What will culturally relevant pedagogy look like, sound like, feel like, in your future classroom?
In order to create a learning environment that is culturally relevant, one must be critically aware and agentive in classrooms, drawing on relevant socio-cultural theories and creating purposeful praxis. As a future teacher, it is crucial to be prepared to teach a multi-cultural classroom. I will provide alternative resources and texts for students to be able to see themselves represented in the classroom. In doing so, the children will reach academic success when the learnings are relevant to their lives and experiences. When providing these resources, it is important that after reading them, you ask the students to reflect on them. The resources can touch on topics like bullying, race, sexual identity. After the reading, I could ask questions like, “how did that make you feel? What do I need to learn?” Because I am in the elementary program of education, it may be more of a challenge to be able to discuss these difficult topics with younger students but they must be talked about.
How will you, as teacher, contribute to the sense of place for your future students?
“Music education allows one to be in culture (Gibson 2008), providing opportunities to experience the traditions that underpin one’s environment that can not only increase their musical understanding but also develop students socially and emotionally, thus strengthening their sense of place” (290). In a community, there are people with all different sorts of backgrounds. To be able to create a sense of place in relation to music education, it is important that as the teacher I will expose students to new and different music. I could invite local artists to showcase their talents to give students the opportunity to see the people that make up the community. For example, when I was in elementary school, I always loved when Indigenous peoples came to our school and sang in their language and played the drums. These types of interactions allow students to be in culture, rather than learning about culture, create a sense of community, and give students a chance to participate in music that encompasses the different cultures in the community. I believe this can be said about all subjects in school. In order to effectively deliver a place-based pedagogy, the teachings need to represent the members of the community.
Hey Amber, I really like the part when you asked “how did it make you feel? “what do I need to learn”. which I think is the perfect question to answer because it gives the student time to really think and provide feedback that is ensuring a positive outcome. also having the indigenous people come to your school is cool, I had the same thing happen to me at my schools back home too.
Hey Amber,
I quite enjoyed reading your blog. I feel as though that you filled some gaps in my own perception of the reading. I think it would be great to be able to have students of all cultures in the classroom represented. We after all as Canadians are a mosiac of the people who came before us. I feel as though having to provide resources for the different students based on whichever culture that they come from would be terribly time-consuming. If we spent the time doing this, I feel as though this would give us less time to make it through our units. I suppose this would be employer-dependent, but just my initial thoughts. I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of using music in the classroom and I felt that we walked the same road when it came to thinking about question 2. Exposing students to different cultures through music seems like something I wanted to do, but did not realize it until I read the article. We could even make some correlations with the cultures that inspired other types of music, as they say, you don’t have the Rolling Stones without Muddy waters.
Thanks
Rob