I can see why the concept of "parent involvement" was changed to "family engagement" and I think the term is all the better for the word change. Because its true that there are some ML students who may be living with extended family rather than with their parents, they could be living with an aunt and uncle or their house could involve both their parents and their extended family all under one roof. And having the ML students family "engaged" instead of "involved" sends a more positive message of wanting to give the family a chance to not only be included in their own child's education but also the class as a whole. An ML student's family sharing their experiences can benefit the non-ML students as well and help them understand the culture their ML students come from.

I really like this idea of assigning students interview projects. Because it gives the students an opportunity to learn more about their cultural heritage from their own family members and then share that culture with the class. And if their parents dont know much about their cultural heritage then the students could ask their grandparents who may still speak their home language and then the student could learn that language from their family member if they grew up only knowing english. It give opportunity for the student to explore their own identity in other words and then share it with the class and the teacher.

This is interesting because it reminds me of what I did in my art appreciation class during my sophomore year at crowder college. Giving the students an image and having them interpret their individual feelings and understandings related to the image as part of a group discussion is a great exercise. As the old saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words" and this is especially true when it comes to looking at art. And if its an art that an ML student could understand from their cultural heritage then they can share that understanding and unique interpretation with their non-ML classmates in their group.

I really like the importance of teachers providing oppurtunities for students to draw on their multiple identities and languages while learning. And I agree with emphasizing how important it is to find out what students know and make connections between their existing schema and the new information to make the newly-learned information stick. I actually learned about this in my ED PSYCH course when I read about transfer of learning and the depth of processing in memory storage. The most effective way for students to encode the new knowledge is by applying past experiences with the new knowledge. When students can relate or make their own connections to what they are currently learning with what they have already learned makes it easier for them to understand what they are currently learning.

I really like how the teacher read to her students and listened to their ideas on what inspired Diego Rivera's art, it made the reading experience interactive for the students. And she paused to highlight spanish words and made sure to ask her students to define those words to assess if they know the meaning of those words which benefits the non-MLs. And it benefits them because they are learning how to pronounce those spanish words from the teacher and what they mean from their ML classmates. Then returning the class to small groups with that new information gives oppurtunity for the students to process that newly learned information and add it to their earlier discussions. I can see myself using a method like this for my future classroom whether I have ML students in it or not.

This stood out to me as interesting because I can see how student choice, when thoughtfully planned and implemented, can benefit classroom management and make lessons engaging. I've seen teachers implement student choice in their lessons during my observations for EDU 280, letting students choose between one activity or another and the students all loved the choice opportunity. Letting students choose how they learn lets them feel involved in the lesson and it nurtures their decision-making and critical-thinking skills. Letting students choose their roles in a group activity can encourage collaboration and teamwork, for some students its also an opportunity for leadership skill development as well.

This is interesting because its also so true. The teacher is the role model in the classroom for their students. And if the teacher is wanting their students to share a bit about themselves then the teacher should too. When the teacher shares about themselves then it helps build that connection with the students and lets the students know what to expect of the class and what the class rules the teacher expects their students to follow.

This is interesting to me because I love the idea of getting to know my students beyond what their academic strengths and weaknesses are. Because knowing a student's passion, their personal goals and what they are good at can prove to be very beneficial and helpful in making a lesson plan that will nurture their talents and help them with their struggles. I want to be able to help my future students reach their goals and dreams and teach them life skills that will help them achieve those goals and dreams on top of learning the core subjects they need to learn at their grade level. I can see this also helping me connect to ML students especially when I learn more about their cultural background, because then I can integrate some of that culture into my lessons.

I really love the idea of student-centered instruction the more I learn about it and I have learned a great deal about it these past few months from both my other classes and the observations I've done for my EDU 280 class. I've seen teachers tailor their teaching methods in ways that kept the students engaged and challenged at the same time. Students really get the chance to understand the lesson material when they have the opportunity to work together in pairs or groups and discuss what the lesson is about and even teach each other when one student gets it more than the other. And I can see how this would help ML students as well, because they can pair up with the teacher who can explain the steps in solving a problem or explain the assigned reading to the ML student in their home language.

Reading this explanation of what a scaffold is really put it into perspective for me. I can't help but think of it as like a training well in language skills and understanding how to use them. Because of how its described as "not meant to be a permanent support". And I can see how the scaffolding might be unique to each student's strengths and areas where they might need improvement.

I never heard of success folders before so this was very interesting to read about. I can see how useful something like success folders could be for monitoring students progress and have something to present during parent-teacher conferences. It also gives the students a sense of pride because their best work is being saved and then shown to their parents and the students even get to have a hand in it when writing the short explanation of why they included a particular piece of work on an index card attached to the work they are really proud of. And having students decorate their folders with inspirational quotes or images adds to the motivation they could feel from adding their work to that folder.

I think this is an interesting strategy to learn about because I feel like its one of the important qualities an effective teacher should have. Letting students know that we, their teachers, have had our moments of struggle when learning and that it ok to feel that way sometimes. Failure and making mistakes is part of learning and its important we make that clear to our future students and then we teach them how they can learn from their failures in order to improve.

I really agree with this viewpoint that one of the ultimate goals as educators, is to eventually guide students to see their own potential. And I think this also applies not just to ML students but all students in general. We want our future students to believe that they can achieve anything when they put their minds to it. And we want our students to believe that the lessons we give them has value for their future even beyond the next grade level.

