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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Promising Practices

Reflection,


It was my first time in a conference therefore, I didn’t know what to expect.  After checking
in, I receive my folder and found out that I receive my first to choices. I didn’t know where to sit or where to go, but I saw some of my classmates and I quickly sat right next to them. I was so excited for everything to start and when it finally started, I found everything interesting and helpful.
My first workshop was A.L.L.I.E.D: Across Our Differences.  A.L.L.I.E.D is a group that focuses on trying to prevent those differences around the classrooms, such as discrimination between people of different races and also on how to make them feel protected around the classroom.  After they introduced themselves to us, they gave us index card, which we had to stand up and read aloud with stories of students who had been through many challenges during their education journey because they have been single out and judged by their appearance.  Then, they asked us for ideas of what us, as
future teachers can do to prevent those injustices. Everyone had different ideas of how to prevent this issue, some of them where;
•Don’t single anyone out.
•Don’t assume that students know everything.
•Use the media to open minds.
•Break the silence.
I enjoyed this workshop a lot.  I think it was very interesting to see how, even college student’s face adversities through their education journey.  All the stories each one of us real made me think about Delpit and “the culture of power.”
My second workshop was Lawrence: Universal Design for Learning.  I was so confused during
the presentation and I did not get much out of it.  Universal design for learning is “a new conceptual
framework in education that makes instructions really accessible for the widest range of learners.” This workshop wasn’t as interesting us the first one, because we didn’t get much chance to participate and hear different ideas of what people thought about this concept. Pretty much she just talked and talked the entire presentation therefore we didn’t get to participate much.  While she was talking, I took some notes from the slide show she was presenting, which, were;
• Lets fix the curriculum instead of the child.
• The recognition networks
-         The recognition network
-         The affective network
-         Strategic network
I still really confuse about this workshop.  I decided to checkout their website to see if I could get a better understanding of “Universal Design for Learning” and it was helpful.

I think that the keynote speaker made really good points that will help us to become better teachers. However, I didn’t like that he seemed to be more focused on most of the professors that were basically in front of him, than us, who were in the back. But, while he was giving his speech I took some notes, but what I think was one of the most important points he made was the five dimensions of multicultural education, which are;
•Content integration
•Knowledge construction process
•Prejudice reduction
•An equity pedagogy
• An empowering school culture
I think these five dimensions of multicultural education were very useful, because it informed us about the obstacles we will face as future teachers and how to solve them.  After all, I found that the conference was very interesting and I know all the information I got, will be useful in the future.

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