book blog

Educating Everybody's Children: Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners edited by Robert W. Cole
Book review by Greg Moman
Chapter 1. Educating Everybody's Children: We Know What Works—And What Doesn't
Chapter one shows many different areas that can be improved on to help students from all backgrounds in the classroom. Some of the outlined areas are Attitudes and Beliefs, Institutional Practices, and Universal Teaching Strategies. Chapter starts out by stating that good instruction works for all students regardless of background, social economic statue, and any other possible classification for a student. The author does also mention about how the poor are often left out of receiving the best instruction and how teachers who teach the poor are not held accountable as much as they should.
Attitudes and beliefs cover so many different areas of the educational world. This section of the chapter highlights the need to have the same expectation for all students and to make sure that all students are treated equal regardless of any classifying factor (SES, race, etc). There is also a mention of the decreased open racism, but also there is an increase of less open racism that may cause more problems for students down the road. Part of the problem with indirect racism may be caused by lacking an understanding of culture and the differences between cultures. The author also mentions about trying to develop and understanding of student's culture to be able to accurately look for verbal signs, learning styles, and identifying student's strengths in the classroom. Each of these elements needs to be combined to help have the same standard and expectation of all students.
Another challenge that we may not think of facing students is the practices schools have setup for placing students, access, consequences, inappropriate instruction, disciplinary practices, parent involvement, impact of testing, and lack of native language instruction. Each of these areas, impact a student's daily life and need to be considered when looking at ways to help all students. Each of the reasons mentioned above create a challenge for students improve academically and create barriers inside the school most students are not able to overcome.
The last part of this chapter provides sixteen practices for universal teaching strategies. A few of the ones I found most interesting were using a multicultural teaching perspective, emphasize brain-compatible instruction, alternative assessments, activate students' prior knowledge, and involve students actively. Each of these mention techniques can be used by any teacher regardless of the subject matter. I found the common thread in most of the mentioned elements is being active with the students, showing an interest, and providing simple ways for students to be actively participating.
The emphasize brain compatible instruction was a very interesting topic and had a good list to consider for the possible conditions for this type of method.

1. " Create a nonthreatening climate.

2. Input lots of raw material from which students can extract patterns—a vast array of activities, aided by an ample supply of materials, equipment, and print and audiovisual resources.

3. Emphasize genuine communication in talking, listening, writing, and reading as ways to interact with other people.

4. Encourage lots of manipulation of materials. Students need to be in command and able to push things around, encouraging them to work toward goals and explore a range of means.

5. Emphasize reality. By using problems, examples, and contacts drawn from the "real world" rather than contrived exercises, texts, worksheets, and basal readers, students can see the real value of their own learning.

6. Address learning activities to actual, productive uses.

7. Respect natural thinking, including intuitive leaps, a grasp of patterns (as in number tables or good writing), and aesthetic and nonverbal interests and activities."

Chapter 2. Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners

by Marietta Saravia-Shore

This chapter is about poor and minority students and test scores. There is also the mention of how expectations again affect students from both of these categories. This chapter as outlines some areas that are in of review like facing the achievement gap, closing the achievement gap, embracing diversity, educating diverse students, and strategies for linguistically diverse students.

Facing the achievement gap may not seem like that big of a deal in one school or another, but almost 1.2 million students in 2006 did not graduate from high school that should have. Urban school districts have a graduation rate of 60% which is 9% lower than the national average. Schools with a high level of segregated populations of students have a graduation rate of only 56.2 %. It was also estimated that 9 million young people between the age of 5 and 17 in America spoke another language besides English in their homes. These statistics show are a great insight into many of the challenges and performances that schools have.

"Regardless of race, the children in married couple families are much less likely to be poor (about 8%) while 29% of white children and 52% of black and Hispanic children who live with a single mother are likely to be poor. Almost half of these single mothers are working, usually at very low-wage jobs. (pp. 4–5)"

Part of looking into the challenges facing schools is to now look at ways to close the achievement gap. This process is outlined with programs like head start; consider the full emotional needs of a student, physical needs, family, and strengths. The problem when considering how to close the gap is the lack of resources and many students do not receive extra help and support until later in their schooling careers. This time lost is often hard to make up later in school. Closing the achievement gap also requires showing sensitive and reaffirming gender, race, culture, and linguistic heritage.
Embracing diversity is also part of the mentioned parts of closing the achievement gap. Embracing diversity is another area outline in this chapter and provided 12 keys for teaching students from all backgrounds.

1. Teachers have a clear sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
2. Teachers communicate high expectations for the success of all students and a belief that all students can succeed.
3. Teachers are personally committed to achieving equity for all students and believe that they are capable of making a difference in their students' learning.
4. Teachers have developed a bond with their students and cease seeing their students as "the other."
5. Schools provide an academically challenging curriculum that includes attention to the development of higher-level cognitive skills.
6. Instruction focuses on students' creation of meaning about content in an interactive and collaborative learning environment.
7. Teachers help students see learning tasks as meaningful.
8. Curricula include the contributions and perspectives of the different ethnocultural groups that compose the society.
9. Teachers provide a "scaffolding" that links the academically challenging curriculum to the cultural resources that students bring to school.
10. Teachers explicitly teach students the culture of the school and seek to maintain students' sense of ethnocultural pride and identity.
11. Community members and parents or guardians are encouraged to become involved in students' education and are given a significant voice in making important school decisions related to programs (such as resources and staffing).
12. Teachers are involved in political struggles outside the classroom that are aimed at achieving a more just and humane society.
It is important to remember to be open and look for ways to learn about student's culture and try to integrate a multicultural perspective when creating lessons.
Part of embracing a diverse student population is to consider how best to educate a diverse student population. Some of the critical issues are listed below.

* The level of the family's socioeconomic resources is associated with success in school but is conditioned by other factors, such as immigrant status.
* Prior education in the country of origin is associated with success in school.
* The age of entrance into the United States affects success in the English language, as well as other academic areas, but the degree of success is also conditioned by literacy in the home language. Those children who enter the United States before puberty will have an advantage in school.
* The longer the length of the stay in the United States, the greater the success in school. Unfortunately, this effect is offset by a reduction of motivation that comes through acculturation into the American society.
* Intact family and home support systems are associated with success in school. Not surprisingly, unaccompanied minors and students from single-parent families are at greater risk of failure in school.

Part of educating a diverse student's population is to also recognize the different major groups of students that have been indentified: African Americans, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans or Latinos, and Native Hawaiians.
It is also important to consider the strategies for students with linguistic diversity. This chapter list many different strategies to help with this task.
"Establish truly bilingual classrooms , Embrace dual-language strategies Use integrated, holistic approaches to language experiences for second-language learners instead of rote drill and practice, Teach language through subject matter rather than specific linguistic skill exercises, Adopt sheltered English strategies Practice English in flexible, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups, Use cross-age and peer tutoring Respect community language norms, Organize teaching around thematic, interdisciplinary units, and Enhance language learning with computers and peer tutors Help students build social capital."
Each of these strategies helps students become more comfortable in the learning environment and help them achieve.
Overall this book is a great resource for looking at things to consider when creating lessons and trying to help students from different backgrounds.
Question- Do the suggestions in this book seem practical in the real world? What are some challenges you could see when trying to provide the suggested situations? Did the graduation rate of 69% seem low or high for America?