My greatest passion for teaching comes from the fact that only two percent of teachers in America are black males. One of my greatest goals is to encourage other black males to pursue teaching. There needs to be representation in education so that students of any color, ethnicity, gender, or disability know they can succeed anywhere. I plan to teach in hope of increasing the number of black male teachers in our nation as well as encouraging minorities in general to make an impact on our education system. In my practice I will incorporate responsive teaching, social justice in education, and tackling underrepresentation in STEM.
Responsive teaching has been one of the most important concepts in my studies. Hammer and Van Zee describe responsive teacher as taking concepts from students and learning how to make students think about their reasoning. The student speaks first and the teacher analyzes the discussion rather than the teacher explaining how something works first and asking the student if they understand. The teacher is responding to the way students think and reason by asking probing questions. Responsive teaching also covers a bracket of smaller concepts such as cooperate teaching in which a structured group encourages students to use skills such as sharing ideas and challenging different perspectives. Vygotsky also discussed how students are responsible for growing their knowledge through growing their zone of proximal development or state of knowledge when responsive teaching is taking place.
Social justice is another important concept. For starters, understanding literacy in STEM is important. Literacy is more than just reading and writing; it is the ability to understand and interpret what you are reading. For Freire, literacy involved students wanting to create and re-create. Students would produce a stance of intervention in their own context and use literacy as a tool. A great example of the importance of literacy is Bob Moses’ Algebra Project. Middle schools at the time did not offer algebra but Bob Moses made it accessible because he figured mathematical literacy was a major key to African-American students understanding the changing world economy under the impact of technological advances. They could excel in higher level math subjects and apply what they learned in math to real world situations to adapt to the growing society. Moses declared algebra a civil right and his project proves why.
Finally, tackling underrepresentation is STEM is a study I will carry through my teaching career. The first step to this is keeping minorities in the classroom. Implicit biases and stereotype threats are preventing students of color, women, and students with disabilities from succeeding in the classroom and the effects are very real and shown in test scores and school suspension rates for minorities. The second step is to teach about the underrepresented in class. This can be done by incorporating hidden figures into your lessons. Students should become comfortable learning about historical figures that are not typically discussed in textbooks. The teacher can also encourage students to hold open discussions about gender and race.
All the concepts show that students learn best when cooperative learning is present. Teachers should not lecture all the time and give out answers. They should be allowing students to formulate their own definitions and using prior knowledge to help each other create new knowledge while the teacher facilitates. It is also apparent that representation is important in helping students learn. A diverse school should have a diverse population of teachers and lesson should incorporate a diverse range of historical and present-day figures.