Bronfenbrenner Blog #2 due by Sunday night February 4th at midnight
I really loved readings this week as they are just chalked full of amazing and interesting information! Certainly after our horror stories from last week’s Blog, we can easily see the power and impact of educators being reflective about their temperaments and how who they are impacts the learning and lives of their students.
I am also a parent of a 12-year-old…wait…OMG she just turned 13 (WTH…I’m the parent of a teenager!)... and so I was very interested in the parenting styles. Let’s hope I do a great job of raising Helena!
Bronfenbrenner’s Biological Theory of Development is the focus of our Blog post this week. There are so many influences on the students we teach and counsel and the bioecological model of human development encompasses them all. Here are two that I want us to blog about this week.
How do you incorporate controversial topics into your classroom to engage students? Since so many people had negative math experiences, let me give an example of what I mean in the content area of mathematics. One of my favorite math websites is www.radicalmath.org because it uses topics that are a part of students’ everyday lives to engage them. Check it out, okay? You can teach math through issues like race, gender, gentrification, homeownership, the lottery (yes, I play), racial profiling, predatory lending, living wage, juvenile justice and sweatshops, just to name a few. I think if we’d all had math class as a way to look at many of these issues that impact us in our daily lives, we’d have loved math more!
I just can’t help but brag on my fabulous kid, so here is a peer-reivewed journal article hot-off-the-press where Helena shows you how she confronts her own colonized elementary curriculum. This girl rocks! It’s pages 6-90 and you will love her homework examples! Brave and Didn’t Know It: A 12-Year-Old Decolonizes Her Elementary Education - by Helena Donato-Sapp.
Our texts references the increasing influence of television, the Internet, and other forms of media and I agree that pop culture is not only a major influence on students, but also a great engagement tool to get their attention as well. So I am curious how you will use pop culture to reach students in an academic content area. How you would use pop culture if you could? What part of pop culture would you use because you think it’s central in students lives right now? Surely The Hellfire Club and Eddie Munson can fit into a class somewhere and somehow, right? How would you use pop culture in a counseling situation? For example, I know I’ve used rap as a vehicle to engage students in comprehending literature.
Again, two questions to focus on and they refer to Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development:
How will you incorporate controversial topics into your teaching or counseling?
What pop cultural reference would you use and how would you use it to engage students?