Is the Field really level?

The divide between race, while having reduced somewhat over the last 40 years, is still a divide none the less.  It is especially noticeable once a person becomes an adult and decides to pursue a college education.  When we are kids, things are pretty much handed out to everyone the same and the levelness of the field is not as noticeable, while that is still not true of every part of our country.  Gender and race come into play in a huge way once we arrive as adults.  I have often seen areas in colleges where white males excel with ease and females as well as minorities have a slippery slope to hold on to.

I found this resource   http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/op_comings2.pdf online and it attacks the very soul of the issue – especially when it comes to level playing fields for women and minorities.  I agree with Michelle that possibly having courses that were more reflective of all groups in college would go leaps and bounds in reducing the great divide in our college system.  I have personally witnessed discrimination at the high school level while working at a 99% non-diversified school in a rural area.  While the discrimination was overt in nature, it was still demeaning and made a mockery of the civil rights movement and where we ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!

Read the first chapter of Building a Level Playing Field and I think you will agree we have a long way to go in making the community college experience equal for all.

The divide between race, while having reduced somewhat over the last 40 years, is still a divide none the less.  It is especially noticeable once a person becomes an adult and decides to pursue a college education.  When we are kids, things are pretty much handed out to everyone the same and the levelness of the field is not as noticeable, while that is still not true of every part of our country.  Gender and race come into play in a huge way once we arrive as adults.  I have often seen areas in colleges where white males excel with ease and females as well as minorities have a slippery slope to hold on to.

I found this resource   http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/op_comings2.pdf online and it attacks the very soul of the issue – especially when it comes to level playing fields for women and minorities.  I agree with Michelle that possibly having courses that were more reflective of all groups in college would go leaps and bounds in reducing the great divide in our college system.  I have personally witnessed discrimination at the high school level while working at a 99% non-diversified school in a rural area.  While the discrimination was overt in nature, it was still demeaning and made a mockery of the civil rights movement and where we ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!

Read the first chapter of Building a Level Playing Field and I think you will agree we have a long way to go in making the community college experience equal for all.

Race, Class and Gender

After reading chapter 10 of Merriam, Caffarella and Baumgartner’s Learning in Adulthood, I found myself pondering the complex make-up of community college students and employees. It seems that the issues of race, class, gender are still prevalent within the community college learning environment.  I wonder what effect race, class and gender based power struggles have on the classroom environment and on student –instructor behavioral conflicts.

I was recently working with a colleague on developing resources for faculty to use when dealing with inappropriate classroom behavior.  We quickly became aware that some classroom behavioral situations stemmed from a lack of knowledge or perhaps understanding of who community college students are, where they come from (culturally and socioeconomically) and how this relates to the classroom.  This background knowledge on students could aid the instructor (assuming the instructor has an understanding of their own background/privilege and of course, an awareness of the forms and cycles of oppression) in creating a positive learning environment for all students.

It would certainly be revealing to review classroom conflicts to see how often issues of race, class and gender have been at the root of the situation.  I would guess that a great deal of student-to-student conflicts and student-to-instructor conflicts arose from these areas of oppression.  

I also wonder if these conflict situations would be reduced if the course material was more reflective of all members of the student body.  This could be in the form of more diverse reading assignments, videos or classroom/workplace examples that include people from all backgrounds making the material more relevant to a broader student population and deepening the learning experience.

Non-Western Perspectives of Learning

I found Chapter Nine's Review of Non-Western Perspectives of Learning and Knowing to be fascinating.  I was particularly struck by Rain's comparison of western knowledge production's dismissal of indigenous learning as the equivalent of intellectual apartheid.  The chapter highlights four themes of Non-Western learning, which are that it is interdependent, communal, holistic, and informal.

I'm also intrigued at the notion that learning is primarily informal and embedded in everyday life. I 
think there is considerable merit to this concept.   Nowhere have I found this truth to be more self-evident than during my five years experience as a parent.  I've learned a bunch.  I learned that it's not possible to love anything more than your child.  Although I had heard this many times before, I never knew the extent it was true until I had my own.  And by living and doing as a parent, I've somehow managed to master tasks like changing diaper and wiping noses...things I never imagined being able to complete without being sick.  I've learned to really appreciate things I took for granted like sleep, and free time, a clean house.  I've also learned to see the world in new ways like through a child's eyes and a parent's eyes.  All of which have taken shape in  a very interdependent, communal, holistic, and informal way. 

Chapter 9 highlights the difference of Eastern and Western thinking perspectives. We all have said at one time or another “Confucius say”.

The top 11 picks:

Confucius Say: Man who drop watch in toilet have sh1tty time.

Confucius Say: Woman who put husband in doghouse, will soon find him in cat house.

Confucius Say: Man who eat crackers in bed wake up feeling crummy.

Confucius Say: Man who run in front of bus get tired.

Confucius Say: Man who run behind bus get exhausted.

Confucius Say: Man who stand on toilet high on pot.

Confucius Say: It take many nail to build crib, one screw to fill it.

Confucius Say: Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.

Confucius Say: Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.

Confucius Say: Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.

Confucius Say: Man who lose key to apartment not get new key.

