Ladson-Billings; Paris;Banks

Geneva Gay Response

The Geneva Gay article was about culturally responsive teaching. The author defines this type of teaching as, "using cultural knowledge and prior experiences to make learning relevant to diverse students" (Gay, 2001,p. 49). In my own placement experience the demographics of my school are that the majority of students are white and the minority are hispanic. I definitely feel that my experience in my placement school has very much been geared toward the majority. A lot of the ELL and hispanic students in my class are expected to read books by all white authors or participate in lessons that may not engage them. Recently my mentor teacher had all of her classes write a letter of thanks to the military. I definitely felt some tension from the hispanic students because of the political atmosphere that is going on currently.

Gloria Ladson-Billings Response

This article is about a study on culturally relevant pedagogy. The three main findings that are outlined in this article are the conceptions of self and others, social relations, and conceptions of knowledge. The study also found that culturally relevant teachers used "community as the basis of their curriculum" (Ladson-Billings,1995,p.279). I like that in this article it outlines the ways in which you can practice this method through strong communication with students. Reflecting back to the phone conference with the educator from Savannah, it is also important to have strong communication with the parents of your students.

James A. Banks Response

This article is about 5 dimensions of multicultural literacy. The 5 dimensions that are highlighted in this article are content integration, the knowledge construction process, personal cultural,  prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and empowering school culture and social structure (Banks, 1993, p.25). Some main take aways that I got from my reading of the article is that achieving multicultural education is complex and should not be over simplified. Achieving multicultural literacy in our schools requires more than just surface level inclusion and this article provides clean and cut examples of effective and ineffective methods. This article also analyzes the use of canonical texts in a multicultural classroom. 

References

Banks, J. A. (1993). The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education. Educational Researcher, 22(5), 4-14. 

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106-116. 

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3).

Banks, J. A. (1993). The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education. Educational Researcher,22(5), 4-14. doi:10.3102/0013189x022005004

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education,53(2), 106-116. doi:10.1177/0022487102053002003

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal,32(3), =. doi:10.2307/1163320

Week 7/8 Toliver Articles

The Apartheid of Children’s Literature by: Christopher Myers

• "Recognizing oneself in a text, from the understanding that your life and lives of people like you are worthy of being told, thought about, discussed, and even celebrated" (Myers, 2014, p. 2)
• I belong to the Cherokee nation and being able to recognize myself in texts has been limited to the disney film Pocohantas and with the history books we read in school. 
• Our history books are written by white people
• Native Americans portrayed as savages 
• I did not read a book written by a Native American until I was in college.
• "Children of color are at best background characters, and more often than not absent, is in fact part of the imaginative aspect of these books" (Myers, 2014, p. 3)
• White-washing structure in literature

Critical Indigenous Literacies by: Debbie Reese

-"Unlearning stereotypical representations of indigenous peoples and replacing harmful narratives with accurate info" (Reese, 2018, p. 390)

-Textbooks written by white people

-Teachers have choice over the books that they include in the classroom

-"The key ideas are to choose books that are tribally specific, written by native writers, set in the present day, and relevant all year round, keeping native peoples visible throughout the school year" (Reese, 2018, p.391)

-Riding the Trail of Tears Cherokee Nation & Georgia author Blake M. Hausman

Five Steps Toward Successful Culturally Relevant Text Selection and Integration by: Sue Ann Sharma, Tanya Christ

-Culturally responsive teaching uses students cultural knowledge and ways of being in the world to support learning, offers a way to address the issue (Sharma, Christ, 2017, p. 295)

-Teachers should make an effort to get to know all of their students in order to teach based on each individual student.

-"Unfortunately the scarcity of texts for nonwhite students is the norm. The lack of accessibility to culturally diverse childrens' literature in todays classrooms is an alarming injustice" (Sharma, Christ, 2017, p. 397)

-Ted Talk with Kandice Sumner

-Texts need to be relevant to students

References

Myers, C. (2014, March 15). The Apartheid of Children's Literature. The New York Times, 1-4.

Reese, D. (2018). Critical Indigenous Literacies. The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy,             251-262.

Sharma, S. A., & Christ, T. (2017). Five Steps Toward Successful Culturally Relevant Text Selection             and Integration. The Reading Teacher, 71(3), 295-307.