room and making sure she paid every student attention. After a while, she found that she was unable to keep up with every student and it began to overwhelm them. She began to doubt whether she was the right choice for this method of teaching and it started to stress her out.
    The common idea in all of these cases was that a lack of ability to teach effectively took a mental toll on all of these teachers. This is their jobs that they work so hard to be able to do properly and suddenly they find themselves unable to perform. Its only natural for this to stress them out and get them down on their luck. All three teachers had to spend extra time outside of school hours trying to figure out how they could come back from this and as a result left them with less time for themselves to de-stress. Without proper time for self-care, burnout was inevitable. I believe that burnout is caused by an abundance of pressure with no little to no time or way to relieve it.

So How do You Prevent Burnout?

    Burnout is the accumulation of stress without releasing it. In order to prevent burnout, you must find a way to keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed. When Joel was struggling with his class, he asked his professor to come observe his class and help him figure out what he was doing wrong. By talking with his professor after his class, he learned that his students may have been receiving the information, but not absorbing it. To fix this, he started making the class more student oriented and had them learn by observing their communities in project-based learning. His students finally began to understand and he was able to rest easy again. Shelby managed to recenter herself by reaching out to the Khan Academy staff and learning how to use the program. As she became more comfortable with the system, she was able to manage her classroom better and was able to cater to her students' needs. She split them up so that fast learners were paired with slow learners and it became a peer tutoring environment. Shelby was then able to relax during class and move around the room as necessary to help those that were still struggling. Lindsay's case of burnout was not too severe because she worked closely with her principal who was there for her every step of the way. They worked together to assess her methods and figure out what she needed to do better. This is a good example of a built in support program because it demonstrates that you are not alone. Your school wants to see you perform well and they will do anything they can to help you.

     In my personal life, I face a lot of stress. I come from a broken household and I work two jobs to support myself through college.  In order to cope with my stress, I see a therapist every week in order to center myself. By having a safe environment to talk about my daily life, the challenges I face, things I enjoy, and things I have to do, I find that I am able to keep a healthy mental state and keep moving forward. My therapist has taught me that stress is not a bad thing. In fact it is important to have and even more important to be aware of. It is next to impossible to be stress free but as long as you have a way of controlling and managing it, you will be just fine. 

Sources

Herman, Keith C., et al. “Empirically Derived Profiles of Teacher Stress, Burnout, Self-Efficacy, and Coping and Associated Student Outcomes.” Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 90–100., doi:10.1177/1098300717732066.

First Post

Introduction

Hi! My name is Richie Kevan. I am a transfer student at Molloy college and I am pursuing a degree in Adolescent Math Education. I am in the 5 year program and am on track to graduate in December of 2022. Some of my hobbies include listening to music, watching football, playing video games, watching anime, and Yoga. My favorite artist is CRAY, favorite team is the Indianapolis Colts, favorite game is Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero, and my favorite anime is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. As far as work, I have 2 part time jobs. I work in the Paint Department at Costello's Ace Hardware in Bethpage and I am a delivery driver for Botto Brother's Hardware in Levittown.