My Future Classrooms Sense of Place and Atmosphere!
Thinking about how I want my future classroom to be culturally relevant reminds me of some of the teachers I had growing up. I do feel fortunate for the teachers I had and some of them being of Indigenous decent. I remember in my grade three class learning how to make pemmican and listening to stories about my teacher’s culture. I think about how I can incorporate other cultures into my classroom and how to explain the importance of other cultures to younger students. Literacy is a good area to incorporate different cultures. Reading to younger students books like Henrys Freedom Box, Rough Faced Girl, The Colors of Us, Same Same but Different and Hair Like Mine are all great books to bring awareness of other cultures and identities to your classroom. I am all about building connections with students and making sure they know I care! I want my future classroom to feel safe, look cozy and warm and sound respectful, but questioning allowing room for growth and learning among peers. I also strongly believe in building connections with my fellow educators and peers and learning from them and getting them to help teach me. In the article “Culturally relevant pedagogy and critical literacy in diverse English classrooms: A case study of a secondary English teacher’s activism and agency” by Ann. E Lopez she comments, “it is important that teachers recognize that this work cannot be done alone and that collaboration is important.” The reason why collaboration is important to build your futures classrooms look, sound and feel is because it allows teachers to listen to others who potentially have more experience than I do. It leaves space to question how to appropriately go about culture. In my EAE class we learned about “Culture Appropriation and Culture Appreciation” in the article Moving from Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation written by Hsiao- Cheng (Sandrine) Han. She wrote it is important to be aware of how you are “speaking for others or representing them in fictional as well as legal, social, artistic, and political work [as] appropriate or proper, especially when individuals or groups with more social, economic, and political power perform this role for others without invitation” (Han p.9). I think the most important thing is to just be aware and teach culture with acknowledgement.
Sense of place and belonging is important to teach our students. Making connections to their communities and surrounding environments will help them plan for a better tomorrow and promote awareness on how they can improve the world we live in. If you are not following Garrick Schmidt on twitter you need to start. I went to high school with Garrick, and he is definitely incorporating place based learning in his teachings. I will be using him as a resource to broaden my teachings in my future classrooms. Engaging the students in their own community will help them connect to the stories or that area of their community and be proud of where they are living. Place based education I think involves the students more and they are more actively involved and participating when you can incorporate a sense of space into their learnings.
Shana!
Hi! I do not have twitter! tell me more of Garrick because I am sturggling to grasp the connection from place to an improvment in academic success!
also, great suggestions on books, how do you already know so many titles?
Cheers!
You can Youtube some videos on Place-Based education to get some more ideas around what it is all about. I honestly learned most of what I know about it from my Environmental Education class I took in the spring (ESCI 302). I was an Educational Assistant for 9 years before coming back to University and I also was the Library Assistant at the school for 8 years that is where my knowledge for the books has come from!
Hey Shana, I really enjoyed the points you made about making your future classroom culturally relevant. Including literacy as one form of resource for your students is a great idea! I really liked the quotes you pulled out from the articles this week. I believe when teachers work together and collaborate with one another incredible ideas can come from it. Being able to create a safe place for students in the classroom and to have their own opinions is something that I would want in my future classroom as well. Having a good relationship with my students is a major goal of mine. Great post, thanks for sharing.
Thanks, It is nice to build our knowledge off of each other in this class. Collaboration is key to success I believe.
I think it’s great that you have memories and experiences as early as grade 3 that are positively influencing what kind of classroom you want to teach and learn in. It reinforces that even as young as a grade 3 student, you are still learning life long lessons. What are some other methods you may decide to introduce into your future classroom that incorporate cultural pedagogy besides literacy and readings? I agree with you that it is paramount for students to have a sense of belonging in a classroom. Place based education is a great way to assist in doing so! Great read 🙂
Christian
I think two other areas of study that would be easy to incorporate other cultures would be in Social Studies and Arts Ed. Heck even Phys Ed it would be fun to introduce different cultures games into your Phys Ed curriculum. There is so many opportunities I think to incorporate other cultures you just need to read your students and make sure you are doing it with appropriate intentions and not just making “dream catchers” just for fun, but explaining the cultural values behind why you are teaching about it.
I defiantly think that our past teachers have an impact on how our teaching will be, whether it be from things we enjoyed or things that we can improve for our students. Do you think it will be difficult to allow for enough place based learning but still be structured enough to making sure everyone is getting the same information? I will have to look at the books you mentioned, they sound like they will be very helpful and informative.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I think with my first few years of teaching I will struggle to fully adapt to exploring place-based education. I think it will take time and definitely taking ideas from co-teachers and applying them it will get easier with age and knowledge.