One of the most important thing I have learned about teaching in general is to make the information relatable. An efficient way to get students engaged in learning is to "insert education into the culture". If you teach using information the child is already familiar with the child will be more successful in the classroom. I think more teachers need to be trained how to relate to all students, being that it will help the student to learn more effectively, especially because our nation is so culturally diverse.
For a service learning project I was placed in an elementary school classroom in Lansing and I saw firsthand how this idea of culturally relevant pedagogy applied. The school I was working at was Willow Elementary School and there I saw teachers that made an effort to relate to the students and others who did not even attempt to relate to their students. Between the two different teachers you could tell that the students with the relatable teacher were much more engaged and more interested in learning than the others. These children need to feel comfortable in order for them to perform well academically, they need to feel as if they belong.
I hope to be the kind of teacher who can relate to her students, I want my classes to succeed academically and I want them to feel confident in their work. Through my classes and readings like Gloria Ladson-Billings I am learning more on how to be this type of educator.
I enjoyed reading your post. It was well put together and you used blank space as well as graphic media in a good way. There is a few suggestions i would like to bring up. First you did mention your article you read, but a hyperlink would be very useful to the reader. Also I like how you related your own hands on experiences to this blog post. A couple sentences could be reworded; paragraph two, the if you teach sentence needs to be reworded, it was a little hard to read, it would help the fluidity of the paragraph. Other than these minor changes, I enjoyed reading your blog post
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