Mathematics is typically a huge part of schooling and is seen as one of the major subjects. I find math to be a subject I enjoy and is something I could say I’m fairly okay at but it hasn’t always been like this. Throughout middle school, there was great emphasis on memorizing and just knowing the answer without having to take time to figure it out, however, I was not one of those students and I fully struggled with that…
Canada is one of the most well-known multicultural countries, and with that comes many languages. Most people will speak English (obviously) with the French language being an addition many people know as well since Canada has two official languages, but we as teachers have to go beyond that as many of our students could speak languages we haven’t even thought of. Because of this, they often feel left out when doing speaking assignments, or when educators discuss the French language…
Gender/Sexuality within classrooms is something many schools struggle with and find it difficult to support students who are trans, non-binary, and those who have different sexualities. We see this because many students still use slurs and harmful language to others who are different from what they view as normal, as well as many of the students who identify outside of heteronormative views feel unsafe attending school (this heavily affects LGBTQ+ Indigenous students the most). Obviously, this isn’t okay and will…
Teaching treaty education within schools is so important, no matter the school population or its diversity. In fact, its thought to be even more important within less diverse schools (ones with very few Indigenous students) as it guides students into what is appropriate. This is a huge problem within schools, so it’s not just happening to you but it is very important to keep teaching students about treaties and Indigenous content/perspectives. Why it’s important is as educators it is our…
To be a culturally relevant classroom, it has to aid in the development of students’ competency when it comes to culture and its relevance, as well as raising their social consciousness. How I want this to look in my classroom is that it becomes a place where all my students can relate and have a place to learn about different aspects of cultures. It may be harder to do so as I’m going for science/math which typically does not involve…
The word citizen plays many roles within society and through class discussion, it was found that many people have their own understanding of citizenship. How I understand citizenship is that it is a role within a community and how you choose to act within the community. What I mean by this is that there are many roles within a community and everyone has a part to play (even if you think you don’t you most likely do). Some examples I…
To be a good student in our worlds common sense is to be one who sits quietly during class/instruction, students behave and are not “rowdy”, as well as being part of school activities. A good student will have good grades and test scores (test scores being most important in our common sense). A good student has all of their learning materials and comes to school well-rested and ready for the day. This is not what an actual good student looks…
The topic I chose for this blog post/curriculum critique is affect theory. Affect theory is the theory that seeks to organize affects into categories and to describe their manifestations; which this means that in education, the affect theory is the effect different practices have on students, and the categories we have come up with. The affect theory also clarifies why we have certain policies in education. After defining affect theory, we can see that it has a bigger role in…
The Tyler Rationale is still greatly part of our curriculum today in many ways. As such most of us have experienced some of the ways it was adopted/adapted into our curriculum. One way I experienced the Tyler Rationale during school was the focus on finals/exams as Ralph Tyler believed the final product to be the most important thing when developing a curriculum. Another way I experienced the Tyler rationale was the way things were measured in school, which was mostly…
While the usual definition of common sense is practical judgement by using prior knowledge, Kumashiro makes a new definition in this reading that applies to our education system and what is considered “common sense” to us educators. He said in the reading that “common sense does not tell us that this is what schools could be doing; it tells us that this and only this is what schools should be doing.” What I draw from this is that the common…