Sleeter Article

When reading the article "Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools" by Sleeter, I found myself getting quite frustrated.  I understood a lot that was being addressed and could see the point she was trying to make that teachers need to be prepared when they are going to be teaching in culturally diverse schools.  And that teachers also need to be able to bring in a multicultural curriculum to the classroom.  I also understood that people who are culturally diverse and come from certain backgrounds may have an easier time teaching in culturally diverse schools because they can relate, however I disagreed with that fact that they will be better teachers in general over a White preservice teacher (like the article was saying).  I do believe that someone's background can help them in certain ways, but I do not think that the race of someone will make them better at teaching verse another person.  The article talked about the need to recruit and select preservice teachers who are of color because they will be able to relate and teach culture in classrooms better than white preservice teachers, but truthfully I believe it is more than that.  People need to recruit and select preservice teachers who have a love for culture and want to embrace it and teach it, it should not matter the color they are.  I believe that it is the experiences that one has and the competence they have which helps shape them into being a good teacher.  If a White preservice teacher is given the opportunity to learn about multicultural diversity through schooling, observation, and even hands on learning, they are capable of being prepared to teach in a culturally diverse setting.  And hey, no one can ever be fully prepared no matter where you are going to teach.  I think what really matters is the drive and passion a teacher has towards cultural diversity.  We all are TESOLers for a reason and I think we all can agree we want to embrace cultural diversity and bring it into our classrooms.  It offends me that someone thinks just because of the color of my skin, I will not be as prepared to do that as someone who is of another color.  I know I do not have some experiences that others have had dealing with cultural diversity, but I have had some.  I have a drive for teaching and I want to be put in a very culturally diverse classroom and be able to embrace the culture into my curriculum.  I know I will be able to do that just from things I have learned in my classes here at ISU and from observations I have done.

Final Project Progress

Currently my progress is not going well for my final project. I am waiting still to be placed with a teacher so I can start my ESL observations.  I have been waiting for 4 weeks now for my placement. So hopefully, I will be placed this or next week and can get to work.  I plan on observing and assisting in an ESL classroom.  Once that happens I can start journaling for this project.  Hopefully depending on my teacher, maybe I'll be able to even teach a mini lesson.  So that is the status of my final project right now.

Minimizing Perceptual Mismatches

I never really realized that when a topic being taught in class that I found highly irrelevant or over taught could have been due to a mismatch between me, the student, and the teacher.  After reading Chapter 4 in Kuma, I understood a lot more about some of my classroom experiences.  I found that I encountered some mismatches before in my classrooms and that mismatches were what had me getting so frustrated with my teachers at times.  Now knowing that what really was happening were mismatches, I look back at situations with some of my teachers differently.  I can easily see how mismatches can occur.  Kuma explains how there are ten different kinds of mismatches, which makes it even more likely that teachers and students will encounter mismatches in their learning.  I feel mismatches are even more likely to happen when working with learning other languages.  As Kuma mentioned it is important to note that mismatches will always happen, they are always identifiable, and they are also always manageable.  By knowing these three things, teachers and students can work through their mismatches and even turn them into a learning opportunity.  I feel it is very important for teachers to identify mismatches that are happening so they can manage them for their students.

Being able to minimize perceptual mismatches I felt related well to what Kuma had to say in his article "Toward A Postmethod Pedagogy".  In his article, Kuma talked about postmethod teachers and postmethod learners.  Postmethod teachers need to know about their students and be aware of their needs.  They need to be able to know the context of their classroom.  The teachers job is to constantly be working towards helping create learning opportunities for their students.  They have a very active role.  The postmethod learners need to take control of their learning by being autonomous.  They have to be willing to learn and be effective learners.  It seems that in order to help minimize perceptual mismatches there need to be postmethod teachers and postmethod learners.  A postmethod teacher would be working towards knowing their students and their perceptions and the postmethod learners would be working to take control of their learning.  If teachers postmethod and the learners are postmethod it seems they would be most aware of mismatches that may happen and have an easier time of turning the mismatches into learning opportunities.

