In order to be able to maximize engagement among multilingual students it is a smart idea to include them into the daily conversations. Some of the strategies to do this can be to have the students share some of their home language to  the rest of the class or to allow them to have some work in their home language to be shown to the class or you can even encourage the students to do research for school projects in their home language. Some ways that would be helpful to integrate multicultural instructional strategies into the classroom could include having examples of students works in varying languages, you can have the students do assignments in either their home language or in a multi-language manner, another way could be to have students with different home languages to collaborate on group projects together. There are many ways to include multilingual students in the classroom and to include their work as well. It is not hard to do these things and it will help the student to feel safer and not alone when in a school where most students do not share the same home language as them.

Growing up I noticed that there was a huge problem with discluding the lgbtq+. Not even just disculusion but I never remembered ever having a conversation within school about what it is or what it means to be a part of. In our school we even had 2 or 3 people that were transgender, and it was never brought to attention. I don’t think that the people should have been singled out but it should have been at least talked about what it means to be transgender. With this not being a conversation that was started, it led to those people being bullied or discluded which is very unfair when they are just trying to be themselves.

I think in order to help this situation, I believe that the conversation should be brought up earlier. I think that it should be a normal thing to be a part of the lgbtq+ and not anything that someone has to second look at. By starting the conversation earlier and bit by bit so that it is not super overwhelming when people first find out about it I think that it will help with people not being shocked when someone comes out as gay or transgender ect. 

I want my future classroom to be a safe space for all students. I want all of my students, whether I have them in my class or not, to feel safe and secure in my classroom. I also plan on trying my best to answer any question students may have to the best of my ability. I will not disclude someone from a conversation or from any work or treat them any differently just because they identify differently than some people. 

In my future classroom, I will allow students to feel safe with their cultural identity and encourage them to learn more about their identity. I will do this by helping them out with their research and by including things in the classroom for each culture. For example, for math problems, instead of doing the typical “tyson buys 100 watermelons…” I will include names from other cultures such as indigenous and have the problems also be indigenous related. I will allow my students to feel open about discussing their culture as well as I will want them to discuss and debate with other students about different ideas from different texts. I will allow the students to debate their answers instead of answering it for them or sharing what I think because this will allow them to think more critically. 

I will also allow students to explore and share who they are through music. Music can be a great tool to find your sense of self and to share to others what that may look like. I will allow and encourage students to express themselves through music, this may be by performing or by sharing what music they relate to. Music can be a great way to engage students into the curriculum and to focus their engagement. I want my future classroom to be a safe space for students from all cultures and i want them to feel safe expressing themselves and to learn more about who they are and where they came from.

I believe that hip hop would be a great way to spice things up in our classroom, however, I had never thought about the idea until reading Akom’s Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis. I think hip hop would be a great way to promote social justice and youth activism. People love watching hip hop, not only that but it can also be fun to do. However, people don’t just do hip hop for fun, they do it as a way to express themselves, almost as if it were a language. Akom states that hip hop has been the most influential cultural movement for youth and young adults in the world since the 1970’s (p. 55). This being said, it is a great way to get your students attention. There is often a stereotype around hip hop where people assume it only happens in the streets and that its just for fun. This however is not the case and it can be used for many things, such as teaching. I see no reason why we should not include hip hop in education, not only is it fun but it also can keep students engaged while still teaching them something important. 

My understanding of citizenship is where you belong, as well as how you treat your community. If you live somewhere, you are a citizen, but that does not mean you are a good citizen. You have to treat your community well and put in an effort to society in order to be a good citizen. However, I had never thought about how many layers to citizenship there are.

As educators, it is our role to  teach more about treaty education. Right now, there is not a whole lot that is being taught on the subject and we need to do better. By teaching more on this subject, we will be able to allow the new generations to understand the significance indigenous languages and practices. Being indigenous is an important part of who people are, and even if you are not indigenous you should learn to respect that. In order to be able to properly respect that, we need to teach the students more about it and the impotence of it. This will make our students better citizens because they will respect the cultures that exist around them.

A curriculum is “an official statement of what students are expected to know and be able to do” according to the levin article. I had never thought too much about how a curriculum was established, all I knew was that it took a lot of people and a lot of work. The first step in creating a new curriculum is bringing groups of people and representatives together in order to decide and compose a draft of what has to be changed or revamped. This often takes a couple of years to decide what needs to be changed. Education governance involves national, local, and school participation.  The next step is for districts to decide what subjects they want to include in their schools as well as how they want to teach those subjects and how long they will have to teach. Once this is completed, the education stakeholder groups take it from there where they will begin to review the new curriculum and make any necessary changes. It surprises me how much of these decisions that are involved in making changes to the curriculum come down to government officials. These government officials are not teachers or students or anyone who may use the curriculum so why do they get so much say in what goes into it.

The Government is one major connection between the treaty article and the curriculum. Both the curriculum and treaty education have to go through the government, and are implemented by the government, as well as they have to be seen and approved by many people. Both treaty education  and the Saskatchewan curriculum include goals, outcomes, and indicators that are expected to be met as well as instructions that must be followed in order to meet these goals. I can imagine that tensions may arise because the treaty education is approved and being implemented by non-indigenous people. Indigenous have different values that most of the rest of Saskatchewan’s population, and it may cause tension when their specific values do not get included in their education.

