Years in Education: 7-10 Male Heterosexual Caucasian First in Family to Graduate From College Upper Elementary & Lower Secondary Math, Language, and Media Literacy Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: There is an archaic notion that an educator must have all of the answers in order to merit their rightful place at the front of the classroom. I think that idea is B.S! Or as my mom would say, "Bologna Slices!" Educators should avoid this trap at all costs. It is divisive and contrary to an engaging learning environment. It only serves to separate the one with the answers from those who are there to seek them out. At the heart of my instruction emerges a multi-strand rope that is threaded by students from all of my classes. We share care, kindness, responsibility, and otherliness within an environment of co-lead learners. In other words we create community, and share a collective duty to grow and strengthen it in common. In my opinion, sharing something in common like this with students must come first before any real learning becomes possible. Hence, why community building is at the foundation. If education was merely about compliance then it would quickly digress into indoctrination instead. Students need to know how much I care before they will be asked to care about what I know. Once established community can protect, support, challenge, be safe to fail, and succeed. Along the path, we become witnesses to the strengths and weaknesses of everyone. I am modelling my own humanity and incredible abilities to make mistakes alongside of the students. We become relentless encouragers of one another. We find the positive in the learning even when it looks like a train wreck in the process. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Long answer: It absolutely matters that students and teachers share things in common. We are a people longing to connect, whether it is on a superficial level of eating at the same restaurants and liking the same music, or at a deeper level of human struggle such as a compassion for social justice issues it is crucial that teachers and students have things in common. When we connect in school, we create community. When we create community, we create a caring classroom. Short answer: Yes. Will is part of the original cohort of TED-Ed Innovative Educators from around the world. Follow his adventures in teaching and learning on Instagram @imagemined, through his escheweducationalist blog, and on Twitter @WillGourley. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong
0 Comments
Years in Education: 11--15 Male Gay Filipino American Upper Secondary English Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: This is my eleventh year teaching, and in these eleven years I've taught in Mountain View, CA; Rome, Italy; Bonn, Germany; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and now Sofia, Bulgaria. I share this because the cultural contexts of the places I have lived and the make up of the student body of each of the schools have been incredibly diverse. In California, the public high school had over 2,000 students from grades 9-12. Students were predominantly White and Asian with a smaller Latino population and even smaller Black population. There was a large achievement gap that was largely divided by race. All the international schools I've worked at have had an average of 800 students from pre-K to grade 12. On average, 20% tended to be American, another 20% host country nationals, and the other 60% of students were a mix from over 40 nationalities. Over 60% of our students are non-native English speakers. Accents and linguistic mistakes are never made fun of. However, apart from a small percentage of scholarship students, most students and their families were wealthy enough to afford a ~$20,000/year education. For embassy children, their country's taxes usually paid for that. Many companies also paid for students' tuition as part of the relocation package. Depending on the context, I've had different similarities with my students. In California, the strongest commonalities were with other students who were immigrants or first generation making sense of a bicultural world - for me it was Filipino values and traditions inside my home and white America outside of it. I connected with the students that were assimilating to become white American, inadvertently assuming that American was better and even growing shame for my ancestral roots. Internationally, the term "third culture kid" is used quite often: the first culture being the culture the students' parents are from, the second is the current country they live in, and the third is the amalgamation of the two. This phenomenon is what we have in common - guests in a new world never fully connected with our home country or the one we live in. However, regardless of these varying cultural contexts I've lived in, one thing I have in common with some of my students wherever I am is my sexuality. As a gay man, I connect with my students that are either in the closet or are out and proud. We share a common thirst for safe spaces, constantly having our feelers out to ensure we have be ourselves otherwise passing for straight when we cannot. Living as an expat compounds the complexity of this as each culture has different laws and norms for the gay community. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Yes and no. Commonality has this powerful ability to build relationships. When I find out a student speaks Spanish or German or Italian, for example, I speak to them in that language to make that linguistic connection and share our cultural experiences. Ironically, commonality also as the power to create xenophobia. Too often, students from the same country will only hang out with each other because of the comfort in their similarities but also then to build negative stereotypes of other groups. Teachers are guilty, too, of having an affinity for students that we have things in common with sometimes letting those that we don't connect with slip through the cracks. Josefino is a TED-Ed Innovative Educator. Follow him on Twitter @josefinor and read about his expat adventures as a teacher abroad on Medium @josefinor. