It seems as if as soon as you learn something new you see it cropping up all over the place, at least this has certainly been the case for me. Once we opened up the discussion about connecting to our students, I was seeing and hearing about this issue everywhere! The most influential instance of this took place last night as I was sitting in my Reading Foundations class. We were going over the importance of assessing our students and my teacher, Ashley Patterson, made it a point to stop and focus in on what she refers to as, "equity" in her classroom. As she put it, "Equity is about doing what is right for each of my students individually, it isn't about applying a principle to the whole class each time." She gave the example of examining a child's reading and seeing a poor score, but instead of just assuming the child cannot read, you have to know your student. Could something have happened on the bus, did his dog die, is his mother sick? You must ask yourself these types of questions before detrimental grading occurs. If for instance your student's dog did die, then you should know that today you throw out that score and you come back to it later. As Ashley mentioned, if you have a child's classmate see you throw that score away and ask you about it, you must have such a strong relationship with your students that they trust fully that you treat each of them with fairness and kindness. There cannot be enough emphasis placed on knowing and understanding your students, as Ms. Patterson says, "Your classroom must be built upon a foundation of love and equity."
I found this article that gives some tips on promoting fairness in the classroom. I know that it seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes we all need a bit of refreshing!
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/classroom-management/15435-fairness-and-equality-in-the-classroom/
It's incredibly important to be reflective about equity in your practice. I'd also suggest discussing this openly with my students. There are lots of ways you can do it; with my younger students, I tied something (like an incentive ticket) to the ceiling on a length of string. I then invited my tallest student and my very shortest student to try to reach it. My tallest students could always grab it with no struggle, while my shortest would jump and jump without success. We would stop there for a class discussion about whether this was fair, and through the discussion the students themselves would always suggest that it would be completely acceptable to provide a boost to the shorter kid (it wasn't his fault for being short, after all). So then, I gave the shorter child a chair and both students could easily reach the prize. I made sure to follow up by reminding students that from time to time they would see (or feel like) other students "getting chairs," but that would hopefully serve as a reminder that my job as the teacher would be to ensure ALL of my students could meet their goals. I added that when the day came that they need a "chair," I'd have one ready.
ReplyDelete