Learning Opportunities

For this week's reading, I really was drawn in by chapter 3 of Kuma which was maximizing learning opportunities.  I found myself completely agreeing with a lot of what Kuma had wrote.  I do believe that it is both the teacher and the learner's responsibility to create learning opportunities.  Teachers need to be able to create an open atmosphere in their classroom and promote communication.  One of the things I found most important was the difference between display and referential questioning.  I personally have come across teachers who have used both, and I always got more out of the classes where teachers used referential questioning.  It is important that there be open ended questions and that they can lead to other discussions.  It also is important for teachers to allow their class to discuss other topics that they may have not planned for because, like Kuma mentioned, it could be an opportunity for the students to learn something they don't know.  One shouldn't just shut down a topic or discussion when it is an opportunity to learn something new.

Another aspect that one needs to keep in mind is that learning is also on the student.  A teacher can do a lot to create opportunities, but if a student does not have any learner investment or put forth any effort the opportunities may not be taken advantage of.  A teacher can only do so much, and it is also up to the student to participate and be an active member of the class in order to get something out of it.  I have observed classes where some students just simple do not care and do not want to learn, and it is very difficult to get them to.  If a student simply shuts down and doesn't want to have learning opportunities, a teacher can not force it upon them.  Teachers can only go so far in helping create learning opportunities and it is good to remember that it is a two way street with the teacher and learner.

Lastly, I also agree it is always good to connect with the classroom community, campus community, local community, and global community in order to create more learning opportunities.  I feel that all this information really applies to not only language learners, but to all learners.  Many opportunities can be made from using multiple perspectives.  Kuma does a great job of providing microstrategies for the learning opportunities that exist in all different types of communities.  Overall, I felt that Kuma did a great job in this chapter emphasizing the importance of learning opportunities and how they can be created and utilized.  This chapter especially spoke to me because it not only applied to language learners, but to all learners.  It also helped me reinforce some of the beliefs I had on learning opportunities.

Week 3 Readings

Chapter 1 of the Beyond Methods book discussed the role of teachers.  The role of teachers is something that tends to be discussed in many of my education classes.  Therefore to hear the different roles a teacher can have and how they are used at different times really was not anything new for me.  This chapter mainly just helped emphasize the importance of the roles a teacher could have and how there is always critical mind engagement happening.

Chapter 2 on the other hand was about understanding postmethod pedagogy, and had a lot of new information for me to learn. The chapter first introduced the different methods there are such as the language centered method, the learner centered method, and the learning centered method.  These methods I have been introduced to before, but only briefly.  I found it very useful to know the difference amongst the methods and when it is best to use which method.  This chapter also discussed a little about the dissatisfaction with methods, which I found to be interesting because some people do not usually give you that perspective on method.  Lastly, I learned the most about the postmethod pedagogy and how it is a three dimensional system that is broken up into three parameters.  There is the parameter of particularity, the parameter of practicality, and the parameter of possibility.  These three parameters overlap with eachother to create a functioning system.  The three parameters of postmethod pedagogy work along with the roles of teaching.  From reading it is easy to grasp the concept that teachers need to know the roles they play in the classroom and with the roles they play using their theory and practice, the teachers are able to use methods and the three parameters of postmethod pedagogy.

Language Approaches

I believe throughout my language learning I have experienced the Grammar Translation Approach, the Cognitive Approach, and the Communicative Approach.  There is a chance I have experienced some other approaches as well, but for now these are the only ones that I seem to remember.  I started taking Spanish in 6th grade and took it all the way through high school.  As I progressed through the years in my Spanish classes, the approaches seemed to change.  My earlier Spanish classes mainly used the Grammar Translation Approach.  As I got into high school the cognitive approach and communicative approach ended up being used.  Out of these three approaches, I do not really feel more comfortable with one than the other.  I think I am more successful with the Grammar Translation Approach because I work well with vocabulary and grammar.  Sometimes I would struggle a little more with speaking in a second language to the whole class.  This mainly was because I did not want to be incorrect in things I said even though errors were accepted.  So I may have been more successful with one approach than another, but comfort wise I felt the same with all of the approaches.

When it comes to language approaches, I do not believe there is ever "one best method" that will fit all students' needs.  I believe in order to reach all students' needs teachers need to incorporate multiple language approaches into their classroom.  One approach may work really well with some students and not so well with others which is why there is no such thing as "one best method".