Islam in the classroom

It is up to us as educators to facilitate lessons, discussions, and cooperative skills that open-minds and increase understanding. Children repeat what they hear at home and from outside sources but we must not let bullying and hatred into our classrooms. Hate begets more hate. It never ends but it can end by making our classes a safe place. San Diego Unified School District Board Will Address Islamophobia and Bullying of Muslim Students | NBC 7 San Diego http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/San-Diego-Unified-School-District-Islamophobia-Muslim-Students-CAIR-Plan-388390272.html?_osource=mobilesharebar

We need to address this in San Diego, how about where you live? 

Sign-up for one of my favorite resources, Teaching Tolerance Magazine, or check it out online. There are also many resouces for understanding world religions, ask you Librarian for suggestions or get started with these:

http://www.slj.com/2013/05/resources/islam-in-the-classroom/

http://www.tolerance.org/lesson/taking-closer-look-religions-around-world

http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/islam08.socst.world.glob.lppillars/the-five-pillars-of-islam

Teachers and communities may be fearful, and are not always trained to lead lessons on religion. http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-na-islam-schools-20151220-story.html

But, that's not helpful for us as teachers, our students, or our communities to not address that students may be hurt and bullied while other students may actual be fearful of muslim students based on what they hear in their homes. Noone can learn in fear. So, it becomes something we can take time to learn more about: how to talk and lead studies about religion in a fair, unbiased, inclusive, and caring way. It's our responsibility to make sure our children see themselves in our literature and in our classroom and to help build a future where we may not all believe the same things but we can understand each others beliefs. As we say in IB, just because someone is different, that doesn't make him wrong. It just means we may have different ideas. Moving toward developing international-mindedness is something we work on in IB and this paper may help understnd that educational philosophy more. 

http://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/ib-research/imeufullreportfinal.pdf

Thank you for working to develop open-mindedness, peace, and caring in our community and in your classrooms. 

5 Paragraph Essay?

Should we teach it anymore? "You write to communicate something, and that means you have to adapt the form to the function," argues Mark Anderson, a teacher at the Jonas Bronck Academy in New York City. Is the ol' five paragraph essay support or a straight jacket? Read more from the article: Is the Five-Paragraph Essay History? http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/06/20/is-the-five-paragraph-essay-history.html?cmp=soc-tw-shr via @educationweek. What are your thoughts? Have you ever used this fornat in real-life? Should we teach curruculum that does not have relevance in the world of career, life-skills, or higher level academia? If we don't teach this clear format of thesis/claim and support, will students learn to identify and cite high-quality evidence or is there a more efficient tool for teaching conventions? 

Why Learn A Second Language?

When we ask students, "Why learn a second language?" We often hear, it will open doors to new cultures, help you make new friends, order food, get you to your hotel. I love..."so you can find the bathroom." But beyond those answers sometimes we are all stumped at expressing and understanding the depth of our all encompassing dependence on language?

We know, as language educators, that learning a new language helps to develop neurons and dendrites, and understand cultures, make connections, communicate with others. and express ourselves. I just read an article, however, that stretched my thinking and I learned something new about how language affects how we think and what we do. 

The article also poses many questions that could be used in our units such as: Can patterns in language play a causal role in how we think? Can our language affect our perception of time and space?  For folks who have work language learning at the academic and/or research level, please forgive my naievete, but for me, I found this article to be incredibly fascinating. For me the most interesting thing about language is how it expresses a culture, a community, or an individual but I've mainly used literature as the way to understand others. The linguistics side of language study has always seemed so formulaic and dry, but again, I haven't had much exposure. If this article is any indication of what I've been missing, I definitely have a lot to learn and explore on the language side of "Language and Literature." 

Does language affect the way we think?

For instance, a group of researcher have found that artists who speak languages where nouns have grammatical gender, often create art where images represent the word's gender. For instance, German painters are more likely to paint "death" as a man, and in Russia "death" is more often painted as a woman; both matching the grammatical gender of the noun in that language.

