Ashley Bell

Unit Reflection

Identity: Dominant, Other & Resistance

Day 1

At first, I felt this pressure to dive right into the content material for the first week of

school. Then I thought back to this quote from Tomlinson and McTighe in Integrating

Differentiated Instruction and Understand by Design, “In effective classrooms, teachers

consistently attend to at least four elements: whom they teach, where they teach, what they teach,

and how they teach.” So, instead of allowing pressure to dictate my lesson plan, I allowed those

four elements to guide me.

One of my goals this year is to transform my classroom from a mere classroom to a

community. Community classrooms are spaces where students are recognized as individuals and

are valued, they feel that they have something to contribute to the community and the community

has something to offer them, there is room to think independent and they feel connected to the

teacher. Furthermore, it is important to me that I make my classroom into an environment that is

conducive to learning and for students to make mistakes as a I know this will aide their growth

process; to do this I have to build a “Learning Partnership,” with each of my students.

According to Hammond in, Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, the end goal of

fostering relationships with students and teaching should be the development of “Learning

Partnerships,” which is a relationship where, “the teacher builds trust and becomes the student’s

ally to help the student reach a higher level of achievement” (17). Moreover, students are more
likely to take educational risk and seek independence in the classroom when there is a

partnership with the instructor.

Building a community classroom starts on day one and with every community there are

rules, norms, traditions etc. The first day in class will be dedicated to focusing on the rules that

have been set, informing the students their purpose behind the rules, and allowing them to have a

voice and choice. This is important because from my experience when students feel more

involved in the decision-making process they are more likely to honor those decisions.

Moreover, students are more likely to self-manage which will cut down on time spent having to

discipline students and may even prevent issues in the classroom from arising. Lastly, students

are more inclined to be on task in the classroom when there is a routine. My classroom may not

feel like a community on the very first day, and that’s okay, we will get there. but that will not

stop me from viewing it as one. In teaching, your feelings cannot dictate your practice.

Day 2

Day two is the continuation behind developing a community classroom. My leading

thought when planning the lesson for this day was this question:

As a community, what are we going to stand for? When students walk into my classroom

I want them to know what we are working towards/ What our big goal is.

Kensington Health Science Academy’s makes their goals clear in their missions’

statement which is, “to prepare every student academically and holistically to be responsible,

caring community members, ready for college or career upon graduation. We strive to

accomplish this by building our community together, learning through inquiry, valuing integrity,

and celebrating learning.” After reading this, I thought about the people that were involved in
making this mission statement and how some aspect of this statement must align with either their

professional or personal, possibly both, mission statements. So, before creating a classroom

mission statement, I want my students to create a mission statement of their own. It is my hope

that through this activity students will begin or continue to think about their goals for the school

year as well as their lives, what their values are, and the overall life they would like to lead.

Since day two is about goal setting and mission statement development, I thought it

would be beneficial to assign my students homework on Growth Mindset. According to research

there are two types of mindset: fixed and growth. Those with a fixed mindset believe that they

are born with all the talents and intellect they will ever have, and they believe they’re either good

at something or they’re not. Now, in Mindsets: The New Psychology of Success Carol Dweck,

author, defines growth mindset as this, “your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate

through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way – in their initial talents and

aptitudes, interests, or temperaments – everyone can change and grow through application and

experience,” (Therefore, those with growth mindset believe are not easily defeated by challenges

and failure since they essentially believe that, with effort, they can improve over time.

My goal here is for my students, if they haven’t already, to begin to think about they way

in which they view challenges. Do they identify more with the fixed mindset than the growth

mindset? If so, what can we do together this year to help transition them to the more effective

way of thinking, which is growth mindset. Additionally, those students who are already thinking

in the growth mindset way, I want this information to be a form of encouragement for them to

continue to do so and serve as a signifier that I see their efforts.