Levin, B. (2008). Curriculum policy and the politics of what should be learned in schools. In F. Connelly, M. He & J. Phillion (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 7 – 24). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2013). Treaty education outcomes and indicators. SK: Author.

The commonsense of being a good student refers to a student who is quiet, listens carefully and takes notes. The student also has a natural gift for being able to take tests and exams and achieve a good mark without extra help from the teacher. However not all students fit into this category, does  that mean that they are not a good student? 

Kevin Kumashiro creates the definition of what the ideal good student is stating that a good student is someone that is “completing certain assignments and repeating on exams the correct definitions or themes or analyses in a strong essay format” (21). The problem with this definition is that it does not include everybody. A student does not have to be able to memorize and learn by only listening to what the teacher has to say to be a good student. You can be a good student even if you are someone that cannot sit still for long periods of time and require a little extra effort in order to obtain the facts needed for an exam or test. 

In history, the idea of what makes a good student was close to the same idea as it is now. History’s definition of a good student has formed what today’s definition states. In “A History of Education,” they describe students as hopeless in need of direction. They describe “man [as] helpless and ignorant” and “without the strength and knowledge necessary to maintain an independent existence” (2). Education in this time period is necessary in order to create a new generation. One can infer that a good student in that time period would be one who listens and obtains all the information that the educators give to them, without the need of classification. One must sit quietly and become educated on what it means to be independent. This is similar to today’s standard, educators must teach students how to be independent but in a more subtle way, thus meaning that the student must require less classification from the teacher to be a good student. 

F.V.N Painter (1886) A history of education. https://archive.org/details/historyofeducati00painiala

Kevin K. Kumashiro (2010) Against Common Sense https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JMhySclU27gK-Vo3v4Oesfzp3dVKqG9r/view

Hyphenated Americans Article

I decide to approach finding a source by searching up some of the names that in a way spoke to me in order to see if what they did interested me. I searched up about ten names on the John Archer Library site before I searched Nina Archer and found this article, which I found very intriguing. The article I chose is called “Listening to Hyphenated Americans: Hybrid Identities of Youth from Immigrant Families” by Nina Asher.

The source talks about how any culture differing from the majority has had to be hyphenated. For example, the author talks about Asian Americans. These students that may or may not have been born in America or Asia, have to attempt to fit into the stereotypes of their culture. An Asian may be born in America and their first language may be English, but because of their background, people automatically fit them into a certain stereotype. And, at home they will also get put into a different stereotype because their parents will see them differently than how the schools sees them.

Not only do these kids, who come from all different cultures and backgrounds, have to attempt and feel as though they must fit these certain stereotypes, but they must do so while all being taught the same curriculum. The author examines how these hyphenated identities come to be, how they change between cultures, and how they relate to the curriculum that they are being taught. In order to understand and help fix these assigned stereotypes, the author suggests that more studies, research and documentation needs to be done so that we can bring light to the struggles of these students who have to create two identities for themselves, one at home and one at school.

My next step for assignment one would be to find two more articles. I am hoping I will be able to find one article that is from the Canadian perspective but has some of the key points. Possibly with indigenous peoples and public schools in Canada and how that relates to the Asian-Americans and in American public schools. Another article that I think could be interesting would be an article that defends the curriculum and how the author believes that they can create one singular curriculum to fit every student’s needs.

Asher, Nina. “Listening to Hyphenated Americans: Hybrid Identities of Youth From Immigrant Families.” Theory into Practice, vol. 47, no. 1, 2008, pp. 12–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/00405840701764680.

Curriculum development from a traditionalist perspective is widely used across schools in Canada and other countries. Think about: (a) The ways in which you may have experienced the Tyler rationale in your own schooling; (b) What are the major limitations of the Tyler rationale/what does it make impossible; and (c) What are some potential benefits/what is made possible.

The Tyler rationale method is examined in the readings from  Smith Curriculum Theory and Practice. This method is described as being very technical. It almost takes the teachers way of teaching out of the situation and make the teachers focus on the end result, what they are supposed to learn, instead of the learning itself. In the past, I have had teachers that seem to use this method of teaching. Instead of allowing you to learn at your own pace and in your own way, they were more concerned with having you already know the material. by them doing this, it made learning even harder because I was not given the chance to do it in my own way and the teachers were to preoccupied to focus on the learning process.

The Smith Curriculum Theory and Practice article examines many limitations from the Tyler rationale. the first of which being that it may take away from the learners. This rationale is too focused on the end result and “turning teachers into technitions” that it does not give the learning process any room to change, the teachers are tole what the children must know an dhow they will teach them. another limitation is that this rationale expects that all students act the same and will react to being told what to do in the same positive manner. this is not true however, behaviour can not be “objectively, mechanically measured.” This rationale majorly impacts the pedagogic practice of teachers. it allows no room for teachers to have their own teaching style, making it impossible for them to create their own pedagogy.

There are many limitations to this rational as outlines in The Smith Curriculum Theory and Practice readings but, the source also outlines some advantages to the Tyler rationale. this way of approaching the curriculum is very organized, very systematic. this allows for the lesson plans to also be very organized and the teachers know exactly what their students needed to have learned, making it easier to evaluate.