7/19 Class Reflection - Robyn

Today’s class was really informing and inspiring for me. I definitely feel like I have a better grasp on the current divide between our public schools, and Dr. Narcisse did a wonderful job in helping me to see this. One of Dr. Narcisse’s main points was “know thyself”, which I think is crucial. We have to know who we are, where we come from, what our biases are, etc. because it all comes into the classroom. This is something we talked about in my Teaching Social Studies and the Arts methods class – we focused on the importance of understanding our positionality. Our positionality affects what we teach and how we teach it. In terms of social studies, this means we might teach the significance of one event from only one perspective, for example, which then limits the students’ knowledge and perception on the topic. We have to be aware of the “baggage” we bring into the classroom.

Dr. Narcisse also spoke about teaching students to save themselves, rather than us as teachers saving the students. This brought me back to an older “Do Now”, in which we talked about our roles as teachers, whether that be to “save” students or just to “teach” them. I don’t like the word save – I think it implies a sense of helplessness on the part of the student, and as teachers, we should be encouraging our students – they are smart, they can accomplish their goals, they can do anything, as Dr. Narcisse said. As we talked about in our discussion group after the lecture, it is important to be a source of encouragement to our students and to help them believe in themselves. This especially important for students who may not be receiving these messages at home – help prevent “learned helplessness.”

Also in our discussion group we spoke about “dinosaurs” in the education system – those teachers who constantly send negative messages to students, who aren’t interested in doing anything but teaching, etc. Something important to note is that not all of these dinosaurs are old teachers, but can even be a person in his/her first year of teaching. How can we reconcile working with such teachers when we are trying to approach education from a different, more engaged perspective? Is it possible to change their beliefs?