Reflective Essay for 602B James Holan National University March, 23, 2011

Its is my belief that in order to be a successful educator in today's schools, especially in the special education field, it is imperative that teachers strive to become culturally respectful and sensitive educators. It is important to become culturally aware for many different reasons. I believe though that it is important to understand where your students are coming from so you can help them achieve their goals and get to where they wanna be in life. By acknowledging the cultures of different ethnic groups, a teacher can better understand students' attitudes, dispositions, and approaches to learning and education. It can build bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences, which can help a teacher identify different learning styles and methods of teaching for specific students. It can may even inspire students to learn more about their own cultures and other students heritages as well, creating an environment where students are aware of each other and respect the cultural differences in the classroom. It would also be necessary to incorporate multicultural information, materials, and resources into most of the subjects curriculum's. I say most of the subjects, because some subjects are more universal than others. Math and Science are subjects that would seem to be fairly hard to work multicultural examples into on a consistent basis, when things like fractions and elements of the periodic table are not related to a certain group of people. One way though to relate Math problems to a diverse classroom is to present the problems in the form of everyday life concepts like employment, economics and consumer habits of various culturally groups through word problems. In my interview with a second language program administrator, I learned a lot about the landscape of ELL and special education students. When I asked her about how many English Language Learners they had at Mission Hills she quickly got on her computer and found out the exact number was 386 which she said was equal to about 15% of the schools population. She also estimated that 30 40 percent of those students are classified as students with disabilities. She said that in her field they are considered Double Dippers because they are involved in both programs and require two types of

academic attention. She also explained that the school inherits most of these students and very rarely do they have to refer a child to the Special Education that isnt already there. Michelle explained that one of the biggest problems English language development teachers have is figuring out whether the learning problem is a language issue or a disability or a combination of both. She suggested using movement/physical based activities and oral language exercises and activities as specific strategies she thinks Special Education teachers could use to help get better performance from ELL students. Michelle also believes that professional development throughout the year is crucial for the teachers success. Working on and using SDAIE strategies across the board in classrooms whether it is special or general education classrooms. She also said that special education teachers at there school also go through GLAD training. I think another major factor of a being a successful educator is creating an environment where the students can be successful. It seems when students have a better understanding of themselves and the students that surround them they can become part of a group effort which I think creates an environment that can encourage academic and cultural excellence. Students, I believe, will find the confidence to clearly express thoughts and ideas, have unique and more advanced skills taught to them, and begin to develop interpersonal relationships with students they may have ignored or written off in the past. In turn students may behave like members of an extended family, helping, assisting, supporting, and encouraging each other. Throughout my observations over the last two months it has become very apparent that there are many different ways to accomplish teaching a full curriculum to a diverse and unique classroom. Being able to see the different methods and strategies was an extremely helpful. In Mr. Stamatalatos's class he had a teachers aide from the resource center to assist kids that had IEP's and 504 plans. She floated around the room to assist the different students with their work when Mr. Stamatalatos wasn't doing a lecture or demonstration. During his lectures and demonstrations Mr. Stamatalatos did a very good job engaging each of the students in his class. Sometimes it was merely making eye contact, sometimes he

had the students help him finish explaining steps as he was demonstrating on the board. I can't say for sure, but it seemed like he personally engaged with every kid during some point of the class, whether it was to asist them in an academic problem or just to check in and see how the students weekend was. I also remeber seeing Mr. Dwyer teach a history lesson to his tenth grade classroom where he taught a WWI history lesson. He handed out a fill in the blank worksheet and a blank European map, this was a note sheet that the students were to fill in as the lesson was being taught. The first slide of his lesson was a vocabulary introduction, this included words that would be showing up throughout the whole lesson. Students quickly filled in there worksheets as Mr. Dwyer reviewed each of the words and its definition. The next slide were instructions on how the blank maps were too be filled in. He then stopped the class to give the students about five minutes to fill in all the borders, seas, and states. As the lesson progressed Mr. Dwyer would give the class different scenarios relating to the beginning of the first World War and ask them, taking all the variables into account, what they would do if they were a general of Germany's army. When he would give these scenarios to the students he would then give them time in there little groups to discuss and write out a plan of action. After that he would go around the classroom and ask each group what there plan was, how it was to executed, and how they came to that conclusion. These parts of the lessons were obviously very engaging for the class because they are having their small group conversations and then having a larger conversation based off of all of those little conversations. Mr. Dwyer would then explain what really happened, sometimes referring to a small groups plan, as the students filled out their review sheets. I know that if students can be held accountable as a piece of a bigger group, and it is everyone's job to make s that each individual member of the group is successful, I think it would give all of the students involved a greater sense of belonging and understanding of each other. I think that is so important in education that our students feel like they belong. We never want them to become a negative self fulfilling prophecies.