Académique Documents
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Culture Documents
In order for a school to instruct each student to his or her maximum ability, the school must be inclusive of all learners. This includes being inclusive to all learning styles, inclusive to all cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and inclusive of all students achievements. Inclusive instruction is delivered, shared, and experienced by everyone in the school community, from janitor to teacher. This is my philosophy of education. My school will be warm and inviting. It will convey a feeling that everyone in the school community is a learner, from the students and teachers to the support staff. Welcome to our school will be written in all the spoken languages of our community. The sign above my office will read Head Learner rather than principal (Hord & Sommers, p.12). I will have weekly drop-in times for parents to share their celebrations, concerns, and questions. Each classroom will have a bulletin board where student work will be displayed, shared, and celebrated. Students will work with teachers collaboratively to create multiple school-wide bulletin boards celebrating accomplishments in safety, respect and responsibility. Signage and information will be sent home in the languages spoken by our community. Teachers will each be expected to call five families in his or her class weekly to discuss the great accomplishments each student is making. This will create an open communication system where questions can be answered before they become problems, and create a collaborative union of trust such that when a larger problem emerges, a foundation of communication has already been fostered. The ideas of Collaborative Problem Solving led by Dr. Ross Greene (http://www.livesinthebalance.org/, retrieved November 6, 2012) will be the foundation for discipline, where challenging behavior is viewed as an unsolved problem and an opportunity for learning new skills, rather that something to be punished and suppressed. Struggling students will not be pulled out of their classrooms and dropped into specialized instructional programs that require them to transfer their learning back to their home classroom. Supplemental programs will push in, and teachers will co-teach the lessons, further helping the facilitation of differentiated lessons (Frattura & Capper, 2007). Frattura & Capper cite numerous studies that student achievement and morale increases most in a push-in model, where instructional strategies such as SIOP and GLAD are used with the entire class and not just targeted students. The way to build an empowered community of learners is to treat each member as a valued member of the school community. Cultural experiences will not be singled out to be celebrated for one day, or taught for one month, but woven into the fabric of the curriculum and experiences of the school (Geneva Gay, 2010). Cultural experiences will be shared through our Experiences Wall, where teachers and students will display pictures of their families in the community, creating bridges of connection among a community of learners. Culture will be
experienced through food, literature, writing, plays, and movies, not through a simple bulletin board or assembly. A community that learns together achieves together. The way to build a community of learners is to engage the community in learning together. To accomplish that, we will have monthly family nights on a Friday, where the school will have a movie playing in the community room for families to enjoy. Each month will have a food and culture theme, which will represent the cultural heritage of the school community and themes from student learning (harvest, Kwanzaa, etc.). We learn from each other in many mediums, and socializing around food and family are proven ways to build community (Deal & Peterson, 2009). When the entire family is engaged in the learning process, student achievement increases. That is my philosophy of education, and my vision as an instructional leader
References Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (2009). Shaping School Culture; Pitfalls, Paradoxes & Promises. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Frattura, E. M., & Capper, C. A. (2007). Leading for Social Justice; Transforming Schools for All Learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Gay, Geneva. (2010). Culturally Responsive Teaching; Theory, Research, and Practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Hord, S. M., & Sommers, W. A. (2008). Leading Professional Learning Communities; Voices from Research and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.