Multicultural Education

This article gives a brief update on where the education world currently stands on the topic of multicultural education. It shows that the idea of multicultural education is quite new to norms of education and because of this young age, there is a lot of contention about what multicultural education really looks like. This article shows that multicultural education can range from simply including a local hero into a lesson to full-programs that cater only to the needs of a group. However, they all follow the idea that since America comes from such a diverse background, its education should reflect this.

However, the idea of multicultural education in its confused young state seems almost disturbing and potentially dangerous to me. The first question that comes to mind is where do we draw the line on multicultural education. Should we discuss the culture of wiccas or Kitchen Catholics? Where should the line be drawn on who to include? Also I worry about the idea of separating children too much in order to get unique schooling. Pretty soon this separation turns into separate but equal. We want kids to value each other not their own. Thus, I think multicultural education needs to be apart of everyday life. It also needs just more clarification and details about how exactly multicultural education works if we hope to replicate the positive effects.

Understanding Unconscious Bias and Unintentional Racism, Jean Moule.

“A stereotype is a simplistic image or distorted truth about a person or group based on a prejudgment of habits, traits, abilities, or expectations.” Almost everyone has stereotypes and acts on these stereotypes whether they know it or not. In fact, it when these stereotypes and the actions that people associate with them are unconscious is when they can become especially dangerous. Our minds are wired in order to process large amounts of information quickly allowing us to assess situations and act accordingly. If our brains were not quick at these actions, our ancestors would have died out long ago. The brain is able to do this by creating stereotypes and then placing new situations and people into these stereotypes in order to process them. However, these stereotypes might not always come from credible sources, so they could be distorted. Thus, it is important for us to recognize these stereotypes rather than pretend they are not their. If we do not recognize that we have them we won’t be able to address them, and thus as the old adage goes you have to know what you don’t know.

I am curious as to what stereotypes there are for Hawaii and whether or not these stereotypes match reality. How different are they from black and latino in New York City. I know I have many stereotypes of people from different backgrounds, meaning educational, racial, and social. I judge people off of how they dress and how they speak. If I didn’t though, would I be able to survive in this world. Are stereotypes always bad, or do they serve a vital purpose.

The Negotiated Project Approach: Project-Based Learning without Leaving the Standards Behind

Before reading this article, I was really skeptical of project based learning. I had an experience with project based learning my senior year in high school, when they were trying to totally revamp our school and it was terrible. Furthermore, teaching senior project now has shown how it can be very problematic in terms of actually getting kids motivated and making sure they are learning. Its kind of difficult to teach standards in a project form, especially if the students have a wide-variety of options to choose from and grading can be even harder. How to access whether a project meets the criteria.

However, after reading this article and understanding that projects should not be semester based as both of my experiences with it are semester, I think there are some serious benefits to project based. The first is that it provides ownership. Ownership is a skill and knowledge that is severely lacking in Hawaii and low-income communities. The other is that college and the job world completely revolves around projects. Therefore, its important for us to teach these skills.

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

Woon Chia Liu ⁎, C.K. John Wang, Oon Seng Tan, Caroline Koh, Jessie Ee

This article highlighted the benefits of project-based education. It showed that a low-controlled environment high motivation is best way to satisfy students needs. How satisfy is defined is another question altogether. The bad news was that low self-determination and high controlled lead to less enjoyment and less improvement. Its still a question of how they define value over time. What aspects are going into value?

This information did not surprise me as I teach senior project and the kids who I can give the most self-determination are having the most fun. However, its not just as easy to do that, when the students do not have any base motivation skills before the class. I feel as if I spend 50 percent of my time just motivating these kids to do their work. Project based work depends on personal responsibility, something that many in my class simply lack. I think this might be an idealized situation as you don’t know what kind of school they are in. It could be one like the slab school, where the needed skills and mindset are already conducive to learning. Or it could be like Campbell where I have to ride them in order to get the work in. This could be just because I have terrible investment, but this whole article seems like it was written in an ivory tower.