SPED - TLT 404, Fall 2012 - Course record

Owned by Tom Hammond
Last updated: Dec 06, 2012Version comment
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 Session 1 - Thursday, 30 Aug

Before class

  • If you can, get into CourseSite and poke around
  • Purchase copy of the textbook (Amatea, E.S. (2008). Building culturally responsive family-school relationships. Allyn & Bacon – see Amazon page.)

During class (ppt)

  • Brief introductions
  • Going through the first part of the syllabus
  • Online resources for you to use
  • Frameworks / metaphors for the course 
    • Hands up demo
    • Metaphors to work by: Teacher as collaborator, communicator, student
  • Going through second half of syllabus: Assignments we'll be doing
  • Matching game
  • Discuss Self-in-Context assignment
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments
    • Start your WTL thread (and update your profile with a current pic)
    • 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!

NB: Help session on library resources & how to use the portfolio system (Mahara) - WEDNESDAY, 5 SEP. Sessions are 4-7 pm and 7-10 pm in the Mac lab.

 Session 2 - Thursday, 6 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Update your CourseSite profile to include a picture, if you haven't already.
  • Tell me if you know a family that may want to participate in our Family & School Interview project! Do it by filling out this form. 
  • Do your Writing-to-Learn. If you're unsure about using Google Docs (for the personal / private writing), don't worry – we'll discuss this in class on Thursday.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
    • Changes to scheduled topics in next couple of weeks
    • Writing to Learn
  • Conceptual work
    • Sharing artifacts
    • Dimensions of identity; identity as monopolar or multipolar
    • Challenging the model: WEIRD people...and just how weird are we, anyway? 
      • Activity: Name That Norm!
    • Defining culture
    • Personal identity & broader cultural context
      • Special case: religion
    • Models of cultural identity development
    • Identity & cultural context revisited: Privilege and oppression
      • ur-text: McIntosh "Invisible Knapsack" 
      • Going broader: PrivilegeCheck.
      • Two suggested tactics for recognizing the constraints of identity & culture
  • Closure
    • Connection game
    • Discussing Self-in-Context; note newly-created checklist for grading.
    • Discussing fieldwork and Family & School Interview assignment planning. (Seriously? No one has any suggestions for me??)

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments 
    • I'll ask again: Please suggest a family for the Family & School Interview assignment, if you know someone who might like to participate. 
    • Complete class-wide WTL. Remember to make TWO (or more) posts.
    • Complete personal/private WTL.

 Session 3 - Thursday, 13 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • WTL (private AND group)
  • Complete & turn in Self-in-Context assignment.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping – turning in Self-in-Context OK?
  • Conceptual work
    • Draw your family activity
    • Family models, theoretical frameworks
    • Family-school dynamics
  • Closure: MorphThing?

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 4 and THEN Ch. 3
    • Pick one: Reschly, 2008; Carter, 2002; Woolley & Grogan-Kaylor, 2006
  • Assignments
    • WTL
      • Private
      • Group: Post on one of the threads for the articles
    • Work on F&SI project and/or Fieldwork. If you have a field opportunity, LET ME (and Carla) KNOW. If you have a family interview opportunity, LET ME KNOW.

 Session 4 - Thursday, 20 Sep

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • WTL
  • Work on field projects

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
    • Fixed ppt
    • Self-in-Context returned
  • 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.
        • 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
    • Plug for two sources that certainly push my thinking about community, families, and education
      • The documentary Born Into Brothels– VERY uncomfortable to watch, lots of ambiguity to deal with, definitely worth thinking about. The FML Media Center has a copy.
      • The writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I read his blog; you could also consult his memoir (The Beautiful Struggle). Here's an interview he did on NPR about his memoir.
    • Building up your own employability: See the questions on p. 193 – GREAT material for interviews during the "Do you have any questions for us?" stage.

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments

 Session 5 - Thursday, 27 Sep

Before class

  • Complete the reading.

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work: Gender & sexuality (guest presentation by Dr. Christianne Gadd)
  • Looking ahead to the Family & School Interview
    • The role of cultural assumptions in contemporary life & politics, courtesy of Senator Scott Brown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzf2WIJgxwI
    • New, preparatory step for Family & School Interview assignment: At some point in the next two weeks, please complete the following prompts in your private Writing-to-Learn thread.
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 5 (more on families), Ch. 7 (communities)
    • Follow up on one or more community investigations – perhaps something from our activity about the Southside, or some articles about the Harlem Children's Zone, or anything else mentioned in class. (I also posted a reading in CourseSite mentioned in the book: Berg, Melaville, & Blank, 2006: Community & Family Eengagement: Principals Share What Works)
  • Assignments
    • WTL (both private and group)
    • Organize your Neighborhood Walk

 

 Session 6 - Thursday, 4 Oct

Before class

  • Complete readings

During class (ppt)

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 6
    • Harry & Klingner, 2006
    • Blanchette, 2006
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Complete the neighborhood walk assignment

Pacing break - Monday, 8 Oct & Tuesday, 9 Oct 

 Session 7 - Thursday, 11 Oct - NO CLASS due to conference

To complete in Dr. Hammond's absence

  • ...(TBD)...

