Narrative Question 2

2. How do you plan and design effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology? What research resources have supported these initiatives?

For a teacher to effectively provide their students with learning environments and experiences that help prepare them for the “real” world, she needs to take into consideration the diversity of her classroom. No two students are the same and a teacher needs to take this into consideration. The diversity of a class entails the students’ backgrounds, cultures, socioeconomic status, family situation, learning styles, and learning disabilities. A teacher needs to take this all into consideration when planning lessons and creating the curriculum. These learning experiences should not be taught in isolation, but instead interwoven into the curriculum and everyday routines of the class. I have provided effective learning experiences and learning environments to my students throughout the years in various ways.

Multicultural education is one way to provide students with an effective learning environment and experiences. Teachers need to help their class engage in thoughtful discussions that explore the diverse issues of literature and culture, which will increase cross cultural understanding. Teachers need to include multicultural literature for more than just expanding the reading list, but also to explore issues of culture and race. To discuss a topic, a teacher does not know much about, the teacher should use “insiders” or the Internet. Class speakers can come in or students themselves can be the cultural insiders (Dong, 2005).

I recently have been helping one of my students with his essay writing. He has been reading stories by authors of various cultures. The articles discuss the writer’s perceptions of the occurrences around them and how they feel others treat them due to their particular race and culture. My student has had to write essays, using Word, that discuss the article and that provide character traits. I have found myself getting into discussions with him about how these writers’ cultures affected their lives and how this must have felt. We have both learned more about these cultures and the biases they face. This is just one example of how multicultural literature can be used in an educational setting. I will continue to find multicultural literature to incorporate into my teaching and my classroom library. I will teach these stories on more than a superficial level and try to dig more into the culture behind the writing. The use of K-W-L charts will be used to help the class see what they already know, what they want to learn, and what was learned after the lessons. I will invite the students to be the teachers on cultures I am unfamiliar with, so I can take the position of student. If none of my students are cultural insiders, then I will invite guest speakers to come in and discuss the culture. As with the student I have been helping with his multicultural essays, he has become my insider on better understanding the prejudice blacks have endured; he is an older black man.

In Edu 553, Computers in the Classroom and Curriculum, I was asked to create a CultureQuest unit with a small group. This activity helped me to truly think about a curriculum and plan lessons about a different culture. Much of our school’s social studies curriculum focuses on the United States, so my group created a unit on Mexico, since it is our neighbor to the south, and we do have many immigrants from that country. This unit provides many aspects of the Mexican culture that students can learn about and explore, providing them with an effective learning experience (See Appendix D). I will also use other shared CultureQuest projects to enhance my curriculum with multicultural learning.

Students also need to have experiences that help them to learn more about their own country. Each section of the United States has cultural differences, and students need to learn about each of these states. While student teaching in a fourth grade classroom, my class had to create a state project. Each student had to pick a state and find out as much as they could about it. They had to focus on certain topics which included the state animals, flag, and famous people. They also had the opportunity to use the Internet to conduct online searches to find out other interesting information about their state. Students were able to visit their state’s official website and communicate with state officials through the site. They had to write a report, using Word, and create a poster board with all they learned. The school then had a state fair where parents and other grades came and learned about the different states. I modeled how to fill out their research forms through teaching a unit on New Hampshire. I would place the worksheet on the overhead, and we would work together to fill in the New Hampshire worksheet. Then they would fill in their sheet with the information from their state. Also, during this unit, I taught a mini-unit on famous New Hampshire people. I choose people from different eras, races, genders, and professions. This helped students to relate with one of the people and to see that anyone can be a success. I also created a bulletin board with the state enlarged on it. As we discussed each person, I would call on one of the students to mark on the map where each person was born or lived (See Appendix E). I will do a project like this again, but instead of using the overhead and having students write reports, I will incorporate the use of PowerPoint for the presentations. I will also allow students to use art programs, such as Paint, to help create pictures of the flag and animals. Not all students consider themselves artsy, so the use of the computer would allow these students to produce quality products. I would also create Webquests to help my students find useful information on the state they are researching and on the state in which they live.

The Authoring Cycle I created for EDU 545, Curriculum Development and Evaluation, also helped to enrich my curriculum with a unit on an important time in American History, the Colonial Era. This is a topic discussed in many fourth and fifth grade classes. Through this project, I created lesson plans, activities, and field trips to help students to learn first hand about Colonial America, instead of just reading it in a book (See Appendix F).

Competent teachers provide their students with activities on their skill level, which exploit the different kinds of intelligence and which capitalize on interests (Clabaugh, 2002). Centers provide an effective learning experience that does just that. Throughout my life, I have had numerous opportunities to help my father create centers for all subject areas in his fourth grade classroom. I helped to create the centers, organize the centers, and create answer keys for activities. The centers cover all subject areas. They also allow students to explore the content area on the grade level they are on instead of the grade level they are in, since the activities range from second grade to high school level skills. All the centers have activities that allow for all students to learn without others knowing the level they are on or the material they are reading. The centers include: tangrams, attribute blocks, and try-a-tile activities for math, creative writing using viewfinders and Word, SRA packets and a vast library for reading, experiments for science, and computer activities that enrich the curriculum. The technology center is made up of 6 computers on which students can access software programs and teacher-made programs that allow them to practice and learn about a plethora of topics and skills being taught in the class. The centers allow for students ranging from special education to enrichment students to learn successfully.

A teacher needs to also welcome diverse ways students learn. Mainstreaming Special Education students is the current policy in education. According to Shanker (1995), advocates of inclusion feel it provides equity for all students in that it allows all students to learn the social and academic skills needed to succeed in a mainstream society. Teachers need to provide all their students with the accommodations necessary to have a positive learning experience. In EDU 555, Education and Society, I was asked to create a paper on one topic in diversity. I wrote about Aspergers, so I could learn about these types of students, since I was working with one at the time. After writing this paper, I began providing my student with a visual schedule of the hour and allowed him to write on topics that interested him. This allowed both of us to teach and learn about the writing process without either of us becoming stressed. If the noises of the room began to bother him, I would allow him to sit in the lobby for a few minutes or work in a quieter area of the room (May, 2005). Through using a few of the strategies I learned from writing the diversity paper, I was able to design for my student effective learning experiences. I will continue to use these strategies, and other strategies for other learning styles and diversities, to enrich my teaching.

There are many other research resources I will use in my classroom. I will continue to use Webquests and Culturequests, but will enrich them with other resources. I will use e-pals with my class, so students can have pen pals from all over the world while using a form of communication with which they are familiar. I will also bring my students on virtual field trips and to museum websites, so students can see places they would never be able to visit in real life.

The book, Life in Schools, we were asked to read for EDU 555 makes the reader question the world they live in and to find ways to improve it (McLaren, 2003). As a teacher, I instill upon my students the need to learn about the world around them, the flaws and all. Through multicultural literature and projects, students are able to investigate the world and cultures around them while thinking of ways to improve the flaws. Through the learning experiences I have provided my students, they are able to partake in learning experiences that relate to their lives and their futures, causing them more success in school and life. Students’ backgrounds are assets students can use in their learning, and teachers should develop the skills to teach diverse students (Nieto, 2003). I will continue to learn and adjust my curriculum so it meets the curriculum requirements of the district and the learning needs of my students.