Domenic Martini Week 5

a.     Interestingly enough we just had a child protection professional development last week that touched on the role that cultural diversity can play in the way families discipline their children. I think a similar conversation would need to be held during my professional development into Responses to Intervention. Within a single school so many different cultures and cultural practices, values, and beliefs can be found that it would be irresponsible not to address them.

b.     To honor these different cultures and values one of the first things to have us as a group understand is the core value that we are all following as teachers. That is, to help our students become as successful as possible. If we can all align ourselves to having this as our core belief that I think it will make the work we do and accomplish a lot better and easier to address. For example, if we were trying to help a young girl in science but through discussion with the family we learn that her education is not a priority for them we can honor that by understanding that is probably not something we as educators have control over. This doesn’t not mean that we give up. Within our walls we make a more concerted effort to letting this student know that we do value their education and that they can achieve whatever they put their mind to as long as they are willing to put in the effort and time.

c.     Critical thinking and our approach to cultural understanding really go hand in hand. I will create instances where we question core values that we have or that we’ve developed over time as both people and educators. The most basic being; why do we want all students to be successful? If we don’t question these assumptions than they have a lot less meaning behind them. A great example of a value that many espouse but not enough question is “all students can be successful”. This was like a slogan or motto of my previous school but no one ever thought about it. In just a short amount of time it became so overused that students themselves wouldn’t buy into it. Why? Because no one ever took the time to actually discuss what it means to be successful, or how you can achieve it. Students would take a test and fail, see others pass and question this value but not have the tools to do so. I want to build a PD that forces participants to question their values to better establish them and be able to explain why they are so important.