Equity+and+High+Expectations

**Dimension of Effective Teaching:** Demonstrates Excellence, Equity, and High Expectations for All Students || **Description:** Sets high standards, shows they believe that all students can meet them, and uses a variety of strategies to ensure that all students can in fact meet them. These strategies can include, but are not limited to, identifying and helping students to identify their own strengths and learning needs, building on previous knowledge, and connecting with students by using relevant, authentic themes related to students’ interests and backgrounds. || **Successes:** I always provide opportunities to apply classroom learning to ‘real life experiences’ and practice and apply subject-specific learning strategies. What that looks like in a Spanish classroom is generally setting up scenarios that students might encounter where they need to use Spanish: ordering items on a menu, talking about what they like to do, clarifying a school schedule. At the same time, students are often highly engaged during ‘drill + kill” scenarios such as the dice game, mini white boards, and flyswatter. |||| **Challenges:** I found myself only in the ‘sometimes’ column for encouraging students to consider multiple perspectives when examining opinions, ideas and theories, as well as for offering and eliciting differing perspectives on subject matter during discussions and in writing assignments. I find that I sacrifice these somewhat for the sake of staying the in target language. I would rather than students me more limited in the conversation and stay in Spanish, pushing themselves and taking risks, than drop more often into English in order to express themselves more deeply. So, it continues to be a challenge to reconcile depth and critical thinking with limited language skills. || **Area for Growth:** An ideal area for growth would be using multiple sources to show some contradictions. While I use multiple authentic sources, I rarely use multiple sources on the same topic, and I think this would be a great way of deepening critical thinking skills, as noted above. For instance, we are having some sustainable, fair-trade chocolate farmers from the Dominican Republic come as Equal Exchange guests in two weeks, and I would like to show students some sources that imply that profit comes over people so that they have a frame of reference for questioning the status quo. || **Artifacts:** Wikipost from 3/03/10: Two of the most compelling ways to successfully get reluctant learners to be motivated by learning are by offering choices and by providing open-ended activities to develop creativity, as suggested in the article “Intrinsic Motivation”. The podcast aptly points out that students’ beliefs about their competence in their education-related outcomes also play a significant role, though they use a lot of buzz words without a lot of practical suggestions. In a classroom setting, conveying high expectations can be related to both teachers’ feedback and the assignments that they give. By maintaining demanding learning goals and giving students the tools to attain them - such as modeling, scaffolding and rubrics to check their work against, etc. - these goals can be met. Offering choices and providing open-ended activities are sometimes considered unrealistic, but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if boring assignments lead to unengaged students, which lead to teachers’ beliefs that students can’t handle more. Wikipost on Benefits of Technology Integration 3/09/10: While I agree that technology enhances deeper understanding of content, I found “A Vision of K-12 Students Today” to be overly dismissive of pen and paper learning activities, as if they were inherently dull and low on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Here’s where I see the benefits of technology in my classroom: 1) video clips to elicit discussion and serve as a reference point for subsequent activities 2) in addition to writing pen&paper letters to our penpal in Paraguay, we also follow her blog and see more images (such as eating cow brains and imagining what it would be like to have an anaconda escape) 3) @HomeTutor for students to practice on laptops at their own pace: [|http://www.classzone.com/cz/books/avancemos_1/-book_home.htm?state=IL] 4) on my way to incorporating voice thread (see post to previous discussion) 5) use digital recorders for students to practice hearing themselves speak – and to hold them accountable for their conversations even if I can’t listen to all of them at once Checking out new Web 2.0 tools:  []   [|http://bpsom.wikispaces.com/message/view/-Internet+Cafe/21604779] ||||  **Resources:**   How to Engage and Support Urban Students ~ []  Engaging Schools ~   []  In addition to listening to the “Engaging Schools” podcast, I also listened to the “Como Se Dice – Multilingual and Loving It” podcast, which can also be found on this page.  Teaching for Understanding ~   []  || **Reflection:** The first Wikipost demonstrates that I have consulted resources to consider opinions on and methods of motivating students, which is a characteristic of excellence and equity in teaching. Motivating reluctant students is directly connected to exploring themes that are relevant to students’ lives and interests, though this post shows that I was disappointed by the lack of practical suggestions. Because the online mentoring course has been focusing on ways that technology can increase motivation and enhance understanding of content, in the second post I mention ways that I use technology as part of excellent instruction. I have also developed additional Web 2.0 tools for use in my classroom, as introduced to me in this course. In addition to using the tools to which we have been introduced, this course has spurred me to try additional tools, going above and beyond expectations. In the first linked post, I note that I will follow-up on Patreka’s suggestion to try our Wiggio.com, and in the second post, I recommend the tool Scratch to fellow teachers. || **Future Learning Goals:** To further support my growth in this Dimension, I can learn more about multiple perspectives on many of the cultural themes in the Spanish curriculum, as well as follow-up on plans to integrate Wiggio.com into the classroom. As a way of holding myself accountable, when lesson planning I can note whether I am encouraging students to consider multiple perspectives when examining opinions, ideas and theories, and/or offering and eliciting differing perspectives on subject matter. If I keep track of meeting these goals, I am more likely to incorporate multiple perspectives into my classroom. ||