Haley's FNED 502 Blog

This week's readings really resonated with me and the journey that I have been on the last two or so years. As someone who has always valued kindness, Sonia Nieto's piece captures some of the lessons I've learned as a teacher, and more specifically a white teacher in an urban school. The piece was plain and simple-- being nice is not enough to not conform to racist practices or tendencies. The other readings discuss the significance of relationships in teaching, moving away from strictly technical pedagogy and toward prioritizing making meaningful relationships with our students. A line that really stuck out to me was that we tell our students what to do and what to learn, but we do not bother to ask who they are. So teachers can be "nice" in the most basic way (perhaps a better word is polite or well-mannered). But if we deny parts of our students' lives, we are not making those meaningful relationships and thus not allowing students to truly flourish. Li...

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...