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SPED - TLT 404, Fall 2015 - Course record

SPED - TLT 404, Fall 2015 - Course record

Nov 23, 2015

Navigation short-cut: Session jump by number

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Session 1 - Monday, 24 Aug

Before class

  • If you can, get into CourseSite and poke around

  • Purchase copy of the textbook

During class (ppt)

  • Brief introductions

  • Course discussion/rationale – why a diversity course? Why this kind of a diversity course?

    • American teachers vs. American students – e.g., recent-ish AP story.

    • Complexity of American educational politics

    • The difficulties of looking in the mirror

      • Personal example from TCH, centering around class

      • Categorical example of professors! Recent op-ed in the New York Times. (See para. beginning, "Professors were more responsive to...")

    • ...plus we're doing this course at Lehigh, which has not had the most distinguished track record, in terms of diversity / multiculturalism / sensitivity...hence the lawsuit. (And if you need some further background, here's an article from the Brown and White. The updates are handy, and the comments are essential reading.)

  • Frameworks / metaphors for the course 

    • Hands up demo

    • Metaphors to work by: Teacher as collaborator, communicator, student

  • Going through the first part of the syllabus

    • Online resources for you to use

  • Going through second half of syllabus: Assignments we'll be doing

  • An ice-breaker: The matching game

  • End of history effect

  • Discuss Self-in-Context assignment

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

  • Assignments

    • WTL

      • In CourseSite, post to class forum (and update your profile with a current pic)

      • Start your individual thread and share it to my gmail address. In your first post, please briefly summarize the prior experiences you have had (if any) in diversity / multicultural ed. Did you take a course? Have a class session focused on identity, culture, or privilege/oppression? Attend a workshop? It doesn't matter if this was in college or in your K-12 experience. Out of these experiences, what worked for you or didn't work for you? What insights did you gain (if any)?

    • Bring in an artifact for your personal sharing. (For example, I’m posting a URL to my flickr feed)

    • Start working on Self-in-Context assignment

    • Please let me know if you have any contacts with traditionally underserved families that might agree to participate in the Family & School Interview project. Just fill out this form. (If you have more than one contact in mind, you can fill it out multiple times.) Thanks!

Session 2 - Monday, 31 Aug

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Bring in an artifact for sharing about yourself

  • Complete class-wide WTL. If you're on top of things, please also start your private WTL thread (via Google Docs or whatever else you like) and share it with me

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

  • Conceptual work

    • Sharing artifacts

    • Dimensions of identity; identity as monopolar or multipolar

    • Challenging the model: WEIRD people...and just how weird are we, anyway? 

    • Defining culture

    • Personal identity & broader cultural context

      • Special case: religion

    • Models of cultural identity development

    • Culture & identity in context: Meet Jeffrey Isidoro (video, article in NYTimes)

  • Closure

  • Tech support things

    • How to start and share a private WTL thread

    • Introduction to digital portfolio stuff, for those who need it

After class

  • Reading

    • Tierney, 2013 (to think about your own growth and change in identity)

    • I also recommend reading linked articles from the ppt or the wiki – consider, in particular, the case of Jeffrey Isidoro. What are the dimensions of his identity? What is his cultural identity development model? Our personal environments and our students' environments are increasingly complex...there's a lot to think about!

  • Assignments

    • Class-wide WTL

    • Private WTL: If you haven't already, set up your personal thread and share it to Dr. H. Suggested topic, but not required: Think back on what you chose to share about yourself in class today. What did that story reveal about you? Think about the stories you choose to tell in other social or professional settings – what image do you seek to put forth? If you really want to dig into things, think also about the stories that you choose not to tell – by editing these stories out of your conversation, what aspects of your identity do you keep hidden or try to suppress from others' image of you? 

    • Complete and turn in your Self-in-Context. Re-read the syllabus description of the assignment to make sure you're hitting the required elements. 

