Building a Community within the Classroom

Throughout her chapter, But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy, Gloria Ladson-Billings talks a lot about what it means to 
use culturally relevant pedagogy. I thought the title of this piece was perfect 
because as I read through it, I found myself thinking, “But that’s just good 
teaching.” The part of this text that interested me the most was when she talked 
about the study she did with eight teachers who found success teaching African 
American students. This section caught my attention because it reaffirmed 
many of my own beliefs about teaching, including a lot of beliefs I picked up 
over this past summer of classes.

As she studied these eight teachers, Ladson-Billings found that all of them took 
pride in their profession and their community, and they believed that all of their 
students were capable of success. They also built a strong community within 
the classroom and ran their class as if the students had just as much of a role in 
that community. I think these commonalities between successful teachers are 
very important to note as I move closer to running my own classroom.

I believe that building a community within a classroom is one of the most 
important aspects of teaching, and one that many educators tend to miss. 
Throughout my graduate career already, I’ve heard and read and seen over 
and over again how important it is to build a community within the classroom. 
This ideal has been taught in every one of my classes. In addition, a lot of the 
reflecting I’ve had to do for my classes has brought forth the same findings 
from my own K-12 experiences. As I look back, my favorite teachers and 
most cherished role models had all shared some vulnerabilities and built a 
sense of community within their classrooms.

 When I think about community-building in a classroom, I think about my 
favorite teacher, my middle school/ high school band director. He stressed 
everyday that we need to listen to each other and build connections in order to 
improve our music. We would spend a lot of time within the classroom 
together, but also outside of it. We would spend hours at pep band gigs, go on 
trips together, and even have “Band in the Park”, where we would gather in a 
city park, have a potluck, play games, and give out end-of-the-year rewards. 
My teacher constantly humanized himself by conducting “Story-time”, where 
he would tell us short anecdotes from his life, and speaking to us as if we were 
peers, not inferiors. Overall, there was an overwhelming sense of community. I 
felt comfortable around every single one of the hundred members in our band, 
even if I had never spoken a word to them. In my high school, the band room 
was a safe haven among a world that caused me a lot of stress and anxiety.

Moving forward into the world of secondary education, I will strive to be like 
my band teacher. My first priority every year will be to build a community with 
my students. I will try to get to know each one of them as individuals and form 
how I teach around them. Building a trusting community within the classroom is 
essential because - as is mentioned by this week's resource, Rita Pierson - 
students will not learn from teachers they do not like.

For my external resource this week, I have once again chosen a TED Talk. I don't 
mean to produce the same sort of sources every week, but I came across this short 
video on building relationships within a classroom and I just couldn't resist posting 
it. "Every Kid Needs a Champion" by Rita Pierson is a seven-minute TED Talk by 
a highly experienced educator who tries to counter the argument that kids don't need 
to like their teachers, they just need to learn from them. I chose this video because I 
thought that it goes along nicely with our readings this week and serves to further the 
idea that community-building is extremely important to education.

Source:

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. “But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” College of Education, The Ohio State University, 1995, pp. 158–165.

Pierson, Rita. “Every Kid Needs a Champion.” YouTube, TED, 3 May 2013

Incorporating Students' Lives into Their Readings

            One of the biggest points I noticed when reading the text by Rodriguez for this week was that students tend to learn more and become more engaged when they feel some sort of a connection to what they are reading. This is not a new idea for me. In fact, we’ve gone over this very concept several times throughout this program already. However, I think it is definitely worth noting in depth because it is essential to success when teaching literature (or any topic, for that matter.)

            In this chapter, Rodriguez mentions that students feel empowered when they see themselves on the page (Rodriguez 5). I completely agree with this notion. Throughout most of my schooling, I convinced myself that I hated reading. I believed that books were boring, and that reading was a chore. I tried to avoid reading in any case possible. I hated when we had to read novels for classes. Then, one of my teachers assigned a book report. We could report on any (school-appropriate) book of our choosing. I had never really read for pleasure before, so I didn’t know where to start. My friend Jessica, a reading enthusiast, suggested that I read “The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan. As I began to read, I noticed a feeling I had never felt before while reading a book; I was actually enjoying myself. That book was the spark that ignited my love for reading.

Looking back, I realize that I probably enjoyed that book so much because it pertained to my life in a couple of different ways. First of all, when I read it I was relatively close in age to the main characters. I also felt a deep connection to one of the characters and thought the character was practically written for me. In addition, the book centered around a theme of Greek mythology, something I had a deep interest in back then and continue to read about on my own time now.

As I move closer and closer to becoming a teacher, I find that it is important that I look back on my own experiences and place that knowledge next to what I study in class. This practice gives my studies more meaning and credibility, as I realize that a lot of it can be validated by my own experiences. In this case, I can see the importance of teaching my students about things that interest them and that they can connect to their own lives.

As Rodriguez mentions, it is important to bring in texts from multiple different cultures (5). For one, it gives students several contrasting narratives and allows them to make up their own minds about what they think. However, it also allows all of the students to be able to connect with a text. It would be more difficult to connect with a text and to see yourself on the page if every text you read is from a culture that isn’t your own, a culture that repeatedly speaks to the idea that white people are somehow more important.

In addition to bringing in texts from many different cultures, Rodriguez explains that it is important to give students some autonomy in choosing their own materials (9). If they can choose texts on subjects that interest them – like my book on Greek mythology for me – they will be much more likely to be willingly engaged in their own education.

As a future teacher, I intend to utilize all of the above information in my classroom. I hope to incorporate a variety of different texts from authors with a range of different backgrounds into my teachings. I would like to build relationships with my students, discover what is important to them, and make those things available to study throughout my class. I want to make sure that each and every student feels as if their voice is being heard and that people care about and are ready to support them.

           As my resource link for this week, I am attaching The Danger of a Single Story, a TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This past story, I discovered Adichie when my professor for my African Literature class played this TED Talk, as well as her TED Talk, "We Should All be Feminists" for our class. Since then, she has become one of my personal heroes. This TED Talk works perfectly with this week's reading assignment and it is even mentioned in the assigned reading by Rodriguez. In this talk, Adichie explains, with the aid of fascinating anecdotes, the serious dangers and problems that arise when people only hear one version of a story. I would highly recommend that you watch both this TED Talk and her talk on feminism. They are both entertaining and cover topics that are essential to understand if you want to be a good teacher, or even just a good person.