I really enjoyed the article this week. As all of the articles and stories we have read have done, it caused me to look at practices that I am doing in my classroom. There are a few quotes that really stood out to me from this article that allow me to reflect on. The first one comes from page 36. It states, “ in order for students to be fully seen and heard at school, their multiple identities must be recognized and honored” (Ezell and Daly, 2022). This quote stood out to me, because when we look at ourselves or look at our students, we can usually identify each other with one major characteristic that stands out. For example, we could say the one black student, or the student in the wheelchair, or something like that that stands out. When in reality, everybody is made up of multiple Identities. If I were to look at myself, I could identify as a white Christian female with glasses. In that statement, I identify with four different groups. It is important that we look at people as a whole instead of just one characteristic. Another quote that stood out to me was, “too often, multicultural literature and discussions about identity are viewed as deviations from the official, academic curriculum” (Ezell and Daly, 2022, pg. 37). During my first year of teaching I really thought of it that way. I felt like I had to follow the curriculum and could not talk about what I wanted to. That took away my voice as a teacher because I was worried I would get in trouble. Now I realize not only did it take my voice away, but it took the voice away of my students. My last two years of teaching I have really tried to talk about different cultural events when they come up as well as investigate different cultural topics within our reading curriculum. My students are very curious, so, even if it goes off the curriculum trail, I still think it is important to immerse my students in the world around them. As the article talks about during instructional time “make sure to model listening as the instructor to share the microphone to make room for student voice and encourage partner dialogue” (Ezell and Daly, 2022, pg. 37). I didn’t realize the power pure conversation can have. This is something I have really been working on as a teacher to give the voice back to my students.
As we talked about, giving people a voice is very important. With the political climate that we are in, it is very easy to shut down someone else’s voice who we think is different. We need to work on hearing each other out, and realizing that everyone has a valid opinion and valid experience. Until we all start realizing that, it is going to be very difficult for us to put differences aside and embrace the role that everybody has. My question, for everyone would be, how do we prepare students to have a strong voice and impact on society?
References:
Ezell, S. & Daly, A. (2022). Honoring multiple identities using multicultural literature. Texas Association for Literacy Education Yearbook, 9.
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading the article this week as well. The article re-affirmed for me how important it is to teach our students how to engage in critical conversations with each other. Given our political climate these days, it's even more important now that we help our students to navigate uncomfortable, yet necessary, dialogue. It is difficult to teach our students to express themselves, and to also see each other as a whole instead of just one characteristic. In smaller districts, students might not have many opportunities to interact with diverse groups, but using multicultural text can get us going in the right direction. We can help to drive change by giving our students opportunities to interact with characters in ways that they might not interact with their peers, providing for them some dialogical rehearsal for life beyond the boarders of our small towns.
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteWow, your last paragraph is powerful. I love how you said, "We need to work on hearing each other out, and realizing that everyone has a valid opinion and valid experience." I totally agree. I think part of this could be how we implement conversations and opinions into our classrooms. Building a sense of respect among your classroom community and teaching the students how it's okay to disagree... respectfully. We like to use sentence stems in our classrooms that are I agree/disagree BECAUSE. We want people to be okay with agreeing and disagreeing but also having a reason and talking through it. I love telling students that I do this with my friends in conversations so that I can understand where they are coming from. There have been many times I agree with a friend, but I ask them, "Well, why do you think that?" and they don't have a reason why. Sometimes, they think I am disagreeing with them when in reality I want to understand why they have that opinion. I think when students can see us as adults have conversations like this, it only exemplifies how people can disagree and still get along.
Thank you for sharing!
Sam