Connecting Classroom to Community

URBAN LEARNER-TEACHING RESIDENCY REFLECTIONS
Week 3 --Triad One

Monday 10/15/12 to Friday 10/19/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM

Professional Responsibility:
Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships

Area of Concentration: Collaboration
Connecting Classroom to Community

Guiding Questions:

What are the core components of a framework for effective and efficient family-teacher conferences that support diverse learners and their families? How can urban schools best connect the classroom to the multicultural community?

In what negative ways might the community’s various ethnic, linguistic and cultural social groups perceive the education system, the school environment or the family-teacher dynamic?  How has this school accounted for cultural concerns?

Critical Dispositions Matrix

This week’s experiences highlighted four critical dispositions related to the area of Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships:

• Teacher takes responsibility for student learning and uses ongoing analysis and reflection to improve planning and practice.
• Teacher is committed to deepening understanding of his/her own frames of reference (e.g., culture, gender, language, abilities, ways of knowing), the potential biases in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with learners and their families.
• Teacher sees him/herself as a learner, continuously seeking opportunities to draw upon current education policy and research as sources of analysis and reflection to improve practice.
• Teacher understands the expectations of the profession including codes of ethics, professional standards of practice, and relevant law and policy.

Culturally Responsive Framework

Four markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and the pedagogical domain of Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships have been highlighted by this week's experiences:

• Maintaining a respect-filled learning environment that reflects a multicultural perspective
• Instructional planning that accounts for multiple literacies and supports linguistic diversity
• Engendering competence
• Differentiated instruction and assessments

Implications for Practice

Week three of my urban school residency was exciting, energizing and empowering! Although I am still struggling to organize and prioritize my work, I am finding new ways to think about urban teacher training itself.

This culminating student-teaching educational experience – what I am calling my capstone -- presents an obstacle course of interrelated but un-collated objectives, obligations and obligatory chores. I have devised a system to integrate and consolidate assignments. Considering the TPA, UTP and state requirements, there are simply too many things to do if I am to reach my goal – to synthesize Metro State course learning and education theory research through my practicum in the “real” world, resulting in a true capstone experience featuring authentic artifacts that reflect the critical dispositions central to the art and craft of managing the culturally-rich urban classroom . . .

Key implications toward a practical
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:

• Be flexible and understanding about the underlying cause of classroom misbehavior.
  
  
• Enforce rules but make the punishment fit the crime.
  
  
• Create opportunities for diverse learners to form a positive and healthy social identity.
  
  
• Construct an intentionally diverse, culturally inclusive environment where each family’s cultural community and social identity is considered.
  
  
• Call the roll and openly acknowledge each member of the learning community. Make it a time to share a thought or say one positive thing about the day. If time is at issue on a particular day simply turn the roll call into a quick game – but honor the ritual of calling the roll so that at every session, each person has been acknowledged, if only for a brief moment.
  
  
• Provide specific opportunities for positive family interaction.
   
• Share fully with families in the academic targets and goals. Allow caregivers to take responsibility for raising student achievement. 
  
  
• Institute an “early warning system” for discipline issues and provide timely feedback about behavior.
  
  
• Make school conferences a very positive and prompt meeting, and provide pathways to conference further.
  
  
• Use a well-designed, consistently updated website as a communication tool.