SPED - TLT 404, Summer 2014 - Course record

Owned by Tom Hammond
Last updated: Jun 23, 2014
15 min read

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 Session 1 - Wednesday, May 21

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
  • Course discussion/rationale – why a diversity course? Why this kind of a diversity course?
    • American teachers vs. American students – e.g., recent AP story.
    • Complexity of diversity (in American context?), via a Key & Peele skit.
    • 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 year, 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 - Wednesday, 28 May

Before class

  • Complete readings (in CourseSite)
  • Do WTL
    • Class forum (in CourseSite – two postings) on the topic of metaphors for teaching
    • Private thread – this is what you're supposed to create on your own in Google Docs and then share to my Gmail address. If you need help with this, let me know. Topic = prior experiences in diversity classes (see above)
  • Work on self-in-context assignment
  • If you have any leads that I can use in matching folks up for family & school interviews, please let me know! I created this handy form to collect suggestions. (If you have more than one contact in mind, you can fill it out multiple times.)
  • Don't forget to bring in an artifact for sharing something about your personal background!

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
    • How are things coming with the Google Docs? Questions about portfolios? Time reserved at end of class for this.
    • School placement request from Carla K.
  • Social formation: We didn't get to our 'Connections' game last week – let's play it tonight.
  • 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
  • Help session with using Google Docs for private writing-to-learn; working with portfolio system

After class

  • Reading
    • McIntosh, 1988
    • PrivilegeCheck – select any THREE (or more!) areas of privilege that you may experience.
    • (Please do take a look through the ppt – all of the studies I draw upon are named in the Notes section and you can find the articles in our class bookmarks list – https://delicious.com/tchammond/TLT404. The WEIRD article is particularly worth checking out – lots of great examples in there and it can be paired up with other interesting stuff. For example: Did you know that Japan uses a *completely* different system for identifying street addresses? We share a certain pattern for making spatial references – as described in the WEIRD article – and yet we approach a pretty basic urban need in opposite ways.)
  • Assignments 
    • Complete and turn in your Self-in-Context assignment by uploading it to CourseSite. Don't forget to look at the assignment description in the syllabus, particularly the grading checklist.
    • Writing-to-learn
      • 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 3 - Friday, 30 May

Before class

  • Turn in Self-in-Context paper.
  • Complete reading
  • Complete whole-class WTL & individual WTL

During class (ppt)

  • Current events
    • Death of Maya Angelou – had never stopped to investigate her full bio, just slices
    • Example of discussion of oppression / non-oppression: The #YesAllWomen tag started in reaction to #NotAllMen, started in reaction to the Isla Vista shootings of last week.
    • Upcoming film opportunity: If You Build It. Screening on Monday, June 16 at SteelStacks (pending more people signing up), would overlap with our classtime – open to devoting a class session to the film and the Q&A that will follow. What say?
  • Housekeeping
    • New student (sort of)
    • Questions / difficulties with self-in-context
  • Conceptual work
    • 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
    • Amatea: Read Ch. 4, THEN Ch. 3
  • Assignments
    • WTL
      • Private – on your own!
      • Group: Topic is up in CourseSite (family-school interaction) – make first post by Sunday, second on Monday.
    • Work on F&SI project and/or Fieldwork.
    • Watch the trailer for If You Build It – it's 3 minutes or something. On Monday we'll discuss whether we want to take class time to see this and participate in the discussion on Monday, June 16.

 Session 4 - Monday, 2 June

Before class

  • Complete reading
  • Do WTL (both private and group)

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.
        • 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 (1st ed.) or 191 (2nd ed) – GREAT material for interviews during the "Do you have any questions for us?" stage.

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 5
    • Amatea, Ch. 7
    • Follow up on one or more of the community investigations mentioned in class!
  • Assignments
    • WTL
      • group (posted in CourseSite)
      • private (open topic)
    • Plan for your Neighborhood Walk!

 Session 5 - Wednesday, 4 June

Before class

  • Complete the reading.
  • Organize your Neighborhood Walk (via the group writing-to-learn thread)
  • Private WTL. Maybe use this session to complete one of the 'floating' topics?