This selection reminds me of the times when segregation in schools was slowly changed into integration and many students of different ethnic and cultural background started joining white americans in schools. Because there was sadly a lot of controversy and fear back that that the african american, hispanic, muslim, etc. would affect the school's academics, decrease home values in white neighborhoods, and take away jobs. Even still to this day there are still some community members that are so set in that older systemic social construct because it was all they knew growing up. And it was because they never took the time to get to know those families and their culture.

This to me, would be a great thing to do during the first week of school. In my EDU 280 class we covered the importance of the first week of school because of the first impressions teachers and students make and how important introductions are to start building connections between teacher and students as well as students building connections with each other. And I think sharing a good story like this could be a good ice breaker or integrated into a fun activity to get to know one another. Of course that doesn't mean the story sharing idea couldn't also be used when a student transfers later on in the school year. The transfer student could still draw a personal narrative storyboard or write response to sentence promp of their choice even if its past the first week of school.

As I started reading this selection, I started to think about how I recently learned about the importance of looking at our students strengths, weaknesses and learning about their families could help us be effective teachers. And reading about how doing the same for our ML students seemed to be an interesting expansion to what I've learned in that other course. I agree that drawing from that knowledge and implementing it in our lesson plans is an interesting idea, so that our native english-speaking students can learn from their ML peers and the ML students can likewise learn from their native-english speaking peers at the same time.

I think that its interesting idea for teachers to incorporate instructional practices into their lessons for students to build on their knowledge and skills in their home language or languages so that they don't have to lose that proficiency in their home language. I got to observe a DL math class during one of my EDU 280 classes and the teacher spoke through the entire lesson in spanish and encouraged her students to answer or ask questions in spanish so that they can improve on their math skills and keep up their spanish language skills at the same time. Especially since they were already taking some classes in english to learn english language as well.

I always liked the idea of a teacher taking steps to understand the culture of their students, especially those of different ethnic background. I think another way a teacher could expose themselves to a different cultural experience is by attending a community event that has different culture food stalls and art/performances. Or the teacher could also look into their own ancestry because most people would be surprised by what they may find in their own ancestry, and then exploring their own ancestral culture could give the teacher another perspective into a students cultlure that may share similar ancestry.

Being "color-blind" has never been the correct answer to diversity in the classroom or work place. I remember my social studies teacher in the 7th grade teaching me that to look at the classroom with color-blind eyes is to deny anything unique to our classmates and that can be applied to our future jobs too or even out there in the real world. My teacher taught us that we should instead respect those colors, look and see others for all their cultural characteristics and not judge them for any of it. Because those unique characteristics are part of what makes our country so unique and beautifully diverse. Like many different colors forming a beautiful piece of art. And even those with white skin can have a unique background that you wouldn't expect.

I found this to be interesting because I've about student-centered approach to teaching and learning and group learning but I didn't think of them as separate cultures. It's interesting to learn that the US is considered individualist when so many of our classes in different grade levels emphasize the importance of cooperation and teamwork on some assignments and class activities. I also learned recently that Finland focuses greatly on the practical approach in their teaching, they teach their subjects in a way that their students can apply out in the world and in the work place when they get older. They also offer a private tutor lessons outside of the school hours to cater to each individual students strengths and weaknesses.

I could not agree more with the importance of self-awareness in the cultural sense. I remember a time when elementary schools used to teach social studies even and included lessons in self-awareness and understanding your cultural identity. This subject has sadly been put on the back burner in the educational system of today or merged with history or science in most elementary and middle schools. It puts the kids at a disadvantage later on in life and will make it harder for them to understand their own cultural identity and personal bias later on in high school where they are now taking mock citizenship tests before graduating as seniors.

I actually read about this concept when I researched about John Dewey for a presentation in my EDU280 class. John Dewey was the first to introduce the idea of student-centered learning rather than teacher-centered that focused on lectures. His research into the pedagogical teaching method proved that students have a a more efficient learning experience when they have opportunities to learn from each other as well as the teacher and learning from experiences.

I agree that it is important to remember that everyone is a member of various cultural groups and that even within cultural groups there is a variety of beliefs, expectations, and behaviors. One only needs to really look at this country, the U.S.A for example. This country was built and has grown around a very large cultural variety and that's what makes it unique. Its a great big hotpot of multiple beliefs (both religious and non-religious), customs, and behaviors. And when I was in the 3rd grade and my class had the foreign transfer student from africa, he was given the option to share in what he remembered of his home in Kenya, Africa only when he was comfortable doing so.

I actually touched on this topic briefly while I was taking a biology course during my 2nd year at Crowder college, when we talked about genetics. Biological characteristics can vary because of the various different traits one can inherit from their mixed lineage from different ancestors being from different countries. And its true that racial inferiority was created in the US to justify the unequal treatment of the enslaved people, but one more people I would include in that list is the Chinese people. Because like the Chinese were actually imported and exploited for cheap labor to build the railroads and work on plantations.

This takeaway left me with thoughts that never occurred to me before. But thinking back on it now, I can recall a classmate that moved into joplin from Mexico that knew some spanish but they spoke more fluently in English. He moved just shortly after learning to speak spanish when he was really young so he didn't have as much practice in his home language as he did english.