Space, time, and other concepts may also be affected, developed, or understood differently depending on your language. For instance in English we use terms for directions that are relative to ourselves: left, right, in front, behind. An Aboriginal group in Australia uses absolute cardinal direction:east, west, north, south, to describe the location of something. We might say, "the pencil is to the left of your foot," whereas they might say "it is to the south southwest." Scientists believe this has helped them develop skills. They cite a study where members of their community can identify cardinal directions in unfamiliar settings and even inside buildings which would be difficult for English speakers who may not have the same ability to navigate. 

Does language affect who we are and what we do? To learn more read this fascinating article by Lera Boroditsky https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think

The quandry I have is how to bring these types of rich discussions about language into a language acquisition class. How do I balance learning about languages with the challenge of language learning? Can we bring these types of questions into a room in English, or stay in the target language and focus on language acquisition.

Youth Service America

If you are looking for service ideas and resources be sure to check out Youth Service America at ysa.org. Sign up to receive their newsletters with links to projects, grants, contests, and even service themed songs. My other favorite is their trainings: check out the youth tab and access their curriculum for young students planning a service project. 

Best Apps for Bloom's

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2016/02/blooms-digital-taxonomy-cheat-sheet-for-teachers.html

Will the REAL Librarians Please Stand Up

When jobs are on the line can the skills of inquiry leader, readers' advisor, resourceful collaborator, curator, promoter, event planner, independent learning expert, blended-learning educator, collection developer, acquisitions staff, indexer, evaluator, weeder, early-adopter, maker/designer, cross-pollinator, community and service-learning practitioner, etc. add value to the title of Librarian and therefore help increase the brand? Or...does sticking to a title like Librarian put people in jeopardy of being thought of as antiquated keeper of books. After all, this is what is portrayed in pop culture and sometimes reinforced by a few untrained, unwilling, or lazy bad apples right? It's hard when a school only has one and he/she fits the stereotype of someone who sits behind a desk and refers to resources as "my collection." If that's a librarian then yes, it's no surprise that the position may end up cut and replaced by more dynamic cheaper staffing with a glitzy title but little training. This has happened across the United States where we say we value literacy. Why? Is the position misunderstood? Are Librarians to busy or too humble to promote their work and the outcomes of teacher and student collaborations and achievements beyond postings and meetings with their own colleagues or beyond their schools or professional organizations? 

It baffles me that districts and schools would cut, let alone, not add more high-quality Librarians because: 

-A high-quality Librarian works with and knows every student and every teacher over time. The personal interactions go way beyond circulation numbers. 

-He/she has unique insight into each individual and understands their interests, their needs, and their skills because he/she has helped teach the students across subject areas and often knows what information and diversions the seek on an independent level through helping to find print, electronic, expert, and community resources.

-Today's Librarian has a multitude of skills and is open-minded and excited to develop and grow with new students, new knowledge, new understandings, new technology, and new strategies for how, when, why, where and what humans learn and teach. 

-Librarians are lucky; their approaches to teaching and learning are untethered by a textbook and a classroom roster with one set of students and curriculum. 

-Librarians are connected with a multitude of patrons and potential resources. 

-Their teaching and learning skill sets involve working in and knowing and supporting everyone in the school, and connecting and helping them make sense of, evaluate, organize and utilize resources, ideas, and communities at an individual and global level. 

-Opening doors to the world through ongoing inquiry develops, uncovers, and hopefully challenges subject-area knowledge by encouraging teachers and learners to venture beyond the day to day didactic curriculum, to question, to push, and in turn apply their learning to create, make, and develop new ideas, strategies, models, systems and/or products and solutions. 

So should high-quality Librarians move beyond or embrace the title? What do you think? What's in a name? 

(inspired by Adventures in Libraryland blog)

Add...Reading Room for Visually Impaired

http://www.slj.com/2016/03/diversity/a-new-reading-room-for-visually-impaired-kids-has-books-and-art/