Haley's FNED 502 Blog

As I engaged in each week's readings and other content, I try and make it relevant to my own practice. A lot of my posts have been relating the themes or lessons I learned to my life as a teacher. And this week, as I was relating the readings and videos to my life, I experienced a somewhat "meta" moment in that this is the feeling (or something similar to it) is what our students should be feeling in school. They should not only be actively searching for personal or life significance in things that they are doing, but we as teachers have to also ensure that they can  pull meaning from what they are learning. As a middle school math teacher, I get a lot of questions about the importance of what we are learning. A lot of "Miss, how will this actually help me in life." As a lifelong math enthusiast, it's really easy for me to just assume that people understand that math in general is just important. And I try to convey to my students that problem solving a...

Hi all, I just realized I posted this to my other class' blog (as I just posted this week's blog post to the other one as well) but I included a screenshot to prove I posted it last Tuesday! In  Dis/ability Critical Race Studies: Theorizing at the intersections of Race + Dis/ability  By Subini, Connor, Beth Ferri, the authors argue through a series of tenets that race and dis/ability are strongly connected in the way that people are segregated and discriminated against. They combine "aspects of Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies" in what they call "DisCrit." The rest of the article goes into detail about each of seven tenets of DisCrit the authors propose: DisCrit focuses on ways that the forces of racism and ableism circulate interdependently, often in neutralized and invisible ways, to uphold notions of normalcy DisCrit values multidimensional identities and troubles singular notions of identity such as race or dis/ability or class or gen...

Intersectionality is an idea that I was only introduced to a little under two years ago. Like with a lot of social justice issues, my first real exposure and exploration came when I joined TFA. But watching the video of Kimberle Crenshaw's TED talk brought up a lot of issues that have been given much more meaning to me as I have been exposed to this idea. The exercise she did with the audience was really powerful, especially because I was similarly unaware of the four women she brought up despite knowing who all four men were. Intersectionality, especially the intersection of race and gender, has very much been a topic of conversation with how big the Black Lives Matter and Women's Rights Movements have become in the last few years. Black Lives Matter, despite being run and led by many women, has rallied around the injustices black men have faced. Similarly, the Women's movement has been criticized for its perceived singular "white middle-class woman" narrati...

Questions: 1. In the context of my own classroom, how can I be "reconceptualist" and help reframe the way my students with learning disabilities see themselves? They are often given certain treatments or pulled out of class for one reason or another, which at middle school can be an added stressor in an already hard time. Some of my students have a really healthy mindset and truly understand their learning needs, while others are much more insecure. 2. On a similar note, how can I have productive conversations with my students about our IEP students? How can we discuss their differences and what some would call "special treatment" (extra time on tests, notes on tests, extra STAR testing, extra services, etc.) while still maintaining that there is nothing wrong with them? Middle school students are already tough enough on each other and I want to be open with my class about what goes on, but also need to protect my students with IEPs. 3. I feel like this is a s...

Before I moved to Providence, I didn't know much about English Language Learners and the special regulations and rights that are given to them. In a lot of research I have read and conversations that I have been a part of, there has been much debate about immersion as an effective way for EL students to both learn content and language (I couldn't remember specific research I have read in the past, but this  results page  has some interesting papers I browsed through). I say this because EL education in Providence is immersion-based (as opposed to a bilingual approach) and teachers are strongly discouraged from providing any sort of translation in students' native languages (but, I also can only speak to the experiences of those at my school and friends at other schools). The reason I bring this up is because I was really interested in the Hesson and Toncelli article and did not know about this change in the ESL regulations. The article was really relevant to conversations...

"But I who am bound by my mirror    as well as my bed see causes in colour as well as sex" I forget (more frequently than I would like to admit) that the LGBTQ rights movement has been actively fighting for as long as it has. One of the questions on the lesson plan outline that was meant to be asked to students actually gave me a little perspective. The Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969, the end of the decade that saw the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Both important parts of our country's history and both taking on new forms in the 2018 age. In full transparency, some of my first thoughts while engaging with the texts and videos were "How can I incorporate this information or these significant historical events into my middle school classroom?" And it honestly brought up a common struggle I think I continue to have when discussing or engaging with different kinds of social issues. I teach middle school math, how can I incorporate queerness in...