Your blog posting should include the following information: Name of event, organizer and location, reflection in which you summarize the event. Discuss what you learned, what it makes you think as an educator and how it is connected to the themes of the course.
Remember: It is a short reflection in which you informally share your experiences with your colleagues. Please read and post comments on each others postings as well.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
NYCoRE Workshop Talk
Hi All:
I am so curious to know what workshop everyone attended and what it was like. Please post here about the workshops you attended, materials that may be useful, websites and other info!
"Talking Back to the World: Using Poetry/Performance to Protest Injustice"
This workshop was about writing poetry for social action. The first thing that we did was watch a video of the presenters' students performing a spoken word poem about public education and how they feel about it. After we watched the video, we all contributed to a word word around the words "public education". Then we read a kind of poem called, epigraph, which is a poem that starts with a short quotation or saying, intended to suggest a theme. Below this quotation is the response of the poet to it (will have the final poem below). After understanding what this kind of poem entailed, we moved on to the writing process of the poem that started with choosing a quote from a list provided to write our epigraph poem. These epigraphs all touched upon public education worthy of a response. This is where I found the connection the social justice, because we were given the opportunity to write back to a quote that was provoking. The quote I chose to respond to was: "Classes in Arizona may not be designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; teach political views that encourage overthrow of the U.S. governement; or promote resentment toward a race or class of people; and advocate ethnic solidarity. - House Blll 2281". To start the poem we used a graphic organizer and a poem checklist that served as a mini-rubric. I have examples if anyone is interested. After creating our epigraph poems, we were to work in groups with other people in the room. Within each group, everyone selected their favorite stanza from their poems. We were then charged with creating one single poem (we didn't include each of our epigraphs because we weren't responding to the same one", and add some performance pieces to it such as body movement, line echo, acting out, repetition etc. My group and I came up with the following poem:
"A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation.
How can we advocate ethnic solidarity but overthrow the rights of the people, the books they read, and the classrooms they teach?
A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation.
Since when is the hunger, thirst for knowledge and betterment of self deemed an offense, punishable as though a crime?
A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation."
*What I really loved about this workshop was the presenters gave us very useful tools and ways to teach our kids in any grade. As a hands-on learner, the workshop running as lesson really worked for me, having the whole group discussion, then independent work and then guided work to achieve a final product. I will definitely consider using this activity to answer some quotes or words in social action.
The workshop began with a discussion on the impact a positive school climate has on its students' personal and academic development and success. Students in school with a positive climate are more likely to feel connected to the school, have higher self-esteem, autonomy, and individuality, and demonstrate improved relationships with teachers and peers and have improved testing scores. This creation of a positive school climate was linked to racial identity development people of color and the white racial identity development models. I learned that even though the models are developmental, it is possible to skips steps as well as go back and forth between steps. We quickly read through the models and used them to determine individuals racial identities within a case study. To conclude, we discussed strategies to develop an anti-racist identity. The strategies can be used to develop one's own sense of racial identity.
This workshop helped me identify where I am within my development of racial identity. I learned that my racial identity can impact the type of relationships I build with my students, school, and community, which makes it an important characteristic to understand as an educator. For example, color-blindness hinders building a relationship with a student, parent, or colleague because it invalidates the person's experiences. This can lead to poor self-esteem or disengagement of learning within the classroom. Please let me know if you would like a copy of the models, case study, and strategies. I cannot post pictures in a reply, but I'd love to share.
"Talking Back to the World: Using Poetry/Performance to Protest Injustice"
ReplyDeleteThis workshop was about writing poetry for social action. The first thing that we did was watch a video of the presenters' students performing a spoken word poem about public education and how they feel about it. After we watched the video, we all contributed to a word word around the words "public education". Then we read a kind of poem called, epigraph, which is a poem that starts with a short quotation or saying, intended to suggest a theme. Below this quotation is the response of the poet to it (will have the final poem below). After understanding what this kind of poem entailed, we moved on to the writing process of the poem that started with choosing a quote from a list provided to write our epigraph poem. These epigraphs all touched upon public education worthy of a response. This is where I found the connection the social justice, because we were given the opportunity to write back to a quote that was provoking. The quote I chose to respond to was: "Classes in Arizona may not be designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; teach political views that encourage overthrow of the U.S. governement; or promote resentment toward a race or class of people; and advocate ethnic solidarity. - House Blll 2281". To start the poem we used a graphic organizer and a poem checklist that served as a mini-rubric. I have examples if anyone is interested.
After creating our epigraph poems, we were to work in groups with other people in the room. Within each group, everyone selected their favorite stanza from their poems. We were then charged with creating one single poem (we didn't include each of our epigraphs because we weren't responding to the same one", and add some performance pieces to it such as body movement, line echo, acting out, repetition etc. My group and I came up with the following poem:
"A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation.
How can we advocate ethnic solidarity but overthrow the rights of the people, the books they read, and the classrooms they teach?
A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation.
Since when is the hunger, thirst for knowledge and betterment of self deemed an offense, punishable as though a crime?
A cry to humanity rings out across the Nation."
*What I really loved about this workshop was the presenters gave us very useful tools and ways to teach our kids in any grade. As a hands-on learner, the workshop running as lesson really worked for me, having the whole group discussion, then independent work and then guided work to achieve a final product. I will definitely consider using this activity to answer some quotes or words in social action.
Workshop: School Climate and Racial Awareness
ReplyDeleteThe workshop began with a discussion on the impact a positive school climate has on its students' personal and academic development and success. Students in school with a positive climate are more likely to feel connected to the school, have higher self-esteem, autonomy, and individuality, and demonstrate improved relationships with teachers and peers and have improved testing scores. This creation of a positive school climate was linked to racial identity development people of color and the white racial identity development models. I learned that even though the models are developmental, it is possible to skips steps as well as go back and forth between steps. We quickly read through the models and used them to determine individuals racial identities within a case study. To conclude, we discussed strategies to develop an anti-racist identity. The strategies can be used to develop one's own sense of racial identity.
This workshop helped me identify where I am within my development of racial identity. I learned that my racial identity can impact the type of relationships I build with my students, school, and community, which makes it an important characteristic to understand as an educator. For example, color-blindness hinders building a relationship with a student, parent, or colleague because it invalidates the person's experiences. This can lead to poor self-esteem or disengagement of learning within the classroom. Please let me know if you would like a copy of the models, case study, and strategies. I cannot post pictures in a reply, but I'd love to share.