Session 3 - Monday, 7 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Complete both class-wide WTL and do a private WTL entry. Feel free to get started on the vicarious experience of diversity topic, if you like; you can also do the suggested topic or you can write your own thing. 

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping: Questions or concerns about turning in Self-in-context? 

  • Conceptual work

    • Opening activity: After the apocalypse

    • Identity, race, and culture. What is 'white culture'? Is there a 'white race'? 

    • Making identity & cultural more practical and concrete: Privilege and oppression

      • ur-text: McIntosh "Invisible Knapsack" 

      • Going broader: PrivilegeCheck.

      • Two suggested tactics for recognizing the constraints of identity & culture

    • Something more pointed: Concept of "white fragility"

    • Broadening your reference base

      • A habit to establish or continue: Consuming media from viewpoints/funds of knowledge different from your own

      • The "vicarious experience of diversity" topic for your private writing-to-learn thread

      • Another floating private WTL diversity implications within your content area or level.

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

  • Assignments

    • Class forum (in CourseSite)

    • Individual thread (via Google Doc shared to Dr. H): Think back to your own school experiences and/or what you're observing in your current field work. Identify one or more areas where you feel a group of students (and this could be you!) either received a privilege or was oppressed. Explain what the privilege / oppression was, under whose authority it took place, what the community reaction was (if any), etc. How did you feel about it? Did you speak up or take action? 

Session 4 - Monday, 14 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Complete WTL

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

    • Self-in-Context returned: Grading, next steps, questions about any of the above

  • Conceptual work

    • (Thought about balance & diversity ed)

    • (Discussing goals of course, how today's session pivots)

    • Draw your family activity

    • Family models, theoretical frameworks

    • Family-school dynamics

    • Collaborative practice (to be returned to, later)

  • Closure: Floating WTL topic of diversity implications within your content area or level.

After class

  • Reading

    • Grant & Ray, Ch. 2, 3, & 4

    • optional: Harkness & Super, 2006

  • Assignments

    • Please let me know if you have any contacts with traditionally underserved families that might agree to participate in the Family & School Interview project. Just fill out this form. (If you have more than one contact in mind, you can fill it out multiple times.) Thanks!

Session 5 - Monday, 21 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • WTL: No class-wide, just private. 

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

  • Conceptual work: Families and communities

    • Opening activity: Selections from In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms.

    • Families: Life cycle theory, crisis/coping, resiliency

    • Community

      • Again, as with individuals and families, challenge of creating acceptable models, definitions. Typology, yes; functional clarity...not so much.

      • To ground this conversation in a reality: Southside Bethlehem. Let's do a modified KWL activity

        • Establishing the frame: What geographic area are we talking about?

        • K: Write down 5 facts that you know about SSB. For each: How do you know this? Personal experience? Hearsay? Something you read or saw on TV?

        • W: Write down 3 things you want to know about SSB. For each, write down a possible source.

        • Investigation phase

          • Share your Ks and Ws at your table. Can you help one another out in filling in gaps of knowledge? Thinking about resources? Do you have any conflicting knowledge?

          • Turning to (social) media: Without overtly focusing on your 3 "want to know" items, use the following tools to learn more about SSB. Feel free to divide up the labor at your table, or just do a free-for-all. We'll start with a demo with this YouTube clip from April, 2012.

            • Organized media, focusing on Southside results

              • The Morning Call. 

              • Channel 69, WFMZ.

              • The Bethlehem Press. You're probably best off using a Google scrape of their site, so follow this URL to this search for their items related to "Southside."

              • LehighValleyLive.com. (Note that I just had to use 'southside' as the term to get any current results, so some hits are from elsewhere in the LV)

            • Social media. Note that you need to use some surfing smarts here: Find a video or an image that seems fruitful? Look at the related items, look for more items by that user, etc. Also, keep in mind that social media is, by definition, pretty much unfiltered; surf within your own comfort limit.

