Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Create "Student Power"

Rochelle Gutierrez, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign April 22, 2009 Lecture at Pace University - School of Education. (Disclaimer: it's a slow start, but gets juicy around 8:00 minutes in).

Although the focus of this talk is on "urban settings", it is very relevant for international schools dealing with multiple languages, cultures, and levels. It's full of practical tips for classroom teachers and school-wide policies that create success stories. Here are my notes from the lecture: 

EQUITY: power, access, achievement, and identity.
  • Collective enterprise: reflective teachers truly collaborating across dept and levels and modeling teamwork for students.
  • Cooperative Learning groups that capitalized on multiple level/language use (code switching) and was seen as the "norm".
  • Deferment to students for ideas to relate to their experiences and have ownership of the material.
  • Commitment to students: teachers advocating for students before advocating for subjects. 
  • Rotating teachers so they gain a bigger picture of the curriculum.
  • "Open door" classrooms with trust between teachers and students.
  • Student voices: feedback on lessons/policies, recruiting younger students, celebrating their own successes.
  • Transparency of teaching practice for "savvy" students.
  • Process focused: students rationalizing, justifying, and convincing others of their understanding using multiple representations. 
  • Admin/board's low understanding of subject area can create detrimental policies.
  • High expectation on note-taking, materials lists, and respect for the tools/knowledge needed to achieve. Treated students like college students.
  • Teachers/admin professionally developing each other. STRONG TEACHER COMMUNITY.
Jeez... my school needs a staff room! Jennie

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