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How Affinity Groups Can Help With Bipoc Teacher Support, Retention, And Growth
Get PDFOur classrooms have become increasingly diverse. Teachers of Color (TOC) make up about 20% of U.S. public school teachers while Students of Color represent about 52% of public school students. It becomes difficult to model affirmative acknowledgement of diversity in the classroom when most of the adults fit into the demographics of white, cisgender, middle class, and female. To help all students, but especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students, we must first address the importance of Teachers of Color and the crucial need to support and retain them through having BIPOC affinity groups. This brings about the question: How do affinity groups support BIPOC staff and how can an affinity group resource support future groups? Topics explored in the review of literature include the history of Teachers of Color in the U.S., the challenges TOC face, the benefits of having TOC, how affinity groups support TOC, and examples of affinity groups for TOC. The website designed for this project serves as a resource guide that provides the topics, context, and set up for BIPOC affinity groups for school districts to utilize for their BIPOC staff, particularly Teachers of Color (TOC). While there has been a recent push to hire more TOC to diversify the teaching field, these efforts are rarely accompanied by shifts needed in schools to train and support TOC’s specific needs. Affinity groups meet these needs and serve as a powerful tool to retain TOC
How Music can be Integrated Into Life Science Teaching in a way That Enhances Scientific and Musical Learning in Middle School
Get PDFResearch has shown that students who learn interdisciplinary content lessons in school have a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the world they are entering. This paper, and the resultant project, focus on the interconnectedness of science and the arts, eventually ecology and music, in order to teach students both scientific and musical concepts. The project was created using backwards design, in order to ensure students have long term learning outcomes that center both science and music. Students first experience the scientific process and reflect on the similarities between scientific inquiry and artistic processes. Students then explore ecosystems and music side by side in order to track change over time, follow energy and flow, and eventually compare variations of both ecosystem and music side by side. This project is intended to be carried out at an urban school in Minnesota, which already has a focus on the arts. It will reach about 130 seventh grade students each year once implemented
Applying Multiple Intelligences Theory in ESL/EFL Classrooms
Get PDFThe purpose of this project was to create a unit on activities that were inspired by multiple intelligences theory to help English Learners (ELs) develop their language proficiency. The questions explored in this capstone project were: How can language learners develop their multiple intelligences to become proficient language learners through classroom activities? What are ways to create a curriculum that includes both the traditional foundations of language teaching and multiple intelligences theory? I learned English as a foreign language through rote learning. During my teaching experience, I realized that not all ELs learn English the same way and they have different preferences when it comes to learning a new language. Therefore, I chose this topic to investigate more creative and engaging ways of teaching English. Some ELs are artistic, some are verbal, and the others are more visual. The setting is a sheltered English language classroom, where the focus is on English for intermediate level learners. The project was influenced by literature on EL’s instructional program models, EL’s language skills development, and multiple intelligences in education. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory was the framework that was used to design unit activities of this project. The unit’s four lessons are based on a short story called “Brother in Hope” with a theme of war and immigration that lines with social studies standards. The main objective of the lessons is the understanding and using of different language features of the past tense verbs, cause-and-effect, adverbial clauses of time, and compare-and-contrast through multiple intelligences inspired activities which would expand their various intelligences in the process as well as expanding the four domains of language learning skills. Reviewing literature on ELs’ learning and their challenges helped me in developing four engaging lessons that will support their needs in a creative way. My research on multiple intelligence theory and its implications in education broaden my view on a new way of creating lessons that go beyond the traditional ways of teaching a new language. Creating this unit helped me understand how to support ELs in developing their language skills through a new framework
Growing Environmentally Literate Youth
