TCH 130: Prompt 2: Ah-Hah Quotes

Here are a list of three quotes that made me stop and go "Ah-Hah" and the reasons why.

From Twitter Live Chat:

Q4: What are you committed to do to become more aware of you own biases as you become a teacher so that you can create equitable learning environments.

*Ashley Coleman: "A4: I committed to staying open-minded and willing to learn new and different things. I will give that reassurance with my students in classroom and having a comfortable environment. By showing them that we are all learning from each other."

As a teacher I truly want to have an open mind with all of my classrooms and students. Every one comes from a different background and home life so having an open mind can really promote inclusivity and a safe learning environment. As we have all seen in the past year things are always changing, especially for teacher, hybrid learning one week, completely remote the next. With these adaptions teachers have had to adapt and learn new technologies to be able to teach their students. Having an open mind with how teaching should be done and the effective ways is really important to understand. Not having a "this is how I've always done it attitude" is really important because as the years go on you have to be able to adapt and learn different resources in order to effectively teach students. I think something that stuck out at me was "learn from each other" just because you are older doesn't mean that someone younger than you doesn't know what they are talking about. You can constantly be learning from you students and ask them for help, especially when it comes to technology. As much as the students are learning from you, you are learning from them!

From the Article: Checking Yourself for Bias in the Classroom (https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/checking-yourself-for-bias-in-the-classroom)

I think this article really got me thinking just from the first paragraph alone with the quote "Because that's what my own education experience looked like." This article really got me to think about my own experience as a student, what did I like about that teaching style? What did I not like? I feel like this was an Ah-hah moment for me because it's important to think outside the box on teaching and how to make it fun and entertaining and not just teach in the ways that I have experienced. I like the emphasis that moving past unconscious bias will take time, effort, and self reflection. I think it's important to realize that making complete changes will not happen over night but small changes can lead you in the right direction. We are human but constant self reflection can benefit not only us but the students. I think that it is so important as a teacher to take a few minutes, to self reflect over the day, week, month, and school year. With self reflection you truly see things from a different point of view and see how you can improve the class room. If you don't take time to figure out if the way you are teaching the class is effective or not it can have a negative impact on the class. As a teacher I want to make sure that I am constantly reflecting and reminding myself there might be a better way of teaching a certain lesson to help the children understand better. Also her Me/they/we advise that she gives about where the unconscious bias is coming from can be really useful in a classroom.

From the article: Awareness of Implicit Biases (https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/ImplicitBiasAwareness)

For this article it was interesting because it listed biases that personally I have never thought of but I guess I could see how some could. The ah-hah moment for me though was when the author said: "Instructors may assume that certain students know to seek help when they are struggling, although students at higher risk for struggling academically are often less likely to seek help and support." I think this really got me thinking about my own experiences and how I would have questions about assignments but I was too shy to ask in front of the whole class and would then go home wondering if I did the assignment correctly. This really got me thinking about how I could solve this problem in the classroom. I think I would want to implement that at the end of some days I would have time that the students could come up to my desk and ask questions personally rather as a group. By making sure I reserve time for the students that might not be willing to seek help maybe that would eliminate that problem. I want to make sure that my classroom is a safe space where children feel they can express themselves and feel included. Given the divide that our nation has experienced/still is experiencing I want to make sure to try to eliminate that in the classroom. Just because someone is doing well in the class doesn't mean that they don't need the same about of attention as someone who is struggling in the class. While I recognize I will only be one teacher to a bunch of students I want to try and implement a check in where students tell me where they are struggling.