Marshmallow Challenge

One time I used Critical Thinking was when I decided that I just couldn’t deal with someone in my life anymore. I had this ex-friend who was toxic and whom I hated to be around despite some of my other friends either just tolerating him or outwardly showing that they didn’t want to be friends but not cutting him off. I used critical thinking by analyzing the situation and thinking about my feelings about it as well as my friend’s and my own actions. I decided after some deliberation that I was going to distance myself from the toxic person in my life completely and I was going to stop hanging out with my friends when they were spending time with him. In the end, he blamed everyone around him for “hating” him and screamed at one of my best friends. That made almost all of us cut him off and refuse to talk to him at all. Critical Thinking helped me in this instance because I was able to separate myself from the situation without feeling incredibly guilty (something I have struggled with in the past) and am healthier as a person and a friend for it. 

Critical thinking skills can be applied to daily life because all critical thinking is analyzing a situation and thinking of the different options available and making it so you will be able to make the one best for yourself in that moment and in the long run. These skills can be hard to manage at first, but once someone is able to get in a groove, it would make it much easier. An example of how Critical Thinking could impact my life if I practiced using it on a daily basis would be to have a slightly better handle on my overwhelming emotions. If I am able to just stop my emotions from making me do something very drastic, I would be able to see more options than what it is initially available and control myself more as well as not hurting myself and other people emotionally with words said in the moment.

An asset-based approach activity for Lisa to grow her skills in writing as well as reading would be to have the tutor assist Lisa reading a short story about someone who plays basketball. This would reach into Lisa’s knowledge about the subject of basketball as well as help her understand the words better in context if the tutor pick a story with a more challenging vocabulary. This will make her far more confident in her reading skills because she already knows the names of things that would be frequently talked about in the story and picked from the knowledge that she already holds. After the tutor reads the story with her, they can have her write a short excerpt about either the plot or the main character(s) of the story to have her be able to practice writing about something she already have knowledge in as well as providing her with options to take her own learning in her hands. Writing a short excerpt about the plot will allow her to discuss basketball more and be able to use the words she knows in context to what she doesn’t and writing about the main character(s) would allow Lisa to be able to still use that context and herself to better understand the characters in the story and improve her reading skills. The tutor could push for more detail rather than length in general by, instead of having her write an excerpt on her own, have her answer question on the plot/character(s) so she would have to read the questions and would be able to answer them in a more condensed form rather than having an intimidating writing project. Questions such as “What position does (main character) play and what position is that useful for when playing basketball?” promotes reading comprehension as well as allowing Lisa to be able to talk in detail about something she’s interested in. It will have her be more confident in her abilities and provide lots of extra detail that will improve her detail taking abilities. 

Another way to improve her writing skills would be to opt for a similar approach using her enjoyment of movies. The tutor could have her watch a movie that she enjoys and do a similar thing to the previously stated reading assignment. The tutor could either have Lisa write a review of the movie using reasons to why she enjoyed it and the plot of the movie, or they could make a series of questions that would make it so Lisa can focus on certain aspects of the movie and write in detail about it. For this one, I would opt for the first rather than the second because it is more likely that Lisa would be better confident in her skills if she is allowed freedom to write how she wants rather than answering questions, which would have been better for the previous prompt. 

Instead of, or in addition to, these two options, the tutor could have Lisa write about a trip she would like to take–to Hawaii for example because she said she would like to go there one day. The tutor could prepare a budget option and give Lisa a list of activities and things in Hawaii that she would like to do, then prompt her to make a plan for what she wants to do while staying within the budget that the activity set. This would allow her to think about what she wants to do on her (hopeful) trip this summer, which would keep her engaged in the activity, as well as letting her do math to figure out the budget. This would be good for her reading/writing skills because she would not only need to describe what she would like to do as per the schedule/money she would like to set, but it also has her reading the options and thinking critically about them because there are limitations to what she can do in both time and money. 

Yet another way to incorporate reading and writing would be to have a hands-on activity where the tutor and Lisa bake chocolate chip cookies together. The tutor would find a chocolate chip cookie recipe and have Lisa help read out the instructions before they do the action it describes, as well as reading the measurements and everything else involved with baking. This would be good for Lisa’s reading skills because she would have to read the instructions of something she is familiar with–a recipe–but something new as well as having to read it correctly. Of course, the tutor would be on the side to help with anything Lisa needed in addition to prompting for the next instruction or measurement. This would help Lisa become evolved and excited for this activity because she both enjoys baking and everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. After this activity, you could have the option to have Lisa write a short paragraph about how she and the tutor made the chocolate chip cookies to promote the writing skill into the learning, but that is not required in order to make this activity a successful one for working on Lisa’s reading skills. 

