Blog #6

                                                        Anti Racism vs. Culturally relevant

        Over the past couple of weeks we've been talking about anti racism vs. culturally relevant, but my question is how do we as teachers handle a child who is that is being? How do we acknowledge racism in the class room without offending our students of color? When talking about racism I find it a hard topic to talk about because some people didn't do all the research on the topic and trying to talk to the class about it they honestly may not know what it is there really talking about and that may offend someone. Sometimes we don't like to be reminded about what happened in the past because honestly some people don't want to think about it or have the mind set that it happened in the past why are we bring it up? I know because I used to think that way in high school, but as I got older what happened in the past is what got me where I am today. I want to be able to talk to my students about it and how powerful it was and what people had to go through to get us all where we are today. I want to do a project with my students and see what there dreams are. Like Marten Luther King said" I have a dream." Well so do our students and with that being said that's one of my goals in life is to help children find there dream and to stick with it until they meet their dreams. Think about your childhood and ask yourself what was your dream growing up? Did you make your dream and if no why not? When I was a little girl all I wanted to do was become a teacher to help young children who have a disability. I've had so many teachers over the years that I wasn't going to be able to do it, I always thought it was because I was black to be honest, but here I am today working at New Horizon helping young children meet their goals.

Blog #4

                     I find it important to build relationships with our students, to me it shoes me that the teacher is really showing the student they really want them to succeed. In the video it showed that he went to check on his student even though he's not in his class anymore. To me I found that so sweet, and the fact he took his time to go and check on him, if he was struggling with anything he was willing to help him and that takes a lot of patients. We need to make sure that we are meeting our students needs, it's no fun when your that child that doesn't understand something and your scared to say something because you don't want people to make fun of you. I feel like some teachers say something once and expect the students to understand it the first time, but me that's not the way I learn. I need examples and people really need to give me a lot of details. I'm a hands on learner and I'm fully ready to have students like me in my class. I  want to give my students as much one on one time as they need because I believe no child should be left behind. In the video it really showed me how important it is to be there for your student because that child might not get that attention at home.

blog #3

        The video on our home page "testing bias produced by South High students" I've been in those students shoes and it's not fun. I do agree that a student should be able to choose how they want to test, for example I'm not the best test taker so I would want to take my test in a quiet room to take my time. I agree with Vichnet Chhuon when he said "students of color still don't the same privilege as white students." Being a mixed child has it's ups and downs, for example I'm not the color of my skin the way people judge me because of the color of my skin isn't okay. People think that because I'm mixed doesn't mean I'm not smart. Growing up I grew up with two different family's. My moms and my dad, on my moms side I have is black and Mexican and my dads is white. When I would go to my dads side of the family they would say things like how's your moms side doing as if they don't like them because of their race. I never understood it when I was younger, but now that I'm older it's as if they are ashamed of me because of my race. I love my race and where I come from I honestly wouldn't change anything about me. I just hate how people can try to judge you from the color and not to get to know you for who you are. I feel like some teachers that I had in my past thought of me less because of the color of my skin. When it came to taking test I would freak out and overthink and then I would fail because I spent so much time over thinking. I feel like that teacher thought because I'm black that I'm not able to pass my test, but in reality I just overthink when it comes to taking tests. I want to teach my students our classroom is a safe classroom and that everyone is welcome and that no one is going to judge therm.

Blog 7

Today we talked about the pedagogy and for some reason I felt uncomfortable. When we were talking about the different systems like for example the banking system. One of my questions in our small group was, how do teach our students the system without overwhelming them? When I was student growing up I questioned my learning because I was always overthink everything I did. So I as a teacher I'm going to try not to overwhelm my students because I know how it feels. We also talked about a course on campus American Indian. I took that class a couple of semesters ago and learned a lot. We talked about how the class was being taut by the teacher and I got upset because to me it seemed as if they were talking badly about the teacher, when they were really talking about how we should watch our words. For example the teacher uses words like "we and you did this." When as a student we didn't do anything we are trying to learn some thing new about that culture. As teachers when talking about race it's a taught topic to talk about, but it still needs to be talked about so our students understand what really happened back in the day. When hearing about other people sides on how they feel its okay to ask why do you feel this way vs keeping it inside just wondering about it later. How do we get questions out of that they maybe to shy to ask the question? I feel like we should teacher our students our classroom is a safe environment, so you shouldn't feel ashamed of the questions you may have. No question is a dumb question, I'm learning others may have the same question as you, they may just be waiting for some one else to ask it first. That doesn't always work though because if you don't ask the question it may not get answered. When walking into a classroom we should always encourage our students to start the off with an open mind and take deep breaths before class starts, it always helps me right before class. 

