Social Issues in Education

As a teacher of emergent bilinguals, I often have others ask me, "how can you teach ESL when you do not speak Spanish?" This is a common misconception among those who are not educated on what it means and entails to teach emergent bilinguals. I then go on to explain that not all emergent bilinguals speak Spanish. I have had students who speak Polish, Mandarin and Bengali. Translanguaging is a vital component of teaching emergent bilinguals successfully. Sometimes people confuse this with code switching, which it is not. Translanguaging is allowing students to use their language repertoire in order to be successful in the classroom. There are some great ways that this can be encouraged from allowing students who share the same home language to work together and in their home language, to encouraging students to write in their home language or whatever language they feel most comfortable using.  I loved the short CUNY video that showed how a teacher used graphic novels with...

The Freire Project was an enlightening video that highlighted the importance of critical consciousness and the connection it has to both society and in the classroom. As he states, critical consciousness is just good sociology. This is something that I learned about in college as I was also a sociology major. I take this concept and really try to apply it to my own pedagogy.  It is vital for educators to remember that we need create and maintain open lines of communication as well as create a nurturing learning environment for students to feel safe exploring and expressing their opinions. Hooks on page 1 stated, " to teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin." This is a notion that I firmly believe in especially in kindergarten, where students are just beginning their educational journey. I spend most of the time in the...

The exercise Kimberle Crenshaw begins her TEDtalk with was moving to see. Watching so many sit down as she moved on to name women who had been killed by police in the last few years was eye opening. I like many in the video knew of the first 5 or 6 names. I was only able to recognize 2 female names before I would have had to also sit down. It was such an eye opening moment for me to see and hear her explain how when facts do not fit with the available frames, people have a hard time incorporating new facts into their way of thinking about a problem. Therefore, these women's' names have slip through our consciousness because there are no frames. Resulting consequently with media not leading with them and politicians not talking about them. "Without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will be let to suffer in virtual silence." -This notion is what gave rise to her creation of the term intersectionality. ...

Article Title : In the Shadow of Brown: Special Education and the Overrepresentation of Students of Color  Focus of the article is to discuss the disproportionate placement of students of color in special education programs. This concept is commonly refereed to as over representation. Background Information : This article was written after the 50th anniversary of Brown vs.  Board of Education and the 30th anniversary of Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA). The IDEA asserted a need for increased educational opportunities for excluded groups of students. The authors of the article states that instead of celebrating Brown and IDEA, it would be ore honest to commemorate because schools are still just as segregated. Introduction: 2 main questions posed by the authors that this article tries to answer:  1. How has special education ignored the intersection of race and disability and by doing, contributed to failure of Br...

As an early childhood teacher, after reading the three articles, I immediately rummaged through my classroom library. I searched for pieces of literature that discussed and highlighted the topic of disability and sadly to my realization I had very few. I also enjoyed reading in Disability in Children's Literature by Liz Crow examples of how disabilities are misrepresented. She gave the example of Captain Hook (disabled people are menacing and dangerous), Tiny Tim ( disabled people are innocent and saintly) or Helen Keller (disabled people are an inspiration to us all).  Even reflecting on movies, I can't think of many movies that don't misrepresent those who do have disabilities. I wonder for those teachers out there, do any of you have pieces of literature that adequately presents those with disabilities and how do you incorporate this topic into your curriculum and classroom? This article does list some great books like Wonder and others that I read growing up. I wan...