My latest piece at Edutopia explores cultural competence:
The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. As teachers, we are often asked to “do” a lot more than necessary: memorize standards, plan lessons, prepare for various assessments, call homes, provide a warm environment for our students (and visitors), attend faculty meetings with varying effectiveness and relevance, grade mounds of papers, and take what little time we have left to eat and sleep, usually less than we should.
Yet, with the laundry list of things that teachers do, check for, and assess, we might be better off staying still and letting students tell us more about what they need.
Read more here. Share and share alike. Let me know what you think as well. Thanks!
Just today, and I mean about 100 minutes ago.
One of my Advisory students was asked to leave the Assembly show rehearsal because of his behavior. I figuratively dragged him kicking and screaming to my room for the rest of our after school program, and provided him what he needed to continue working on his math project (when will two aircraft intercept each other – system of equations :-)
After begging me to ‘play some music’ while he worked, I played my regular jazz-classical ‘working’ playlist; in 10 minutes he was in a hard sleep, head down on the desk. I didn’t berate him for sleeping, nor did I wake him up because I know he spends too much time having to take care of his little sister, and his sleep is inconsistent at best.
The young man’s body needed that sleep, so I let him have it; he needed that more than he had to work on his math project at that moment. You have to know your students to do that, but that comes with the job if you want it badly enough.
José,
I feel like the information and advice you share is extremely beneficial for future educators like myself. The workable strategies you listed are excellent. I found each one of them helpful and also agree with them completely. I can’t tell you how many teachers I have had in the past that constantly demanded silence in the classroom. This of course did not make for a great learning environment, so I’m glad you brought that point up. After reading your post,I feel that I will be much more aware to take my students’ cultural backgrounds into consideration. I look forward to reading more of your powerful and informal posts!
-Erika Owen
Hello Mr. Vilson! My name is Santana Mullins, and I’m a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing my visits to your blog with a post to my blog on April 9, 2015. My blog URL is http://www.mullinssantanaedm310.blogspot.com and our class blog is http://www.edm310.blogspot.com if you would like to check them out. I want to start off by saying compelling post. I loved when you said “we shouldn’t be preparing to teach content or the students we imagine might be there, but rather the students in front of us”. That’s good! I know that will definitely stick with me as a future educator. I concur that building a relationship with students, as a teacher, is key. We can be friendly with students, but building a relationship that is caring and has patience and understanding is much more important. We have to create an environment where there is balance and boundaries to the teacher/student relationship.