tech tool kit 5

Building a Math Center in an Early Childhood Special Needs Classroom

This is a seven minutes long video where it is explained how to build and set up a math classroom for special needs children. I believe that having the children play games is a tool to teach the students how to do math and not only learning math she is showing us how we can use different coloring actives to teach our students colors. I love that she played a game where the using toy dinosaurs teaching them the colors and using a graph to see how many colors there were of each color. I really think a child with disabilities  will really be able to give this a try without over thinking about the math problem and just have fun while learning something new. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i7XO0YJC3Y

tech tool kit 4

Body Check Music Therapy in Autism

When I was working at Asoka Hennepin school district we had a specialist come out and do musical therapy with our special Ed classroom. The kids really enjoyed it, I think I will be using music therapy in my classroom. I think it will be a great idea, it will be a fun way to start off my students day. Music therapy to me is a way for my students to express what they are feeling through body movement. Something that I find hard at my center is that we don't let our students express themselves. For example i think we are all guilty of this, have you ever planned an art project but you lay out everything for your students in the place it went, but one of your students wasn't doing it the way you wanted so. You did it for them?  So I ask did you let that child express them self? As a teacher we are going to make lots of mistakes, but that's okay no one is perfect. Life is filled of mistakes that's how we learn.                                                                 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGKTnRPQfu8

Tech tool kit 3

TECH TOOL KIT  1

Visual Aids for students with Autism

As a future Special Educator, I am interested in Autism students and how can I get into their minds in order to teach them.

Based on research, it is known that children who are autistic learn better using images and visual aids. Therefore,  with this website I can find some sources to use with Autistic children.

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/picture-symbols/7010

In this website, it is explained some of the most common sources that can help  students understand the procedures and rules inside the classroom.

Autistic children need more visual aids than the other  students, therefore, with K-3 Special Education students, teachers can use these pictures and their students  will understand the directions better than if they are only mentioned verbally.

Besides, the daily routine can be explained easily with these picture posted in the classroom and with small versions hanging them in our badge if needed.  

 

 In this image it teaches students when hearing the word no and understanding when it's appropriate to touch and not to touch things. When a child see this picture they will understand why they can't touch, it also keeps the child safe.

 In this picture it shows children different ways to communicate and how they can use their words when asking different questions. I find this website very useful for teachers to use in the classrooms and even with children that don't have a disability.

tech tool kit #2

study stack is a great way to get children wanting to study. I'm going to encourage my students to try it. Study stack is a website that helps you study for a test for example you can make online flash card. They turn what ever it is your study into a game to help you remember the terms your studying.  It really will help my students feel confident to take a test knowing not only they study for it, but they had fun doing. I am going to remind my students that if you try it you will have a great time learning how to do it.

update on how cize is going for me

I can honestly say sense I've been doing cize with my mom it's been a lot of fun. There's days where I'm not up for working out, but as soon as I start I feel great after I do it.  These last couple of weeks have been really hard with work and a death in the family it's been really hard to focus on anything, but when I go to workout with my mom we keep each other up and the teacher is really helpful she really helps you to not give up to stay positive saying you can do it. Sense we've joined cize it brought me and my mom closer than ever. That was one of my goals for joining cize, I've learned how to work with others and also stay on beat while the music is playing.

