Friday, March 22, 2013

Week 11

Race, Language and Identity: Critical multiculturalism in TESOL
Monday, March 25th 

          Reading the articles and the discussion being suggested made me things that everyone in the world is different.  Everyone has their own culture, identity, language, dialogue, and who they are into the classroom. Reading the article about Asian and Blacks about their characteristics and how they are perceive in the class, we as future teacher are to somehow represent and respect our students. We are to make them feel that who they are and they personal characteristics are accepted in the classroom. In the article, “Race, Culture and Identities in a Second Language” by Kubota, it explain the definition about race, culture and identity and how they is no specific term that defines what it is and how we are represented.
            Relating this article with the other two articles that talked about how Asian and Black are, I was thinking that since the beginning somehow society has created this labels such as race and culture based on the similar characteristics people demonstrate that place us under categories. However, I believe it should not be like that because everyone is different and everyone has their own identity, with their own traditions and values. Additionally, society has created this titles that has affected out community and has had an impact on students and how those students who are not Americans have to assimilate into the classroom and ignore who they are.
            I believe that as teachers we can have the power when it comes breaking this titles or categories that society has place on us. And as future teacher it will be our job to unify our students and be clear that everyone is different. We should create an environment that everyone should be respected and with their traits they bring into classroom. Instead, we should get to know who are students really are and make a close relationship to help them achieve in school and truly get to know our students and make them feel part of the classroom just the way they are.  

Monday, March 4, 2013

Week 8

Culture and Material Evaluation
March 4th 
          Reading and reflecting on this week’s reading about text evaluation and how teachers are to approach this concept in class, the reading has some very important information and ideas of how to evaluate text and what to look for to represent students in our classroom. As future teachers we will need to consider and look closely in who and in what way are our students represented from the text that we are teaching from. In ch. 11 from Hinkel, it gave a list of the things to look at when evaluating a textbook. We need to take into consideration that a text can be a teacher, a map, a resource, a trainer, and authority, a de-skiller, and ideology. The text can be used for many things, but we also need to be creative and not really too my much in the textbook because we need to create critical thinkers of our students and look beyond what is written or pictures showed in text.
    Additionally, when it comes to the text that is being used we need to have many other texts that have a variety of images that represents our students. In the article by Taylor-Mendes, he discuss that teachers can also include students into culture discussion when questioning about the images that are used in the textbook and how they are represented. Creating critical questions and asking them what have they experience and how do people really look like besides in the textbook. He also discuss that this might be another good idea to bring and discuss as a class about culture, people, race, and stereotype using the textbook for class discussion about the topic.  
           
             Overall, as future ‘multicultural’ teachers we need to be very sensitive and careful how we evaluate text, what textbooks are representing, what are they informing, how are they being use or how will they be use, is it textbooks that will be helpful for my students’ understanding of culture and identity. Also, not only rely on textbook, but an aid for other information that will be connected together. Use textbooks as class discussion about images, stereotyping, and their true experience of how they look like and how they should be represented in textbook