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong Years in Education: 16-20 Asian Female English as a Second Language Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: When I'm teaching, I feel like I'm a robot/machine. I don't have time to have my break. I'm the disciplinary teacher, and there are times that I handle many truancy cases. We have a crazy system in Malaysia. Every five years we have new Education Minister and this person introduces and implements new approaches. The victims are teachers and students because we become the guinea pigs. Our schools are too exam-oriented and students do not have the choice to do or learn what they want. They come to school to pass the exams. Our education requires teachers to prepare students for examinations not to prepare them to face the reality once they leave school. Only recently (last year) did our government encourage students to develop soft-skills at school so that when they exit, they are able to continue to develop their skills, not only by answering exam questions. In my classrooms, I allow students to choose their own topic of interest and I let them share the topic with their peers. We talk about sharing and listening to each other's stories and how those stories impact their lives. In class we talk about issues that are hardly being discussed in normal Malaysian classrooms such as LGBT issues, child marriage, sexual grooming, and our education system. From our classroom discussions, I can see that the students are actually keen to know the issues but it's not within the content of our syllabus. Once one of my female students was having an identity crisis because she realized she was attracted to her female friends. She was afraid to share it with her parents. As a mother of two teenagers, I told her I respected her feelings and it's okay to have feelings towards the same gender. I know she was confused at that point. I'm not sure whether I did the right thing. That incident really made me realize that many parents never really talk to their kids. All they can think of is the grade, the kid's performance in a test. I guess my specialty is I'm very open towards my students. LGBT issues is an alien topic in our Malaysian classrooms but I've taught about it about for the past two years. Most of LGBT students keep their identity to themselves as they would be teased/condemned if people were to find out. My community is not accepting but I want my students to know what is LGBT and I believe that each and every one of us has the equal rights to be who/what we want to be. To instill awareness to the students is not easy as many of them have their own mindset (mostly negative thoughts) about LGBT people. I have a group of students who will be doing a project on LGBT issues and I'm super excited about it! I know that there are many students who want to share their thoughts but they do not know how or if they should. I want my students and my own kids to know we should treat people equally and never to judge them. Regarding the students who opened up to me a few years ago, I never heard from her again. I wish more students would come forward and share their feelings. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: YES, to me it matters for me to have similarities with my students. I need to understand them and with that similarity is essential. The classroom environment is not only about a teacher standing in front telling students what they should do. Willingness to listen is another thing a teacher should have in common with their students. Teacher should at least listen to their students. Maggie is a TED-Ed Innovative Educator. Maggie’s TED-Ed Innovation Project is helping Malaysian students overcome their fears of speaking in English and is allowing them to share ideas at their own pace. Connect with her on Twitter @magdmuuk . Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong Years in Education: 7-10 Pakistani Heterosexual Male Urdu Language, Culture of Pakistan, Sociology Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: When I start teaching a new group of students I dedicate the first session for ice breaking activities. In the introductions, when I get an answer I respond to that and have some little chat about it. For example, when talking about last book we have read, I will engage in discussion about the storyline or characters of the book and compare it with a character I like, or story I have read. So I intentionally try to create commonalities with my students. Once I was in the girls school in my maternal village and I wanted to discuss with them few important things but students were not opening up. So I started sharing with them that my mother was born in this village and she could only go up to grade 5 because the school in the village did not offer higher classes and her parent could not afford to send my mother to the nearby city. This created a commonality which was needed. Another important thing for finding the common things is that I always consider that the students sitting in front of me are human beings like myself and if for some reason they are not performing well in class I always keep that in mind that they might be facing a challenge in life outside class. Students are not learning machines. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Finding common grounds is perhaps the start of journey which teachers and students embark on. I have seen it in many cases that if students and teachers do not have things in common then the students will not open up. If the wall of unfamiliarity is taken down between the two parties then learning expedites. In Pakistan, I was dealing with a group of young learners who were particularly fond of the sport of cricket. I was trying very hard but they were not responding. When I found out that they all love cricket and I myself was a cricket player, then I started bringing examples from cricketing world. I started using names of cricket players in the lessons and brought in cricketing scenarios and it worked so well. From that point onward the students always waited for my class. Once in America I was teaching Urdu as a foreign language and the class was not very lively. I learned a game 'Simon says...' which my students knew and made a translated version of it in the Urdu language and the barrier broke. Everybody loved it. So yes, it matters. Umar is a 2017 TED-Ed Innovative Educator. He is currently working with the University of California, Berkeley's study abroad program in Pakistan. Years in education: 16-20 Australian/Canadian Caucasian Heterosexual Female Elementary School Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: I was born and raised in Australia. As a child, my family moved quite a few times and I ended up going to eight different schools between Kindergarten and Year 12. As a painfully shy child, this was challenging but gave me a great many gifts too. As an adult I continued to travel a lot and have lived and taught on three different continents. I married a wonderful Canadian man and have since settled in Canada. Even though I come from an English speaking country, I sometimes feel like an outsider. After ten years, not a week goes by where I don’t think, Do they completely understand me? Or, Wait, is that an Australian or English expression, is it global or Canadian.. I can only imagine how much more intense those questions