Edgr 595 - the Same Differently
Dolores Merriweather
The Same Differently
EDGR595
Community of Learners
Concordia University-Portland
The Same—Differently
I believe I can help by teaching staff and students’ equity. Scott (2015) states, “Even in the suburbs, low-income students are now 40 percent of the student population in the public schools,” “It’s everyone’s problem”(Para. 2). It may be possible that students can learn about poverty by understanding the majority of the students in the school are in same boat. Based on this idea I formulated an egg experiment and shared it with the staff in a morning meeting.
I have taught this lesson before, once in Junior high and for the last four years in my 4th grade classroom as we were talking about black history. I first learned about the lesson when I was getting my endorsement in ELL/ESL. As an end result I wanted to use this experiment to enlighten the staff at my school about teaching equity. I begin by having everyone brainstorm gathering ideas about how teachers viewed the words equality, equity, and diversity. After I jotted down the information in an anchor chart I begin to structure my lesson. The lesson is taught with two eggs, one brown, and one white. First I paired the teachers and gave them an egg of each color, 2 graphic organizers (T-Chart) for each color egg. I asked them to write down the characteristics of the outer layer of the egg. Some of the eggs had imperfections however many were considered perfect.
Once they wrote down the their observations I presented them with another organizer and one brown crayon and one white crayon. I asked them to color each egg on the sheet, one brown the other white. As I lead the teacher in the lesson on diversity and how we view our students I asked them to share their observations among one another. After the group shared their observations I asked the teachers to crack each of their eggs. I asked them to use the experiment organizer to tell me what they saw when they cracked each of the eggs.
As the lesson was coming to a close I wanted the teachers to write down and draw a picture illustrating how people are the same. Zmuda, states, (2015) “In every school, Regardless of its resource… The one constant goal is creating a school and classroom culture that engages students to do their best work.” I feel what make teachers true educators are their acknowledgment, appreciation, and respect of students' differences. Students' diverse intelligences, talents, skills, interests, and backgrounds enrich our schools and our lives as teachers. Therefore teaching with diversity means that there are lots of different kinds of things. Diversity can be seen in languages, religions, beliefs, schools, traditions, etc. Diversity makes the world an interesting place to be.
As an end result I wanted the teachers to understand how we view our students and how we can benefit by changing our views. “Treat everyone the same—differently.” (Littky, 2015, p. 155) For example, everyone is unique and deserves to be treated as an individual. Everyone should be given special treatment. When you treat different people the same, you are suppressing their unique ability to contribute in their own ways, and lose the diversity in the learning environment.
According to the text, “It’s the right thing to do”. “Members of society share the same moral…that every child gets what he or she needs to succeed…(Blankstein & Noguera, 2015, pp. 9).” As we moved forward I wanted the teachers to understand that the ultimate goal is treating our students with fairness. Teachers and schools strive to be fair and build programs and polices based on this value. Students are not the same. They have different motivations for their choices,