2 Heated Cultures Debates the Bible Addresses: From 8th grade through High School I went to a private Catholic High school and took several religion classes that studied the bible. As students are becoming their own person and forming their own identity they may have strong opinions about others. Now more than ever people are being more open about their beliefs, cultures, and sexual orientation. What the bible teaches is acceptance, inclusion, and equality. While you don’t have to make the focus in your classroom religious based or even talk about the Bible in the classroom you can still practice what the Bible teaches. As a teacher you should be accepting, open minded, and treat others as equals. The quote “What we often do is look at individual texts in isolation rather than looking at the big picture of the Scriptures-the big story that God is telling us” can be applied in multiple areas in life, it is important to always look at the big picture rather than focusing on the individual stories. As a teacher you may be faced with students coming to you and confiding in you about a number of things including gender and sexual orientation. While this can be a difficult topic to discuss it is important to show them acceptance. You never know what they are dealing with at home or with their peers and it is important that they have a safe space to be open with their teacher. What makes a good teacher a great teacher is when they fully embrace what the Bible is actually teaching and treats everyone with acceptance, inclusion, and equality. 

 

 

Identity Short Film- This video was a great visualization for the concept that everyone is wearing a mask. There is the mask that you wear at home, the mask you wear with your friends and the mask you may wear at school. Everyone tends to change their personality based off of who they are with at the time. This is demonstrated in the film when you see one girl taking off her mask as she leaves one group to have a mask underneath that matches the friend group that she is joining. Society has forced us to conform to fit the environment that we are in and forces us to wear a mask and makes us all the same. I think that it is important to embrace individuality among the students. I feel like more than ever in middle school you are trying to find your group of friends and just want to be accepted so you put on a face that you show at school to be accepted. As a teacher I think that it is super important to show students that they can take the mask off and still be accepted by their peers. If your peers cannot accept that then they are not good friends. This video is a visual representation to the quote “just be yourself.” At the end of the video when she took off her mask you see that everyone with a mask is staring at her which proves you stand out more when you are yourself verses conforming to society and blending in with everyone else. This video does a great job of showing a visual representation of what students go through every day and a lot can be taken from it. I think that you could incorporate this into a middle school by showing students that everyone is acting a certain way to fit in and that everyone feels like an outsider trying to fit in.

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ATLAS Case 181 Analyzing and Discussing “The Scholarship Jacket” By Marta Salinas- This case has a room of 7th graders discussing “What makes a great leader?” The teacher read them “The Scholarship Jacket” and then the teachers asks the students questions to help make connections and think about the reading. The students are asked to describe what makes a great leader and students discussed realizations like “a leader stands up for what they believe in” and “a great leader should be courageous.” The students each take turns sharing and the teacher thanks them after they are done speaking which I think encourages more students to speak up. The students almost have a debate with each other about if they agree or disagree and why. This promotes great discussions in the classroom. I liked that the story had an emphasis on race puts it into perspective that it should not be a reason to discriminate and as one kid said “the only bad one, is the one that is making fun of the person for their race”. I think that this is really important to do in a classroom because it bring the discussion of race into the classroom and how everyone is the same just with different backgrounds. I really hope that in my classroom I can have open discussion in my classroom about race and inclusivity. I also hope to remember to thank my students after they share in a discussion. I think it is great too that the teacher asked the students to make connections to other readings that they explored previously. Having a safe space for discussions is so important for the students and discussing difficult topics like race and discrimination allows students to really talk through the topic.

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ATLAS Case 42 Developing U.S. History Content Vocabulary- This is a video from a fifth grade English Language Development class.  The class has to do an interactive activity about giving a definition to a word. One particular group had the word Patriot and a student that appeared to be an ELL student was having a difficult time coming up with a definition. The teacher was very patient and kind and helped her work to a definition for the word that she could relate to. Something that I thought was great was when she made it relatable to her by saying “or the country that your family is from.” I loved that the teacher was inclusive and is something I strive to be as a teacher. With ELL students it is really important to have discussion and application around new words and learning in a fun and interactive way. I also liked that the teacher made the students look up the words to make sure that they had the right definition by showing them their resources and how to use them properly. I think for any student’s success it is important to show students how to use their resources so that if they are ever stuck they can try and problem solve to get the answer. I thought too that it was great that the students took turns reading individually and then reading as a group. This video was really great and showed a lot of different teaching styles in one that I think can be great for any classroom. This activity allowed for collaboration and problem solving to complete the activity. This activity is really effective because the students can bounce ideas off of each other so that English speaking students and ELL students can collaborate together to finish the project. I also thought it was great that the teacher challenged them in a way that they didn’t even realize for example when the teacher said “try writing it (the answer) in a complete sentence, I bet you can” it challenged the students while working but they didn’t even realize it because they thought it was just a part of the activity.

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ATLAS Case 90- Determining Students’ Misconceptions about Energy- This is a video from a 6th grade Integrated Science class. This lesson talks about energy. The students are in groups and they have to say whether or not they agree or disagree with a sentence that is being presented on the board. They collaborate with a group and then collectively say if they agree or disagree. This is a really good way to bring discussion, critical thinking, and group work into the classroom. I think that this can be utilized in the classroom for multiple subjects I think that this could be used in a English classroom by working on reading and vocabulary lessons. I feel like this method allows for participation and the student to react with all the students on such a difficult subject. Every time the students collaborated I seemed like they would begin to further critically think about what was going on. This also allowed for the teacher to optimize the time that she had with the students by being able to go around the room to each group and discuss.  I really like the idea of group work as being a way to teach lessons in the classroom and making it seem like a “game” but really they are learning. With only one teacher it is so important that they make each student feel like they have a change to speak up and express themselves and I feel like this case is a great example of this and really could see myself using this in my own classroom. I also think that they way that she classroom manages is really effective. At one point all the students were talking when a student was trying to answer a question so the teacher asked the class to time out so that the student had time to think and answer the question. I think that she does a really good job of managing the classroom while teaching.

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