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
    • Setting up Family & School interviews
  • Conceptual work: Race/ethnicity
    • 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
    • John Dewey on schools and society
    • Man is the animal that teaches (relevant YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48rhtgtNxRI )
    • School IS society – revisiting cross-cultural boundaries with "SooLing" scenario
    • 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
  • Closure
    • As always, apologies in advance if this misses the mark, but let's turn to Key & Peele for an implied statement about race and norms: "Substitute Teacher"
    • Closing thought from Lisa Delpit that's worth thinking deeply on, reinforcing needs for a strengths-based approach to teaching & schooling.

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 6
    • Harry & Klingner, 2006
    • Blanchette, 2006
  • Assignments
    • WTL
    • Work on other assignments!

 Session 6 - Friday, 6 June

Before class

  • Complete readings

During class - NO IN-CLASS MEETING

  • (Online activities TBD)

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments: If you haven't already, conduct your Neighborhood Walk!!

 Session 7 - Monday, 9 June

  • Before class
    • Complete reading to prep for gender & sexuality discussion: Gold, Kimmel, Katz
  • During class (ppt)
  • After class
    • Complete (if you haven't already) your Neighborhood Walk write-up.
    • Group WTL (in CourseSite) – gender and/or sexuality in the classroom/curriculum 
    • Private WTL: What are your own experiences of being normed in terms of gender or sexuality? For example, what is the first moment in which you had an awareness of "I'm a boy" or "I'm a girl" (or, to address sexuality, "I like girls" or "I like boys")? What messages were conveyed at that time? Do you feel this early experience has largely helped you or hindered you in your later development in terms of your gender/sexual orientation? 
    • Reading: Please explore one or more of the links from the material above

 Session 8 - Wednesday, 11 June

Before class

  • Turn in your Neighborhood Walk assignment.
  • Complete reading
  • Complete WTL (both group and indiv

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
      • 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 my agenda?
    • Special case of language & class
  • Closure: Connection game

After class

  • Reading
    • Select 3 or more items from the "Handouts" list on EdChange.org (I am particularly fond of the "Taco Night" piece by Paul Gorski)
    • Follow up on 2 or more items linked above from tonight's session or else identified in the ppt's Notes section
  • Assignments
    • Complete either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project – we're pushing this back
    • Work on your Field Experience and/or Family & School Interview project

 Session 9 - Monday, 16 June

Before class

  • Turn in either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project. -As noted above, this is pushed back
  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work
  • Closure

After class

  • Reading
  • Assignments
    • Complete either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project

 Session 10 - Wednesday, 18 June

 Before class

  • Turn in either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project

During class

  • Housekeeping – flipping topics
  • Conceptual work: Culture & acculturation
    • Immigration in the United States
    • Culture & acculturation
    • Nexus of race, culture, and education currently colliding: NYTimes article and video.
    • 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. 
            In-bound (student-to-teacher) action: Teach me your language (or culture, pronunciation, etc.)
            • 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.
    • Tools for educating (yourself)


After class

  • Complete either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project.

 

 

 Session 11 - Monday, 23 June 

Before class

  • Turn in either your Field Experience paper or your Family & School Interview project
  • Complete reading

During class (ppt)

  • Housekeeping
  • Conceptual work: Language & diversity; linguistic minorities & education
    • "Multiplied challenges" of under-served ELLs
    • 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
      • Example of 'push back': English-only laws via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement 
    • 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?? An emerging area for consideration: Mobile tools, such as http://jibbigo.com/
      • 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.). Think of this as a form of 'reciprocal teaching' – described at NCREL; see slightly more detailed entry in Wikipedia.
  • Tools for educating (yourself)
  • Closure: You need to peel back the layers of ridiculousness (and I need to provide some context), but this clip of Flight of the Conchords captures some truths about human behavior around culture, immigration, and the challenges of our assumptions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs_rXxi0zhM

After class

  • Reading
    • Amatea, Ch. 8 and 14. The other chapters we're skipping are neat resources, feel free to peruse them as needed (e.g., Special Ed classrooms/contexts; families in crisis)
  • Assignments
    • Complete your Teacher Resource project. Also bring in a copy ready to share with your classmates.
    • Prepare food and bring it in to share!
    • Make sure you're able to post your artifacts to your portfolio (once they're graded and ready to go) 

 Session 12 - Wednesday, 25 June 

Before class

  • Turn in Teacher Resource project. Also bring in a copy ready to share with your classmates

During class

After class

  • Turn in Self-in-Context, revisited.


...go back to top?

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