The last activity that would be simple to manage for Lisa’s learning/improvement would be to involve her friend, Brittney. To do this, you could have Lisa do a few different things. One option would be to have Lisa write a short story of what she would do with her friend if they were able to have a sleepover (for example), which promotes her to think about doing fun things with her friend and enjoying talking about it. When people are able to write about things they like, it makes it much easier to go into detail about the activities. Another option to still include Brittney, would be to have Lisa narrate a conversation they had together from a third person objective. This would have her write about something that already happened (which could make it easier depending on what she struggles with) in addition to it being with someone that she already talks to on a day to day basis, so she could have many different prompts, It would be far more focused on Lisa’s writing compared to her reading, if the tutor decides to do these activities, but it would make Lisa able to talk about a subject that either excites her or something she’s very familiar with, which allows her to both write more and be able to write with causal language which she seems to not struggle with as much because it is like talking.

I think a teacher could use the four skills of Cultural Competency in addition to the Cultural Iceberg as a way to determine the biases that they hold and fight against them so they aren’t favoring students over others. For example, a teacher can use the idea of the concept of Awareness to realize that not everyone is the same from the same culture and want to dive deeper into a certain student’s culture to be able to understand them better than just simply the surface level things. They might want to learn about the things on the lower level of the “iceberg” because they feel like it is important for that student’s culture. As I am in the great majority of “culture” (as a white person from America) I do not have a great example for this in my own personal iceberg. But a similar example would be if a student wanted to know how certain cultures/people can touch each other casually. Some cultures are very touchy upon close friendships or meetings, while others abstain from it as much as possible. Me personally, growing up in Alaska and my household, I typically shy away from any sort of touch unless it is from one of my most trusted friends or family members, which is something I grew up with not only because of general anxiety but because no one in my family really allowed other adults or people to touch them unless someone was specifically instructed to hug them. That’s just something I grew up with and it is an example of how a teacher might look deeper into cultural norms to see whether or not the student would be fine with touching without having to directly ask them. 

A teacher might use the Cultural Competency skill of Attitude in order to reveal their own implicit biases and not use them while teaching. As Awareness is a skill focusing on one’s beliefs and values based on differences in culture, learning about your own cultural and values would be a good way to remove and implicit biases as well as learning of other’s differences and embracing them instead of throwing them away as poppycock. An example of this from my iceberg (though not really because, after all, I don’t really have a culture to speak of–I just exist) is that one of my core beliefs is that even though all humans should be treated with basic respect (such as be spoken to normally or not be rude to a stranger), but actual respect of a human should be earned. This is not how it is in all–or even most–cultures. Such as in Chinese culture where sons of the family are expected to take care of their parents once they are old and have respect for them no matter what they do or what happens. As someone who is not in that culture, it might be a little difficult to understand that from a teaching perspective without properly learning about it, so I would likely develop that that is a “bad” practice because of my own beliefs. Being aware of your biases and why things in other cultures are the way that they are is a great way to combat this.

Knowledge is the Cultural Competency strategy of being able to understand the difference between different cultures and their similarities. This strategy is important for teachers to learn because of how it corresponds to the awareness of other cultures and not having yourself in prejudice when you are teaching. An example from my iceberg of things being similar but not quite the same is my beliefs that gods do exist even though I do not worship any and people who use pagan types of religion. People who are pagan typically hold belief in more than one god and they can go across pantheons, so we are similar in that regard. Being able to see that similarity can be very useful for teacher because you would be able to better understand someone’s culture when it’s at least sort of similar to your own and you would be able to better emphasize with them and their culture without having to go through the process of learning something totally new without any sort of familiarity.

Being able to use Cultural Competence to perfect communication is a crucial skill and tool (Skill) used by teachers in order to be able to teach their students without bias and with thoroug communication and understanding between their students without having to have any sort of negative feelings between you and your student.

What I have learned about Equity is that it is the standard of which us as educators should do our best to achieve. We want to be able to treat our students fairly, as to be able to do that, we need to focus on Equity rather than Equality. To start, the concept of Equity is that of which everyone gets the necessary resources and opportunities that they need to achieve due to either incapability or lack of it where they are. An example of this would be more community focused efforts in schools in poor neighborhoods because they need more resources to give their students a chance at being able to be the most successful that they are able to be. 

