Theme from Journal Essay

James Klimas
Boston University, School of Education, SED ED 100
Professor Martinelle and Teaching Fellow Dinh Phan
December 3, 2016
 I strongly believe that student-centered lessons provide students with the most effective

learning experiences. Both healthy student-teacher relationships and a culturally relevant

pedagogy help create an atmosphere that is conducive to such a student focused classroom, for

both provide students with an open and connectable setting. Throughout ED 100, we have

learned that connecting to or otherwise understanding students varied cultural backgrounds and

communities build effective student-teacher relationships that create an inclusive and welcoming

learning environment. Therefore, this entire semester, I have thought about my ability to

effectively and genuinely connect with my students. I have become increasingly concerned that

my lack of experience and inability to empathize with some students cultural backgrounds will

hinder my attempts to provide students the best opportunities to learn. My only official teaching

experience at Brooklines Pierce Middle School offers me a real world example of my

shortcomings. Furthermore, I am apprehensive that my strong, yet obscure attitudes towards the

appropriate level of parent involvement will impede my capacity to establish good teacher-parent

dynamics. Therefore, a theme that continually came up in my journal entries was the concern of

my preparedness to provide students with the best opportunities to learn. While I am excited to

teach, I feel that I still have much to learn before I can become an effective, connective, and

culturally relevant social studies teacher.

A student-centered class allows students to independently explore history as a real

historian would; therefore, they are more apt to learn from their own, original inquiry questions

and experiences adventuring through the material. Combs (1982) describes learning as the

personal discovery of meaning that relies on emotional stability (p. 495). A transmission model

of teaching pales in comparison to this hands-on based strategy. In the latter, students are given

the opportunity to go far beyond a simple textbook and actually experience the joy of creating
their own historical hypotheses and connect with the past. This cannot be done in an

authoritative, white-centered traditional style of teaching history, for not every student will be a

white male; therefore, cultural relevancy becomes key to allow students to adventure through

their coursework. Furthermore, students must feel cared for before they are able to participate

in such an independent style of class (Combs, 1982, p. 497). Healthy student-teacher

relationships nurture this feeling of safety. The realization that these two factors are necessary

before I can successfully implement a student-centered pedagogy has caused me to reflect on my

abilities to connect with students.

Relationship building is key in creating a nurturing classroom setting. I firmly agree with

and wish to follow through on Mawhinneys and Sagans (2007) emphasis that positive student-

teacher relationships create effective learning environments. One thing I think I will do well is

establishing high expectations for my students (p. 462). I plan on using the multitude of

historical examples of different peoples accomplishing inspirable things to help my students see

that they are all capable of greatness. However, while I certainly think that I have many of the

teacher traits that engender affection and regard that Mawhinney and Sagan (2007) describe, I

have concerns about having students truly know me based on potential differences that I feel I

might not be able to overcome during my first few years of teaching (p. 462 & 461). I suspect

that after I have gone through many experiences throughout my early career this worry will go

away. Nevertheless, I feel uneasy thinking that my potential ineffectiveness at creating

meaningful relationships with students will establish a somewhat forced classroom environment.

Essentially, I fear that I will become a distant educator instead of a cooperating educational

learner with my students. As Mawhinney and Sagan write, the former will hinder my classrooms

ability to reach its fullest potential.

 The importance of cultural relevancy causes me to reflect on my ability to establish

effective student-teacher relationships. One of the hallmarks of a good social studies class is that

it offers students a culturally relevant pedagogy from which they can connect to and better

learn from (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 159). This is not an easy goal to achieve, for it requires

teachers to be aware of a variety of factors, motivators, community characteristics, and

individual student backgrounds. Without these bits of knowledge, a social studies teacher will

follow the path that many have taken thus far: Hindering student involvement by teaching a

white-centered, authoritative history. One strategy to avoid this pitfall is to utilize students

culture as a vehicle for learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 161). This is where I become

increasingly apprehensive about my current capabilities. I like to believe that I am an open-

minded person (which in itself is a heavily biased statement), so this seems like it should not be a

problem. I would simply need to educate myself about the different cultures that exist within the

community where I teach. However, I do not think it will be this simple. Even if understanding

students cultural background was so straight forward, it would take time. Classroom time that

will thus not be used to its fullest potential; therefore, I would be failing my students.

