Equality 101

As a teacher of social studies and social justice, I am constantly on the prowl for engaging, relevant resources and professional development that help me to bring controversial and difficult content into my classroom.  Facing History and Ourselves has proven to be an invaluable resource for me.  It’s a non-profit that offers rich and wonderful courses for teachers, texts, videos, speakers all around the importance of bearing witness and using voice to make a difference.

The lesson I’m sharing here is one from my unit on the Armenian Genocide and post WWI Europe.  The book I used was Facing History’s text titled The Genocide of the Armenians.  I find it fascinating that the Turkish government continues to deny that this happened which is one reason I bring it into my classroom.  You can facilitate a lesson like the one below using any content with the jigsaw technique.  I like it as a strategy because it empowers the students to become experts in their reading and to then teach each other.
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During my vacation with my boyfriend and a couple of our friends (to Maui! So fun!), we had a discussion about whether the US should name English as its official language (ironic considering that Hawaii names both English and Hawaiian as official languages). This is a debate fraught with political, emotional, and cultural turmoil, primarily because laws that proclaim English as the official language of a state or nation have far-reaching consequences, especially when it comes to education. Indeed, my conversation with my friends bordered on dramatic simply because we all have had vastly different experiences with people who speak other languages in our work and personal lives (it should be noted that we are all white native speakers).

Before this conversation, I hadn’t really questioned what I learned about the English-only/official English movement as an undergraduate, which is summed up rather nicely by this position statement by CCCC/NCTE:

The National Language Policy is a response to efforts to make English the “official” language of the United States. This policy recognizes the historical reality that, even though English has become the language of wider communication, we are a multilingual society. All people in a democratic society have the right to education, to employment, to social services, and to equal protection under the law. No one should be denied these or any civil rights because of linguistic differences. This policy would enable everyone to participate in the life of this multicultural nation by ensuring continued respect both for English, our common language, and for the many other languages that contribute to our rich cultural heritage. Read the rest of this entry →

Research shows that students perform better for teachers who are invested in them. And by invested, I mean teachers who know their students. It’s a lot of work to build relationships in the classroom and a student/teacher relationship is a complicated one. As teachers we are authority figures, confidantes, parental figures to some students, role models, and guides. We facilitate our students’ educational experiences. It’s a heavy load, if you think about it.

One strategy I use to get to know my kids at the start of a year or semester is a bio-poem. I teach social studies, but I find that particularly when we are doing biographies or examining a historical figure, I can pull my students in most easily when I can relate the content directly to their lives. The bio-poems help me tease out personal elements that I can use as the connective tissue between the student and the history.

Even if my kids can’t read, they can relate to Gandhi, to Malcolm X, to Alexander the Great. And it’s incumbent upon me to foster that engagement by knowing my students.
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A couple weeks ago, I came across an article about a study called “Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors.” The study was written by Scott E. Carrell of the University of California, Davis and National Bureau of Economic Research; and James E. West of the U.S. Air Force Academy. Basically, these researchers examined how student evaluations correlated with teaching “toughness.” The study found, not very surprisingly, that students rated easier teachers higher and more challenging teachers lower. Read the rest of this entry →

There has been quite a bit of talk in the educational world recently about the importance of personalizing the educational experience for students.  As teachers, many of us are faced with an alarming rate of students who have somehow fallen behind on state standards, and with teacher pay almost certainly being tied to student performance on state tests in the near future – and teacher and administrative control already tied to these tests – we all know that we need to do something to get students who are not otherwise engaged and involved in their education for whatever reason to become actively interested in what is going on in the classroom and, by extension, to learn the material and, hopefully, perform better on the state tests.  (Of course, the objective is not really to have the students perform better on state tests.  It is to have the students become interested in the subject matter and, more importantly, interested in their own education.  But, if you’re teaching in a struggling school, higher performance on state tests is a definite plus.)  The most obvious solution to the problem of the less-than-captivated student, it would seem, would be to make the educational experience mean something to the student personally.

But how do we go about this?  I, personally, teach five classes a day with at least 20 students per class (20 is the minimum; the actual number of students in my classes more often than not approaches 30).  That’s roughly 125 students each and every day, and I’m supposed to personalize the educational experience for each and every one of those students?  I’m supposed to know each student’s individual passion and talents and use that information to create meaningful assignments that will spark their interest in the educational experience?

The answer to this is, of course, an emphatic YES, and it’s something that good teachers have been intuitively doing for years.  There’s a reason why teachers like Jaime Escalante and Erin Gruwell had such success turning apathetic, inner-city students into engaged and excited learners.  They took the time to learn about their students.  They went the extra mile and then some to figure out what each student needed and then provided it.  Most of all, these inspirational teachers listened when their students spoke, and used the information students offered about themselves to tailor meaningful educational programs. Read the rest of this entry →

Bad things happen in our world.  Sometimes, we look the other way.  Sometimes we confront them head on.  Sometimes we stand by and watch.  But what do we remember?  How do we remember?  And why do we remember?  These questions really get my students thinking.

We start by breaking up into small groups to tackle the following questions:

1.    What is the difference between a memorial, a monument and a museum?  Explain.
2.    Explain the purpose of memorializing events.  Why do we do it?
3.    In your opinion, what is the most effective way of ensuring that people will not forget an event?  Why is it effective?
4.    Why is memorializing so controversial?  Consider 9/11.  How do you feel it would best be memorialized?  Should it be memorialized?  Why/why not?
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This series began last week with an introduction to the topic of contingent faculty equity and some of the big, broad reasons all educators have a stake in how well contingent faculty are treated.

Among the many problems contingent faculty face in their jobs is the lack of job security, which usually results in a loss of academic freedom. Contingent faculty, by definition, do not have access to any form of official or documented tenure. Typically, adjuncts are renewed just weeks before the start of the next semester; many adjuncts have been given courses mere days before the first day of classes. I actually got my first adjunct gig two weeks before the start of the semester, and I’ve gotten many teaching gigs just weeks or days before the semester begins. Read the rest of this entry →

Over the past few weeks, Ileana and others have been discussing the importance of teacher sabbaticals and self-care. Indeed, teachers need the same kinds of things to do their jobs well as students need: support, stability, guidance, compassion, and time to destress and unwind. Unfortunately, at many institutions of higher education, the majority of teachers do not have access to these basic requirements for a job well done.

These teachers are who we now call the new faculty majority, but they go by many names: adjuncts, contingent faculty, sessionals, seasonals, part-timers, non-tenure-track faculty, and so on. But many of these teachers share one thing: they are underpaid and overworked.

You’re probably thinking, well, yeah, aren’t all teachers underpaid and overworked? Pretty much, yes. Contingent faculty face a unique situation within this larger, systemic problem, which is that contingent faculty are often really, really underpaid:

Contingent faculty members, particularly part-time/adjunct faculty, are paid very low salaries (less than $2,700 per course on average.) They generally receive few, if any, health or pension benefits. This means that they must look for other ways to provide for themselves and their families, which diminishes the time and attention they can devote to the institution and to students. (AFT FACE Call to Action, 4 [PDF])

And really, really overworked:

The teaching loads associated with these positions are generally larger than those given to tenure-line faculty, leaving less time for the fixed-term faculty member to pursue scholarship or even keep up with developments in the discipline. Many of these positions are designated as “teaching only,” and therefore carry explicit limitations on the potential for support to pursue research or attend scholarly conferences, a real handicap for faculty seeking another academic job for the following year. These positions, like all contingent academic roles, are structured primarily to meet the needs of a department for instructional personnel, rather than the career objectives of junior faculty. (AAUP Contingent Faculty Index 2006, 7 [PDF])

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