            • Specialized media

        • Discussion at your table: What did you learn about SSB? What sorts of information did different media channels tend to offer? Try to focus your discussion on funds of knowledge – what funds of knowledge were presented in the organized media? Social media? What funds of knowledge do you think exist within SSB that the organized media might not report? That the university might not know about? 

      • L: Class-wide discussion of what we learned, what we would need to do to investigate further. 

    • Putting the exploration of the Southside into a larger context

      • Research perspectives vs. parent perspectives

      • Schools' community action efforts to support schools and/or support families

      • Support families: Deficit-based approach and/or asset-based approach

      • Real-world examples

        • Broughal as a community school

        • Asset map of Easton

        • Harlem Children's Zone

    • Closure

After class

  • Reading

    • Grant & Ray, Ch. 6 & 7

    • optional readings, giving some opportunities to think about diversity in your content area

      • Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2015 – see charts on pp. 14 and 15...lots of threads to follow from that, if you're interested

      • Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1966 (Pygmalion effect)

  • Assignments

    • Starting working on your Neighborhood Walk!

Session 6 - Monday, 28 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Start working on your Neighborhood Walk!

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

    • Tonight's plan of attack

  • Conceptual work

    • Finishing up last week's tech-mediated community investigation, discussing Neighborhood Walk assignment

    • New topic for this week: Race

      • From communities to race

        • Something I knew about but never really thought about: Redlining. For an overview, consult the Wikipedia article. For a more detailed description of redlining–addressing it as something that pre-dates the New Deal–in a specific location (Richmond), see historian Robert Nelson's "Redlining Richmond" project. (The maps I'm using are pulled from Urban Oasis' archive of digital HOLC maps.)

        • Something I didn't know about until recently: "The Ghetto is Public Policy", focusing on Chicago. Note that the author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, recently expanded this discussion to a long article published in The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations. (See comments on the article here; see the author's discussion of his 'evolution' on the issue here.) The article opens with an extended example of Jim Crow law in the South, immigration to the North, and then the impacts of redlining and other forms of institutionalized racism, culminating with the efforts to fight back against it.

        • Something you probably knew about already: Chinese-American exclusion act, placed in background of other legislation

        • Quote system applied to Jews (and others) in school admissions

        • Chicano experience of the border

      • Race, society and schools, starting with the Carlisle Indian School

      • Unpacking race

      • Considering role of race in social contexts: schooling, labor, even social phenomena such as gun deaths – see CDC report on gun deaths.

      • Education research on impact of race

      • Setting up your reading of Harry & Klingner, 2006, Ch. 5 – think in terms of families and race, especially what happens when educators take a deficit view / family structure view as opposed to a strengths-based view / family systems view

  • Closure

After class

  • Reading

    • Blanchette, 2006

    • Harry & Klingner, 2005

    • Recommended reading: Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" – see especially the material on the nexus of the politics of crime, racism, and schools. Very, very depressing. 

  • Assignments

    • Work on Neighborhood Walk! Note flexibility in due date.

Session 7 - Monday, 5 Oct

Before class

  • Complete reading

  • Work on Neighborhood Walk

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping

  • Conceptual work

    • Finishing off discussion of race, with way too much attention to the KKK. 

    • Opening up discussion of class – let's see how far we get during this session

      • Class inventory activity

      • Sharing experiences of class, class-conciousness

        • Self-disclosure: My middle name is (was) a car

      • Playing mother-may-I with American household income

        • 1979-2003, then we'll go back and do

        • 1947-1979

      • Examples of class as the Forbidden Subject

      • Considering that most of us are (or grew up in) middle class / affluence, and that many students come from less economically advantaged backgrounds, how do we prepare to teach them? Well, here's a handy Framework for Understanding Poverty. 

    • I have an agenda to sell you
      Special case of language & class

      • E.D. Hirsch and cultural literacy.

      • Ruby Payne and Understanding Poverty. 

        • Book.