 Session 8 - Thursday, 18 Oct 

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work
    • Opening anecdote: Classism and a car alarm
    • Class in America
      • 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
        • What do we talk about when we talk about tax policy? Handy (longer-term!) link to the National Taxpayers Union data. (Note that they would strenuously disagree with the argument I'm making, even though I'm using their data.)
        • American History as a vision of progress? A history of competing social classes?
      • 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
      • Ruby Payne and Understanding Poverty. 
      • E.D. Hirsch and cultural literacy.
      • Ron Clark and...whatever label you want to apply to it. Sub-components
      • And to be fair: James A. Banks and multicultural education.
      • And here's a callback to our gender discussion, courtesy of Gina: Senators KB Hutchison and Mikulski's Op-Ed in the WSJ: A Right to Choose Single-Sex Education.
    • Complexity of social encoding of class: Focus on language
      • Selections from the body of research on SES, parenting, and early childhood outcomes 
      • ...and a (humorous) demonstration of how we judge and self-enforce class norms within language, courtesy of Key and Peele.
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments

 Session 9 - Thursday, 25 Oct

Before class

  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

After class

 

 Session 10 - Thursday, 1 Nov - NO CLASS due to conference

(Riding out the storm / recovery!)

 Session 11 - Thursday, 8 Nov 

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Work on fieldwork, F&SI assignments

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Current events time! Discussing the election
    • Questions / comments / observations you want to share? 
    • What are the implications of the election on America's experience of diversity / multiculturalism? Of your awareness of diversity / multiculturalism?
    • Does this have anything to do with schools & classrooms? Curriculum? Students & communities? 
    • My Rosetta Stone to both the election and my (on-going) reaction to it: Bill O'Reilly on the changing nature of the electorate.
  • Conceptual work: 
    • Mandated reporting follow-up. In addition to the document I'll be sharing, see http://delicious.com/tchammond/TLT404+mandatedReporting for more resources. 
    • Language & diversity; linguistic minorities & education
      • Significance of language
        • Who here has studied a language other than English? Who here speaks one? (And how can you tell if someone's American?) 
        • Who here speaks a second (or third? Dare we hope for fourth??) language? What was the context of learning it? Using it? 
        • The challenges of learning another language: mental, physical, emotional – even perceptual! See Ta-Nehisi Coates on learning French; his commenters are even more useful!
        • Examples of things we don't think about
        • Language is more than words; hearing is more than de-coding sound waves – think about language and culture via Amy Walker's 21 Accents video
      • The significance of English – it's not easy to acquire!
        • ESL stages, time-to-mastery
        • Dual coding (Triple coding?)
        • Spoken vs. written (vs. txt? Chat? LOLspeak?)
        • Slang vs. 'marketplace' vs. academic
        • Formal vs. informal writing, genre writing, concept of 'voice'. Example: Mark Twain's writing of Huck Finn's father
        • Think about how you learned it. Example: 'If I was president' / 'If I were president' – formal instruction? Modeling? Or did you never learn it? Could you explain it to someone who was learning it for the first time?
        • English as a high-stakes language (and set of cultural conventions) to learn
      • Flipping the script: We are now in class in Haiti, and I will be speaking Kreyol...very badly, but I'm thinking I'll get away with it....
      • Working with ELLs
        • Awareness – who are the ELL students / families / communities in our area? What are the trends nation-wide? 
        • Standards: Meet (if you haven't already) the PA ELPS
        • Resources: http://delicious.com/tchammond/ESL – anything you can contribute to this??
        • MIND-SET
          • Out-bound (teacher-to-student) action: Translation as a human right. Think about it. 
            • Book that may be of interest: Found in Translation, particularly the anecdote about a mis-translation of 'intoxicado'
            • And look at this! Exact same name, and in fact addressing the exact same topic! Found in Translation.
          • In-bound (student-to-teacher) action: Teach me your language (or culture, pronunciation, etc.)
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
    • Gonzalez, 1995
    • Amatea, Ch. 11 & 13 (for background)
    • optional: MacDonald, 2012 – keep in mind the source!! This author is publishing in the magazine of a conservative think tank. Very family structure-oriented view; culture-of-poverty lens. Ask yourself: What effort does she make to access the funds of knowledge that her subjects have? What details does she choose to highlight? Hopefully, after now being so deep in our semester together, you read this with a different eye than you might have at the start of the semester.
  • Assignments
    • Field work
    • Family & school interview
    • WTL

 Session 12 - Thursday, 15 Nov - NO CLASS 

To complete in Dr. Hammond's absence

  • ...(TBD)...

