Reflection : Photo Story and Culturally Responsive Teaching

The photo stories helped to create the ideas of reaching into our roots and seeing the different sides of the many students in the classroom. When first meeting other people or students I tend to have preconceived notions about what they are like, with everyone in the class my first impression of them were changed by watching these photo stories. Though the preconceived notions were not negative they were untrue of the individual or a simple idea of them, which has now become a more complex and positive view. I feel that my experiences of preconceived notions are probably quite similar to some of my other classmates and would be to future students who may have the chance to participate in a similar if not the same activity. Through these exercises I can better know my students and their backgrounds and use the idea of Moll’s ‘Funds of Knowledge’ to strengthen student’s interest in learning in the classroom. By using the student’s background knowledge and family experiences in my lesson plans for class activities, I would go about changing the ideas of cultural deficit that exist and turn them into cultural capitals (strengths), just as the idea of using a qualitative approach to connect the home and the classroom that is discussed in the Funds of Knowledge reading. For example when we did the classroom activity where we had to think of a deficit or a capital for West Virginia, I had said that even though our deficit was the ongoing stereotypes of being unintelligent and backward, we could use those feeling to better understand other cultures who suffer from their stereotypes. The article also goes on to ask how we as teachers can break these cultural deficits, and I feel that this photo story is a great way to begin. Not only will students be able to share their cultures and families to other students they can also then relate better to one another and create a sense of classroom unity. These ideas of classroom unity and building lessons plans around the children’s ‘Funds of Knowledge’, will then create the mindset for me to use culturally responsive teaching. Which as the Diverse Learners’ article talks about the importance of being culturally responsive and how as an educator I might go about achieving this in my classroom. By following the characteristics of this idea I plan to focus on changing my natural mind-sets to become positive for the students. I truly feel that emotions are contagious and that if I continually show tolerance, positive attitudes, and patience that my students can then use me as a model for themselves and how they treat others. In my art education lessons I have been keeping these ideas and concepts in mind, by creating lessons that focus on unity to complete tasks, and building on their strengths to create ‘out of the box’ ideas of art. I feel that the world of art is truly for everyone and that all students possess some artistic talent if not through traditional styles then through contemporary one’s that they can connect to through their world.