and feelings would be, if my first language was completely different. When I meet another Aussie, I often feel like I just ‘get’ them and they often ‘get’ me. There are fewer misunderstandings and moments where I feel I have to further explain myself. They often have a sense of where I come from and what a special place in my heart my homeland has for me. I feel like I can’t really talk too much about Australia to other because it's not a shared experience, it’s in the past and it's almost too painful at times. I don’t want to be sad I want to try and live in the moment and make the most of where I am, but Australia has a chunk of my heart! I have just finished teaching for almost ten years in schools where there is a high migrant population. I feel deeply for these families and can relate, at some level, to being different and the struggle to get settled in a country. It is so difficult to establish yourself, set down roots, find your people and communicate well. I think having this shared experience does connect us at a deeper level and gives me a greater sense of empathy, understanding and connection with my students. I feel I must clarify that even though I miss my home and feel different at times, I don’t regret traveling at all! I actually think it has greatly enriched my life and my perspective. I find the world such an amazing and inspiring place. And the more that I experience the more that I realize we really aren’t that different from each other. We really are all just human beings, learning together. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: I think it is important that students and teachers have things in common. It helps to build relationships when you find common interests. And, when you really get to know your students, there is always common ground. My most common connectors are sports, books and shared experiences like being a migrant. Canada is a ‘mosiac’ of cultures and has a very diverse population. Fortunately, I've connected with a variety of different people in my community who have supported who I am and understood where I was coming from. They acknowledged and valued me and my experiences. All schools that I’ve worked at in Canada have actively worked to include all in their community and celebrate the diversity of cultures and experiences. I hope I’ve provided some support to my students in this way too. Even simple things, like when I see a student experience snow for the first time, I get it and I remember the awe I felt in my first snow moment! My TED-Ed Innovation project ‘Sprout’ has really has built on my experiences of living and working around the globe. Sprout is an online space where students pitch any and all of their possible TED-Ed talk ideas and give each other feedback. My goal is to connect students around the world and have them communicate and build stronger ideas, in collaboration with each other. There’s a lot we can learn from each other and I hope I can facilitate this happening, a little more often. When we celebrate differences and encourage connections and dialogue, I think it has the potential to make our world a more accepting and peaceful place. Megan is a 2017 TED-Ed Innovative Educator and is the Founder of Sprout. To learn more about how Sprout is growing ideas and connecting students around the world, follow Megan on Twitter @lowesclass and visit sproutideas.net. Years in Education: 4-6 Caucasian Heterosexual Female Senior High School English Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: My parents divorced when I was 12 and my sister and I were pretty much raised by our Mum. She did a smashing job and while I can honestly say that it never felt like we missed out on anything, I know it wasn't easy for her. We didn't see our dad a lot and he didn't contribute much either financially or emotionally after the divorce. In Australia, nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce, which means many of my students have been through, are going through, or will go through a similar experience. When I was 17, mum began seeing a new man who she later married. I struggled to share mum with him, so it’s fair to say that we didn’t hit it off right away. In fact, I was pretty awful to him for quite a while. But he was (and remains) a kind and patient man. He is indigenous and taught me a lot about prejudice. One summer, during a family beach holiday, I saw first-hand the ugliness of the kind of racism he experiences on a daily basis. We were at the local pub and he was targeted by a couple of young surfers who called him horrible names, which he later told me were derogatory terms used to refer to mixed-race indigenous people. What stood out to me most during the exchange was the strength and dignity he maintained. He stayed calm. He stood tall. He did not yell. He did not fight. I was in awe. In that moment, my eyes were opened. I started to pay more attention to what was going on around me. I began to realise how frequent and insidious these kinds of moments were. I talked to my stepdad about them often and he guided me and helped me to understand the complexities involved. I subsequently spent a lot of time at university learning about Australia’s history of institutionalised and generational racism. I learned about white privilege and started to pay attention to instance of it in my day to day life. Now, as an English teacher, my students and I explore texts that examine themes linked to marginalisation and the “other”. I also refuse to accept even a hint of prejudice in the classroom. Students learn pretty quickly with me that there is no such thing as an innocuous joke. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: I don't think it's necessary for students and teachers to have things in commom. I think it's more important that differences are understood and respected. For me, it's critically important to have a bond and a genuine relationship with all the students I teach. If I relied on commonality to develop those, I feel I (and the students) would be worse off. This is particularly relevant in light of my TED Ed Innovation project this year. The project is based around using various media forms to document the story of our school when it opens in February 2017. It relies on the students involved bringing their unique knowledge, experiences and ideas to the table. The diversity they bring will be reflected in the stories we tell, which is key to capturing and maintaining interest. Christie is a 2017 TED-Ed Innovative Educator. She is leading students in creating a multimedia living documentary of the opening of a new school in Australia. Find out more about Christie's work here and follow her on Twitter @CASimpson. |
ROLL CALLHumanizing the gaps separating teachers and students. Archives
October 2019
Categories
All
|