Learning Differences
“The teacher uses understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures and communities to ensure inclusive learning environments that enable each learner to meet high standards.”
Ironically I have very little experience with diversity in the classroom and have a ton of life experience. I grew up in an area where diversity is very, very common, and this is where I will be teaching next year. However, both the high school and middle school I was placed in have little to know diversity and the diversity that it did have was not the kind of diversity I am concerned with. In my experience socioeconomic diversity is much more difficult than racial, or religious diversity. Socioeconomic diversity is much more of a challenge on a teacher. When it is impossible to assign homework because three fourths of your students have jobs to support their family then you have a truly important job as a teacher.
Anyway, all of this is evident in my educational autobiography and you can read it there. In my time at school I could not focus on diversity in terms of socioeconomic status so I focused on exceptional learners. To assist students with learning disabilities I made sure to incorporate the Strategic Instructional Models or SIM. These FRAMEs, Concept Maps, and Unit Organizers were designed by T/TAC for students with disabilities. During my time at my internship I was able to use 2 unit organizers, 2 concept mastery maps, and 3 FRAMEs. Each lesson plan for these can be seen to the right, as well as a compiled list of blank, teacher, and student examples by clicking the SIM Project button. To the right you can see a video of me using one of the FRAMEs in the classroom. Many of my blog entries also deal with the idea of diverse learning.
A lot of my experience with diversity does not have specific examples of evidence but is rather in dialogue with students. The best example that I can think of was one day we were talking about the political spectrum and I could not remember if Iran, the most conservative country in the world, was Shi’ite or Sunni. So, I asked one of the students who is Muslim if he knew. Another student said that I was picking on him, to which, I responded, saying that the student is from another part of the world where this is common knowledge and that quite honestly I would rather here his opinion than hear myself, who has never been to the Middle East, lecture on it. This made the second student be quite and the whole class listened very intently. Good victory as a teacher.