Teaching Quality?

    I have been thinking about teaching quality a lot this week. What does that really mean? When my CT expected me to teach exactly the same way as she did in class. If I didn't, I am a bad teacher. Is her way of teaching really the "best" way of teaching? We are people and human beings. I have my own style and believes in teaching and pedagogy approaches. If I have to teach the teaching methods that I am not comfortable with or conflict with my teaching philosophy, does that mean that I am a terrible teacher? It is just like a couple. A boy wants to change his girlfriend to become his "ideal" significant other. It is just not going to work out well.



Another problem that I have observed is the conflict of mastering content knowledge and pedagogy knowledge. A lot of the times, people think someone who are "experts" in one field, doesn't necessary mean they are good teachers. Taking myself as an example, I know how to speak, read, and write Mandarin, but I will never become a good Mandarin teacher. I have no idea of how to debunk the Mandarin grammar, I just.. use it. I don't even know what Mandarin grammar would be like. I don't mean that content knowledge is not important. It is important. But now all "English" native speakers or students who majored in "English Literature" know how to "teach" English.

It seems like some schools are expecting teachers to teach TEKS at all time. If teachers are not doing that, then those are the "bad" teachers. What does teaching quality really mean to school administrators and policy makers? Oh, wait, something seems missing here. School administrators and policy makers? What about teachers and students? Teachers should be the one telling school administrators and policy makers what teaching quality means, not vis versa. This is a really good issue that we all need to think about.

Most Rewarding Week

       After a crazy busy school work from the past few months, I finally get the opportunity to teach almost every class with my CT this month. I have always seen myself as an intruder of my CT's teaching space. I was very concerned about taking over her classes and changed the classroom culture that she has formed. After several great and necessary conversation, I feel more comfortable of bringing my own teaching methods in her class.
        Here is my dilemma. The student-centered pedagogy is my ideal teaching practice; however, most of the schools where locate in high poverty or diverse race/ethnicity neighborhood, especially the schools with a long history of racial relationship struggles, have already had a rooted culture of top-down, authoritative pedagogy and structured curriculum. To those teachers who would like to bring more democratic and liberal culture in classrooms, the struggles between the dominant culture and non-dominant culture are unavoidable. Teachers who believe the student-centered pedagogy will need to put much effort to reframe their classroom culture with students who are used to seeing a teacher as an authoritative figure. Changing culture is the most difficult and challenging reform in any field. What should we do to turn around the dominant culture in a classroom?
        After the intense teaching practices in my CT's classroom, I cannot stop feeling my passion to teaching and education. All the students are so bright and critical. I do think that they teach me more than I do to them. I have to admit that I am a coward in terms of building relationships with students. The more I know them, the sadder I will feel when they are not going to be my students next semester. This is a pattern that I have noticed from my past teaching experiences. I mastered this emotional moment while I was constantly teaching in the past; but it is a little hard for me now especially I have left teaching for such a long time.

Critical Literacy Lesson Plans

When I saw 'critical literacy' on our syllabus, my initial question was that why critical literacy is a separate unit? We use critical literacy every day and everywhere. Why we single out critical literacy instead of acknowledging that critical literacy is embedded in our pedagogical approach.



Teachers should provide a safe space for students to read and write critically. Most of the time, students are very critical to their classes and schooling. However, the test-driven culture in school has swallowed the voiced from 'others ,' students learn to ignore their own critical thoughts.



I am very excited to plan the critical literacy unit for my imaginary class. The biggest challenge of design my "ideal" critical literacy unit is that the existing resources on-line including published books do not satisfy my expectation of "critical" literacy. I would like to use critical media literacy approach to have students develop their own critical views of the world. I realize that creating a complete, read-to-go, package of lesson plans of critical media literacy probably will take a full semester to accomplish. Most of the existing media literacy lesson plans teach students the elements of media, which is still the banking model of teaching.

I'll just have to accept the fact that no lesson plans are perfect, neither do mine. I should always make sure to regularly update my lesson plans instead of using the same old plans over and over again.

Reading Reflections of Harlem on Our Minds (Kinloch, 2010)

        I like this book. The idea of connecting the concept of gentrification, neighborhood, and classroom is exactly what I am looking for to my lesson plans. Having the opportunity to do research about how gentrification influences the Austin metropolitan area and to understand the history of segregation in Austin in one of the graduate course, bringing in the same project into secondary classrooms was not registered in my mind. Kinloch (2010) provides a great model of how literacy teachers can bring critical pedagogy and praxis to students.

          There is another book called "Our America" (Jones, Newman, &Isay, 2009), which shares very similar concept of having students study their neighborhood in their literacy class. However, both Kinloch (2010) and Jones, Newman, & Isay (2009) conducted with only two students in each of their research projects. I wonder the quality of the research projects can be if we have all of our students evolved in the research. I also think teachers should have a profound knowledge of the history of the neighborhood before assigning the research project to students.

         I agree with the teacher response in page 172, "a constant challenge in many classrooms is student engagement." We have always to remember that what the pedagogy we learned from the UT is not the mainstream ways of teaching that what the pedagogy we learned from the UT is not the mainstream ways of teaching. Students will question about what we bring into our classroom because our pedagogy training challenges the teaching norms in schools. The challenges we are going to have are not about not having student-oriented and culturally responded curriculum but about how to frame a new learning culture in our classroom.

The Challenges of Being a Teacher of Color: Teachers as Social Activists

            I am angry. I am exhausted. And, I know some people think I am just complaining and not appreciating what I have. Even though, I know I am not JUST complaining. The problems in our education system is so complex that I have the feeling of not being able to make a big difference. Hearing a teacher leader and school administrator telling me that multicultural education means having diverse racial demographic in school is heartbreaking. Such statement sounds exactly the same as "look! We have a black president. Racism does not exist anymore." I was horrified when I know this teacher's perception of multicultural education and she could be a assistant principal in the future.
             I am angry. I am exhausted. And, I am not complaining at all. Being a teacher of color, my voice will be marginalized and ignored for the most of the time. I have to fight with students stereotype and biases against me every now and than. I have to stay calm and reason with my students when they insulted me just because they want to challenge the power dynamic in class. I have one student asked me "do you know what 'shit' mean?" (Really? Would students still ask me this question if they don't know that I can speak two languages?) I have another student who love to play 'racism' card to silence others and can walk away like nothing happened. (And one of the classroom rule is "respect others". Clearly, the class teacher have not taught students what "respect" really mean.) One of the students was "translating" English into the language he created to me while I was talking to another student. And, I know, this is not the end of the story. I will receive more immature behaviors in the future.
               I am angry. I am exhausted. Sometimes, I wish I can chose not to see things that are unpleasant. Microaggression is not easy to spot for some people but I can almost always tell when microaggression heppens to me. I don't want to share the experience because I have too many to share. The more I share, the more I get angry. I just need to tell myself that I have to become a better person to forgive and to continue loving the world I live.
              Being a teacher of color is never easy. I have to remember every single of my frustration and good and bad experiences to help other teachers of color or teachers who struggle to fight in our education system and to aspire them to become school leaders. Having good teachers is not enough to change a school culture. We must have good school administrators to support teachers as well.