WOW!!!!!
My first Promising Practices. . . Culturally Responsive
Curricula in STEM. . . Keynote Address by Dr. Christopher Emdin: “#HipHopEd(ucators)
STEMming the Tide of Disinterest in Education”
I know that the essential part of this post is to discuss
how I will take what I’ve learned today and use it in my classroom, but before
I can begin to explain that let me just say I’m still awestruck by what I head
today and by the amazing speech Dr. Emdin gave. So even though there were two
workshops from which I will also share some great tools I can use I feel I must
start with Dr. Edmin’s thoughts.
My goal is to use his entire philosophy in my classrooms.
One major point is the idea of “reality pedagogy”; the idea that your
instruction and methods of delivery will be specific to the individuals in
front of you. This means that you will not teach the same information in the
same way to every class but that true equity comes from a connection to the
individual and teaching to their “cultures” or understandings. This means I
will understand ahead of time that each student comes in with their own reality
and rather than I assume we share one or I understand theirs, I take the time
to ask then listen to what theirs may be and bring it into the curriculum.
Besides integrating different cultures into the curriculum,
another tool I will use is bringing the curriculum to their experiences. Both
workshops I went to touched on this idea. The first discussed outdoor
classrooms (for example, the beehive lecture are and exhibit at RIC) and the
other was about community-based learning projects. So I want to get to know my
students and their communities, I want to take them out of the classroom both
virtually and physically to connect the abstract ideas their learning to
literally their backyards and the businesses and people around them.
Additionally in the community workshop we discussed how difficult it can be to
create problem-based learning in K-12 school systems with so much pressure and
prioritization of other aspects. I want to learn to make this happen however. I
want to create authentic learning models where students are presented with the
actual issues they and their neighbors, friends or family deal with every day
and use that as the basis for student inquiries and solutions.
A huge key to being successful at these things is also
something new I was exposed to at Promising Practices which I’d like to take
advantage of in my own classrooms. It’s the idea of establishing connections.
This means outside the school within the community; establishing connections
between student projects and different organizations, mentors in the
communities and your classroom, and between different academic areas. As
someone going in to a conference with a focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering
and mathematics) but whose concentration in English, I really felt the value of
bridging connections and helping strengthen these areas through other methods
and medias such as in an ELA classroom.
