Chapter 4 Learning Log

What?

Group differences: Consistently observed differences (on average) among diverse groups of students (eg. Students of different backgrounds).

Equity: Absence of favoritism or bias toward particular individuals or groups of students.

Culture: Behaviors and beliefs systems of a long-standing social group.

Ethnic group: People who have common historical roots, values, beliefs, and behaviors and who share a sense of interdependence

Cultural mismatch: Situation in which a child’s home culture and school culture hold conflicting expectations for the child’s behavior.

Standard English: Form of English generally considered acceptable at school as reflected in textbooks and grammar instruction.

Dialect: Form of English that has certain unique pronunciations and grammatical structures and is characteristic of a particular region or ethnic group.

African American English: Dialect of some African American communities that includes some pronunciations, idioms, and grammatical constructions different from those of Standard English.

Personal space: Personally or culturally preferred distance between two people during social interactions.

IRE cycle: Adult-child interaction marked by adult initiation (usually involving a question), child response, and adult evaluation.

Wait time: Length of time a teacher pauses, after asking a question or hearing a student’s comment, before saying something.

Worldview: General, culturally based assumptions about reality that influence understandings of a wide variety of phenomena.

Multicultural education: Instruction that integrates throughout the curriculum the perspectives and experiences of numerous cultural groups.

Stereotype: Rigid, simplistic, and erroneous, caricature of a particular group of people.

Visual-spatial ability: Ability to imagine and mentally manipulate two-and three-dimensional figures.

Gender schema: Self-constructed, organized body of beliefs about the traits of males and females.

Socioeconomic status (SES): One’s general social and economic standing in society; encompasses family income, occupation, and education level.

Resilient student: Student who succeeds in school and in life despite exceptional hardships at home.

Student at risk: Student with a high probability of failing to acquire minimal academic skills necessary for success in that adult world.

Summary: Students draw on prior knowledge and experiences to interpret their world and the interactions they have with their peers, and you as their teacher. It is important to take in many different factors when working with your students to be able to understand why they are the way they are or why they think the way they do. You need to take into account cultural background and not judge them according to your own cultural background. It is important to understand that our students are coming from many different cultural, familial, and socioeconomic situations. 

So What?

It is really important to understand the different backgrounds of the students that we will be working with. We need to know how to encourage every student to succeed, not just the ones who come from good backgrounds and who seem to have the potential to do well. We can encourage students to be resilient students by being a dependable source of academic and emotional support. Focusing on the students strengths and building on them. Helping the students identify missing resources and help them be able to find resources that might help them. It is important to be aware of your students so you know when it might be helpful for you to be a little more involved in their lives to be helpful to them.

Now What?

I think that having a background in working with troubled teens will really help me in this area. I have worked with at risk youth for the past 4 years or so and it sometimes takes a while to be able to feel comfortable working with them and to feel like you are helping them or making a difference. I think that one thing that we need is patience and understanding. These students can tell with you are fake or judgmental and they wont be able to succeed at all if they don’t think that you believe in them. We have to believe that our students can succeed no matter what backgrounds they come from or how difficult they might be. Only if we believe in them, will they want to work with us and allow us to help them succeed and that is what I want to incorporate into my classroom.