Confucius really did have a pulse on the early 551-479 BC concepts. His philosophy has been studied by many, but personified by Chu-His in the 19th century. He applied this to adult learning as they imitate virtues to other people. Adult learning in a holistic way is to enlighten. Eastern learning’s emphasizes the self-awareness, one withnature. Self–rectification and spiritual studies thus get you in touch with your inner self. It emphasizes peer learning among adults. Confucian Analects say that the teacher must wait until adult learners understand themselves, then the teachers must again help learners. Another difference is that the relationship between teacher and students is not equal s it is in the Western culture.(Sung 1991) Western culture believes that the premise’s to learning is in the classroom. Teacher-led classes that is dependent on books and curriculum material. Teachers led lectures that are based and also delivered, in the classroom settings. In contrast Eastern learning feels the soul and well-being of the mind make the adult learn more respective to cognitive learning. The innate conscious of the adult learner is complex and requires many different ways to absorb the information presented.

Sources:

http://pressf1.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?89589-Best-quot-Confucius-Say-quot-sayings-thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDaeRNJG9U">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDaeRNJG9U

Technology in Real Time: Learning Outside the Box

After watching the videos for this week's topics, I was instantly transported back to my music classes and recalled how my students learned to read, play and eventually, write music using notation.  While most instructors used books to teach music with, I was convinced early on that the experience had to be kinesthetic and larger than life, engaging them using everything from instruments to smart boards and everything in between.  I taught using the ORFF method of teaching music, a music method developed and named after world renowned composer and teacher Carl Orff (Carl Orff, Wikipedia). 

Orff passionately believed that students learn faster if they are active participants in the process rather than just observers.  And that is the key for adult learners as well - taking students to the next level by making them active participants in the community colleges across America.  The problem, of course, is two-fold: budgeting and changing the mindset of teachers who have taught the same way for decades.

The results in my music classes were dramatic and very measurable, and of course, very kinesthetic.  From stepping onto a gigantic keyboard to show a particular note or to teach octaves to playing Xylophones and drums (Addison) - the result was learning and learning with real retention.  Transferring lessons from 1) reading a poem, to 2) speaking it in tempo, to3) using body percussion (finger snaps, claps and leg pats) while speaking the poem in rhythm, to 4) eventually playing the whole thing on instruments.  It was extremely successful, even with kindergartners.  Kids were learning and having fun doing it, and isn't that the point?

Of course, most teachers chose not to use this method either out of lack of understanding of the process or fear of learning the process.  Three teachers in our entire school system used the ORFF method through both dance and the playing of instruments.  I never quite understood their hesitation since it was so much easier than teaching from a book or black board and the children obviously loved learning in this way.

I think in today's world, we, as teachers and administrators, must start teaching and enabling our teachers to teach "out of the box" using the wonderful tools that the world of technology has given us.  Computers are useful, but in some ways, they have become the next generation's text books. 

Technology is not the only alternative to sitting at a desk or in front of a computer screen all day.  Taking the process to 3D lessons is a proven method of teaching in science.  What high school student doesn't remember the first time they dissected a frog or earth worm or even making models of the solar system for science class?  It worked then and it will work today with adult learners, and not just in science classes. 

Imagine acting out "Romeo & Juliet" rather than just reading it and watching the movie.  That would certainly put a new twist on embodied learning.  And using new technology such as 3 Dimensional  games like Wii or X Box or Smart boards to both bring kinesthetic and embodied learning to life in college classrooms and to be able to teach everything from Science to English without opening a single book.  I know that books will always be used. However, it would certainly be without a doubt more interesting to adult learners to use something other than books or sitting through a lecture or in front of a computer screen for hours as a means of teaching the same lessons.     
_________________________________________________________________________
References:

Retrieved March, 6 from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Orff

Retrieved March, 6 from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AlLtakikyM

Becoming Scientists

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My favorite part of this chapter is Matthews’ example of embodied learning in his childhood science classroom, where his teacher let the students wear lab coats and told them that by putting on the coats, they not only looked like scientists, they became scientists.  It’s a powerful example of how a learner’s physical world changed his mindset, and therefore influenced the way he thought about science.  

K-12 schools have endorsed embodied learning for years.  Recently my youngest sister (who is in 2^nd grade) learned the story of Pocahontas.  She read a book about her, wrote a one act play depicting a scene of her life, then acted it out with a friend.  She is now the resident expert on Pocahontas’ life, and not just the way Disney portrayed it. Magnet schools like hers focus on the arts (music, theater, pottery, dance, etc.)  to help children make connections in history lessons, math, and foreign languages (cabeza, hombros, piernas, piez!) through embodied learning, and as a product of an elementary school which placed such emphasis on teaching through doing, it is my opinion that this is the best way for children to learn. 

But what about the adult learners?  Isn’t it true that at some point in our educational careers our teachers stopped teaching us songs or hand motions to study for tests?  We grew up and became mature and apparently lost interest in such silly ways of committing to memory math formulas (see video below) and characters from Shakespeare’s most famous works. 

I understand the deeply personal and emotional values of adult learning, and how some people may turn simple tasks into embodied learning experiences while others can barely wrap their minds around the concept of mind-body connection.  The example in our text of the person who learns to write the Japanese symbol for river, and articulates how the process of making three strokes on paper inspires him to become the river and remember how to create the symbol from that point forward.  The problem is that throughout our formal educational journeys, we are often discouraged from making connections like these, because they seem less “academic.”  Smart people only need their brains to learn, because our brains are what make us smart…right?  

"Gettin' Triggy Wit It"