Blog #2 Adapting to Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Growing up, I felt that teachers judged me by the color of my skin. To me when I was a child, all I could think about was how unfair it was. How can you judge a book by it’s cover without not knowing anything about them. As a teacher, my goal is to teach my students to treat others the way you want to be treated. I believe that teachers should be educated about racism in general as well as racism that occurs in a classroom setting, because it will help them understand what it is and how to use what they learned to solve problems when certain racial situations occurs. I also believe that teachers have to learn how to teach students unbiasedly. I believe teachers should take a class on how to teach students of different background and/or race. So they can teach them as they would another child of the same race as them.

I think that it is important to teach children why they should never judge other children of a different race or background. Children learn from the adult whether the parent or teacher how to treat people. Like for example, there was an African American teacher who worked at my elementary school and some of the other teachers didn’t treat her the same as her other colleagues. The colleagues thought that the children didn’t notice how they were treating her. But what they didn’t know is that it affected the children of color and made them look at those teachers in a different light. Because of this incident, it made me want to change how other teachers treat each other and also change how they treat students as well. It also made me realize that we affect students with our behavior as well as the people around us.

tool tech kit #1

I am going to use google docs in my classroom, because it will help me get power points ready and collect different types of data to share with my students. On google docs you can do so much that I honestly didn't know, for example you can share documents with people. You can blog, can also use maps, I found it interesting that you can use sheets to collect different types of data. I could use sheets to make a goal chart for my students. I'm very excited to learn new ways to teach to my students.

Cize?

What is Cize? Cize is an amazing way to lose weight just by dancing. My mom is always talking about how she wants to lose weight but isn't motivated to do it. So my mom and I went online and was looking up fun work outs that she could try, and that's where we read about Cize. Cize starts in two weeks and they tell you come with a picture of how you look now and later with that picture we are going to compare how we look from when we first started. I'm really excited my mom wants to give it a try and I'm happy she asked me to do it with her.

What if you can't dance? That's ok they said they will teach you step by step and work with you one on one. As you’re learning the dance moves you forget you're doing it to lose weight. I think this is a great way to lose weight because your not going to get bored with the class, the way the have it set up is like your at a dances studio with mirrors all around so everyone can see what's being taught. Something I may have a hard time with is keeping up, because I have no rhythm it may sound crazy but it's true. My mom on the other hand is a dancing machine, so I'm sure this dance class will help a lot. Cize is a eight week of nonstop dancing fun and within those eight weeks you will build confidence that you may have not had before and to me that's life changing. This is definitely going to be an adventure. Wish me luck. I just hope that it really helps my mom and not something that brings her down. I'm excited to meet all the people and make new friends that want to better their life. I think it's going to be a great experience not only for myself but to help others and see them succeeded. My goal is to keep my promise to my mom and not give up, and to stay motivated no matter how hard it gets. All I want to do is make my mom happy and see her succeed and reach her goal in losing weight, but she said it's not about losing the weight it's also keeping the weight off. I think I'm going to be a big help with my mom helping her, like she always would say your always going to be my little helper.

Why pedagogy?

When I was in the third grade I struggled with reading, because in first and second grade I was at a different school where they didn't teach you how to read right away. I spent two years at that school not being taught how to read. When I went back to Monroe Elementary I was scared to read out loud because I knew I couldn't read as fast as the other kids. I thought they would make fun of me, so I would pray that my teacher wouldn't call on me and when she would call on me it took forever to the the words to come out. Of course the other students made fun of me made elementary hell for me, made me not wanna go to school anymore because I was to scared to be made fun of. After the first time it nearly broke my heart and I couldn't take so I would ask my parents if I could stay home. Two weeks later they got me in to  a resource class that taught me the basics of reading and it really helped me. About a couple of months later my reading level went from kindergarten to second grade reading level.
During my experience in elementary school I really enjoyed math, I had this awesome math teacher his name was Matt and he taught us everything. At first I didn't think u was going to enjoy math because of my reading experience and how horrible it was for me. I was proud that I gave math a chance, I really loved it a lot. As my journey through math I learned so many different ways to add  subtract multiply and divide it was amazing I didn't want to stop the learning. What I really liked about Matt was that if you didn't understand something he would stop everything and explain how to do that problem to make sure everyone understands. To me that meant a