Day 3
 Day three continues to reinforce the classroom routine with the Do Now being completed

within the first ten minutes of class. Followed by the introduction of the vocabulary words. The

highlight of day three is the multiple intelligences quiz, that my students will take. This past

semester it was stressed that solely measuring the intelligence of a student in traditional format

test taking is very limiting; especially since there are various intelligences. In fact, there are eight

different Multiple Intelligences: Musical, Spatial, Linguistic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal,

Naturalist, Body-Kinesthetic, and Logical-Mathematical. It is harmful to assume that someone

that is dominant in the musical realm of intelligences learns the same way as someone who is

dominant in body-kinesthetic. Therefore, as an educator I will try my best to have activities that

incorporate more than one of the intelligences and provide various ways for students to be

assessed on content. The quiz will help me gain a better understanding of where my students fall

and how I should structure my lessons.

Day 4

Day four follows the same format as the previous day. This is not what will happen every

week and I will thoroughly explain that to the students. The quiz on this day is content based

however, its only purpose is to gauge the existing wealthy of knowledge of the students. This

assessment test will let me know what areas may require more attention and where I should start

regarding material.

What excites me the most about day four is the dialogue that will happen around self-

care. Educating my students about mental health and healthy practices of managing those issues

is not only apart of my professional mission statement but personal one as well. Students are

under and immense amount of pressure to succeed and meet these, in some sense, unrealistic

expectations that society puts on them. Furthermore, thinking of my students at KHSA many of
them come from impoverished neighborhoods, have experienced or witnessed trauma such as

emotional and physical abuse. Additionally, some students have through an area of Kensington

that is ridden with drug abuse and homelessness to get to school. The mental and emotional

health of students comes into the classroom. Therefore, it will be something that we discuss, and

my hope is that through these conversations we build out community classroom and breakdown

stigma such as shame, which is a barrier to access of mental health services.

Day 5

The thought process behind Pieces of Me is to provide students with the opportunity to

tell us who they are and what has made them that person. For Pieces of Me, the presenter will

bring in two things (book, clothes, picture, cd, art etc.) that has significant meaning to them and

explain to the class what that meaning is and how it has impacted their life. At this moment I am

thinking that two students will present every Friday for ten minutes each. I know that is a huge

chunk of time that is not being dedicated to content material but again, a community classroom is

what I am working towards. I will present on the first Friday just to give an example of one of

the many ways students can use their time. This will also be an impactful way to continue to

foster the relationships with my students and to show them who I am as a person and not just my

position.

Theme

History is often a problematic subject to teach just from the mere fact that historically it

has been written from the perspective of the dominant culture. The dominant culture being White

Anglo-Saxon Protestant, WASP. The unit quote “Until the Lions have their own historians, the

story will always glorify the Hunters,’ is my way of acknowledging how bias history is and
announcing my dedication to telling the Lions side of the story. Identity: Dominant, Other, &

Resistance is the title of the course and throughout the first unit I will teach my students the

history of America, but I will also teach them about the others whose stories have been

strategically silenced, altered, or erased all together. This is important to me because as a Black

American woman teaching in a school that is majority Latinx and Black, I within my

responsibility that I provide my students with the full story to the best of my ability and

recognize their identities within the history of this country. By reading and analyzing the

narrative of Settlers, Native Americans, Black Americans, Asian Americans etc., we will resist

settling for the dominants version of the story.

 References

1. Dweck, Carol. S (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York,

Ballantine Books.

2. Ferlazzo Larry (2012). Response: Classroom Strategies to Foster Growth Mindset.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/10/response

_classroom_strategies_to_foster_a_growth_mindset.html

3. Hammond, Zaretta (2015). Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain. California,

SAGE.

4. McTighe, Jay., Tomlinson, Carol Ann (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction

and Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA, Association for Supervision and

Curriculum Design.

5. “Beginners Guide to Multiple Intelligences.” Official Authoritative Site of Multiple

Intelligences, multipleintelligencesoasis.org/about/

6. “Importance of Classroom Community.” Partners In Learning,

performancepyramid.miamioh.edu/node/233.In-text Citation. Miami, FL