 Session 13 - Thursday, 22 Nov - NO CLASS due to Thanksgiving Break. Have a great holiday!

Recommended work to keep pace with the assignments

  • If you haven't already, wrap up your field hours & final paper
  • Work on family & school interview
  • Start thinking about your 'teacher resource' assignment

 Session 14 - Thursday, 29 Nov

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Work on field assignment, family & school interview

During class (no ppt this week – everything runs from this wiki, plus the ppt slides I will be using are not my work and confidential to boot, so they can't be reproduced)

  • Loose ends
    • Great resource for introducing diversity  / social justice / community issues in a relevant, contextualized way: Classrooms from around the world – Amazon page; smattering of photos available via Slate article.
    • Lehigh library now has (or will have, once I turn it back in) a copy of "One teacher in 10" (2nd edition) (Amazon page). Definitely worth browsing, whether by geography (Louisville, anyone?), grade level (elementary school? MIDDLE SCHOOL??), or socio-cultural environment (e.g., Benjamin Franklin HS in Philly). (It's also fun to read by content area – I'm imagining that the issues presented in the book occur a little differently for E/LA teachers or social studies teachers than math / sci / foreign language teachers.) I'll be reading some short excerpts just to help demonstrate the importance of not just gay teachers being advocates, but straight teachers being allies as well. 
    • And this segues to an introduction of this week's discussion thread: soliciting suggestions for a TLT 404 independent reading (and/or watching) assignment.
  • Discussion of next session
    • Teacher resource assignment (and example)
    • Any questions about the self-in-context, revisited? 
    • Let's eat! Everyone bring in a dish that says something about you, whether it's your family culture, personal identity, or simply something you like. I'll provide the beverages, plates, utensils, etc. 
    • Do we need to save any time for portfolio work? 
  • Conceptual work: Significance of school and community collaboration: A closing example, focusing upon Thomas Jefferson Elementary
  • Closure: This is an interesting time of year to be in this class. The winter holiday season --> gift-giving --> students may be at a fever pitch over giving and getting (but espec getting...); are there any diversity issues or community connections that can be made? 
    • Everyone's favorite Swedish toy catalog. Do you like happy, Nordic children? Check out pp. 62-63, 66-67, 70-71, etc. 
    • Press coverage and popular reaction via the comment thread
      • Foreign press: UK, via the Daily Mail. 
      • From the US press: NY Daily News. Fantastic bookend to Lois Gold's "The Story of X"
    • And is Sweden weird or are we weird? Well, judge for yourself: Here's the same company's catalog for the Danish market. Contrast their layout of pp. 60-61, for example, with the equivalent from the Swedish catalog (pp. 70-71). 
    • Regardless, hopefully this class helps you see / experience this season with some fresh eyes. If nothing else, you can revel in the sheer cultural insanity of the American understanding of Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa / etc. (And if you enjoy listening to historians talk, try http://backstoryradio.org/happy-holidays-a-history-of-the-season/ You will NOT regret it. Where else can you hear a Jewish professor tell a black Santa Claus enactor how important his work is?)
  • (Do we need to do portfolio work? If so, stick around!)

After class

  • Reading – none! Just wrap up your assignments
  • Assignments: Two items remain, plus whatever you have left from your fieldwork and/or family & school interview project
    • Complete and bring in your teacher resource
    • Complete and turn in your Self-in-Context, Revisited assignment. If you need extra time with this: I'll be happy to accept it by Thursday, Dec 13. 

Session 15 - Thursday, 6 Dec

Before class

  • Complete and bring in your teacher resource assignment!
  • Turn in any remaining work via CourseSite!
  • Don't forget to prepare and bring in some food that has some significance to you!

During class

  • Sharing food
  • Sharing teacher resources
  • Commencement exercise

After class

  • Don't forget to fill out your official Lehigh course eval (emailed to you); please also add anything else you'd like to say (good, bad, whatever) via my anonymous feedback option that you can exercise at any point.
  • Any remaining work due by Thursday, Dec 13. If you need to turn something in after that, email me ASAP!

 

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