Moreover, my biggest concern about providing students with a culturally relevant

pedagogy is my potential inability to genuinely relate to some of my students cultures. Chances

are that I come from a different background than many of my future students. This will make it

challenging to understand their histories and use their cultures as a jumping off point for many of

my lessons. How could I best use certain types of music or art that my students connect with on a

deep level, but I have only seen in passing? Ladson-Billings (1995) offers strategies to

implement successful cultural relevancy, but I question the effectiveness of these plans when a

genuine familiarity does not exist. My only official teaching experiences further concerns me
about this challenge. I taught a lesson dealing with early American industrializations effects on

peoples, both majority and minority groups. One of the reasons I focused on lesser mentioned

minority groups was to create a class that allowed different students to connect with different

historical groups; therefore, achieving cultural relevancy. However, my actual implementation

failed at reaching this goal, for I simply skimmed over different groups and did not use students

individual cultures to enhance the lesson. My current inexperience and personal background

hinders my ability to establish meaningful usage of different strategies. Currently, I can only

sympathize with students who are different to me. I cannot empathize because I have not

experienced what their lives are like nor do I want to pretend I can simply pick this ability up, for

that would be insulting them and their communities. However, since this comes from my

newness to the field and not bigotry, I believe that after I have gained some years of experience

working with students and their cultures, I will achieve a level of genuine understanding that

allows me to offer students an effective, culturally relevant pedagogy.

The appropriate level of parent involvement in their childrens education has also caused

me to reflect over the course. A part of creating healthy student-teacher relationships is

establishing a working and communicative dynamic between the teacher and parents. This not

only extends to the individual teacher and parent, but to the entire school community at large to

create a healthy learning environment, as Habegger (2008) suggests. However, there are

seemingly too many cases where the precarious line between parents helping and hindering

educators is crossed. In Kenneys (2010) chapter, she writes of how a bigoted father impedes

students from learning how to be better open-minded people through exposure to homosexual

texts (p. 62-64). Additionally, Tepper (2005) retells the story of how a religious mother

completely shuts down her attempts to educate students on sex and sexuality (p. 152-153). In
both cases, a close-minded parent disrupts beneficial learning environments, strategies, and

teacher confidence. Therefore, both cases offer examples of the potential harm of giving parents

too much power over their childrens education.

However, I have no idea what the healthy boundary of the level of parent involvement is.

Furthermore, as one of my journals comments said, what gives anyone the right to restrict

anyone elses involvement in education? (Dinh Phan, on Journal #7) I do not have a clear

response to this dilemma, for I agree that I should not have complete control over another

persons childs education. Additionally, it would ideally be in the students interest to work with

their parents instead of against them. However, I still wrestle with examples, such as Arizonas,

Californias, and Massachusetts parents voting against a bilingual education in favor of the less

effective English Immersion. Nevertheless, while my current attitude towards the appropriate

level of parent involvement is hazy and cautious, I am sure that like creating a meaningful and

culturally relevant pedagogy, I will learn how to deal with this aspect of teaching through

experiences in the field.

The lessons I have learned in ED 100 have made me reflect on my abilities to create

meaningful student-teacher relationships through a genuine cultural understanding to establish an

effective student-centered pedagogy. I subscribe to the belief that student interaction provides

children with the best opportunities to learn, for they are the ones who are actually participating

in their education through direct experiences. Thus, establishing a welcoming environment that

offers students a plethora of chances to connect with the material is vital. However, I am

concerned that the potential differences between my and my students backgrounds will make it

difficult to create beneficial relationships. Furthermore, my potential inability to use and

genuinely understand my students different cultures could prevent me from offering them
opportunities to connect with me and the material. While this connection would be aided by a

positive dynamic with parents, I am currently unclear as to where I think an appropriate line of

parent involvement should be drawn. Nevertheless, I am sure that after several years of working

in the field, I will be able to climb these mountains and provide my students with the best

learning environment that helps them reach their fullest potential.

References:

Combs, A. (1982, April). Affective Education or None At All. Educational Leadership, 495-497.

Habegger, S. (2008, September/October). The Principals Role in Successful Schools: Creating a

Positive School Culture. Principal, 42-46.

Kenney, L. M. (2010). Being Out and Reading Queer-Inclusive Texts in a High School English

Classroom. In M.V. Blackburn, C. T. Clark, L. M. Kenney, & J. M. Smith, Acting Out!:

Combating Homophobia Through Teacher Activism (pp. 57-73). New York: Teachers

College Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But Thats Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant

Pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34 (3), 159-165.

Mawhinney, T., & Sagan, L. (2007, February). The Power of Personal Relationships. Phi Delta

Kappan, 460-464.

Tepper, N. (2005). Teaching Means Taking Risks. In S. Nieto (Ed.), Why We Teach (pp. 150-

155). New York: Teachers College Press.