In education, Equity is making sure that people are treated fairly, and that does not always mean equally. For example, as we previously learned in this unit, developing a strategy to make sure you do not develop favorite students is incredibly important in the classroom. One of these strategies is to have either notecards or popsicle sticks that you go through the day in a random order. You would pick one, have the student answer a question or talk to them about the material, and then put their name aside and not pick it again until you have gone through all of the students. The teachers who used this specific strategy to prevent favoritism mentioned that they put students who had special needs name’s in multiple times, so they would be more involved or be able to interact more with the lessons. This, to me at least, is a very important strategy to be able to include these students who need extra help or prompting to join, so they will be able to be involved when they wouldn’t be able to before. This is an example of Equity in the classroom, as I have previously stated. 

Equity’s role in education is to make sure that people get the support they need to be the most successful in their education. I will be especially focusing on this concept in my learning of being an educator because I think it is incredibly important to realize and know that people aren’t able to get the same resources at birth, even if they really need them. I want to do more research on the subject and find more strategies so I will be able to implement strategies in my (Eventual) classroom that will allow all of my students to thrive under the circumstances.

Three lessons that stuck with me this week were, the Implicit Bias lessons, the lessons of Bias in kid’s books, and the lessons of allyship. These lessons stuck with me because they are incredibly important to me and I thought they were interesting. 

The Implicit Bias lessons were interesting and stuck with me more because I think that they are important to understanding how we can act without even realizing it. I think that I have made at least some progress this week (even though I already knew at least some about all of the material these lessons hold) with my own implicit biases and this definitely helped me identify and set a course for retraining my brain so it won’t act like this and make it so I view all people equally, even those I do not respect because of their actions. I feel like this lesson is one most people should learn because it is very important to understand that even if you don’t personally have any biases, you can still have unconscious ones that you aren’t even aware of. 

I think the lesson that we build implicit biases early into childhood from our surroundings and books we read as kids is the most important out of the three I am talking about. This is because this is our next generation. The people who we will leave the world and who will be running it. We need to focus on them and make sure that they are given a shot at being able to live without being absolutely miserable. If we are able to obliterate the implicit biases and ideas that harm others when children are small, then we would allow them to be able to build a better world then we could in the future. 

The lessons concerning allyship are also very important to me, in my opinion, because it is difficult to be able to understand what people are thinking and being in their shoes without thinking about it. We have a lot of problems in our world already without drowning out the voices of people who are more oppressed than us. We as a people, especially those of us who have privileges to speak out and raise other’s voices, need to be more adamant to get these changes, and the first part of that is getting people aware and knowledgeable about how things are. How things in this world suck and get those stuck in cycles of misinformation out of those cycles. 

– How the Raven Stole the Sun

“How the Raven Stole the Sun” is a book of a Native Alaskan folktale and the copy I listened to was written by Maria Williams and illustrated by Felix Virgil.. It is about how raven, a trickster spirit, managed to trick a wealthy person to release the sun, moon, and stars into the sky so everyone could enjoy them, even if most of the reason why he did it was because he was curious about what was in the boxes. This is one of the only Native Alaskan stories I can remember off of my head because I was read it frequently in my preschool and I still enjoy the story to this day. I could not find any biases in it other than potentially the wealthy person in the story being bad (but eat the rich, so go off). But everyone in the story (despite the few people) are native alaskan, so I think that it would be fine considering that it isn’t playing into any stereotypes that would be bad for the group.

I think this book would do great to expand someone’s library in a diverse way because it’s a fun story with beautiful, colorful illustrations that would hold a child’s attention, and it’s also folklore of native Alaskans that don’t portray them in a way that is harmful to them. I will admit that because this is a folktale it is iffy to share with children too much (as the article discusses), but if someone is looking for a place for an indigenous book in their collection, “How the Raven Stole the Sun” would be a wonderful place for that. 

– How the Raven got his Crooked Nose 

“How the Raven got his Crooked Nose” is an Alaskan Dena’ina Fable. The retold story I listened to was written by Barbara J. Atwater and Ethan J. Atwater and illustrated by Mindy Dwyer. The story was about how a raven trickster named Chulyen got a crooked nose because he didn’t fix it when he put it back on his face after stealing it back once he lost it. The story teaches that when you do something, you should take it slow and do it right so you won’t have to live with something unfixable–like Chulyen’s crooked nose. I think this story was very enjoyable and I loved how the grandmother was telling it to her grandchild. I couldn’t find any sort of biases in the story and I think it was just a lovely fable to teach the lesson of not rushing through everything if you can help it. 

I think this book would also be a wonderful addition to any library if they were wishing to diversify it a bit more. As it is a Fable, I would say that you should be careful about not having too many as they can be questionable at times and not teach the right things, but this is a simple, fun, story that should be perfectly fine. This was a colorful book with interesting and beautiful drawings and ways of showing things that I haven’t seen in the children’s books I’ve read.