Get PDFResearch has demonstrated that the importance of producing environmentally literate youth is becoming a priority around the world Producing environmentally literate youth through E-STEM Garden-based learning practices will not only allow our students to become environmentally literate but also capable, aware, citizens with the 21st Century skills necessary to tackle today and tomorrow’s problems. The curriculum designed for this project focuses on using garden-based STEM practices to increase young students\u27 environmental literacy. The project involved using the Next Generation Science standards, the learning goals of the proposed Michigan Environmental Literacy Plan, as well as the American Society for Engineering Education’s Habits of Mind. The curriculum was designed to be used in a formal, public school, educational setting in a second-grade STEM-specific classroom, but is adaptable to be used in a general education lower elementary classroom with the overall goal of increasing the environmental literacy of students
How Using Multidisciplinary Approaches To Mainstream Education Can Increase Diversity In Environmental Education And Improve Students’ Environmental Literacy
Get PDFFor there to be solutions to environmental issues people of diverse perspectives need to be able to critically think and collaborate together to work through possible solutions. Historically, environmental education has been missing many voices from the BIPOC communities in finding creative solutions to environmental issues. This Capstone Project had the driving question of, Can increasing diversity in environmental education improve students\u27 environmental literacy? The literature reviewed showed that environmental education cannot be a stand alone curriculum. Instead, it needs to be a multidisciplinary approach to the curriculum that allows students to critically think about real world issues that society is facing. Besides making environmental education a multidisciplinary curriculum there needs to be a connection to multicultural education at the same time. If students see professionals like them participating in environmental education activities they are more likely to participate. Before students can participate in multicultural, multidisciplinary environmental education teachers need to be able to design effective, meaningful and constructive curriculum to support the needs of their students. This Capstone Project created three professional development opportunities for teachers to reflect on their own social justice understanding, time to create meaningful curriculum that connects environmental concepts to their daily lessons, and a time for educators to share their findings and reflect on the environmental education focus lesson being taught. Everyone has a connection with nature, but in order for environmental issues to be solved diverse perspectives need to be applied and communities need an opportunity to have a strong environmentally literate society
Citizen Science As Experiential Education In The Modern Classroom
Get PDFSecondary education has grown increasingly dependent on delivering instruction and materials via mobile devices and computers in the 21st century. Research has long shown the effectiveness of “student-centered”, experiential and “place based” learning in the classroom. Citizen science initiatives have been demonstrated to be meaningful ways to teach the nature - and practice - of scientific inquiry. This paper explores the current trends in secondary science education in light of recent societal transformations and investigates the body of literature regarding environmental, outdoor and experiential education. The project then proposes a solution to integrate experiential, citizen science into a modern, digital classroom in the form of a “Phenology Teaching Handbook”, equipped with lesson plans, instructional methods and guidance for implementing the program into their classroom
Midwestern Communities’ Reaction to the 1940s and 1950s Polio Epidemics
Get PDFThe 1940s and 50s’ polio epidemics resulted in the illness, death, and paralysis of thousands of children throughout the United States. Unlike other illnesses spread by poor sanitation which usually affected the lower classes, polio cases were far more prevalent among the middle class. Middle class neighborhoods’ conditions did not allow for natural immunity in early childhood. Prior research explored the urban and suburban middle class families in highly infected states like New York. However, the experiences of Midwesterners were largely ignored. In crowded city neighborhoods, polio could spread rapidly in a short period of time and then die down as people became immune through exposure, while sparsely populated rural areas faced unpredictable epidemics. The Midwest’s periodic outbreaks resulted in local restrictions to protect the at-risk youth from the deadly virus. Through interviews with residents from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Dakota, who lived during the polio epidemics, alongside the study of newspapers from the interviewees’ towns, as well as public health reports, this study examined these Midwesterners’ perception of polio and the ways media and government alerted them to the danger. Findings indicate that urban and rural people reacted differently to the epidemics. In cities, the community enacted preventive measures, while in small towns, responsibility for safety was an individual choice. In times of epidemics, this knowledge might assist in better direct communication with the diverse populations of the U.S
Assessment of Lithic Reduction Methods
Get PDFThe way lithic artifacts are analyzed is critical to understand human behavior. How lithic attributes are measured can add important context to archaeological sites and experimental lithic collections. By re-evaluating the way we analyze lithic reduction strategies and measure lithic attributes, we can come to a conclusion as to how they compare. In the project that will be described, nine lithic experiments created by expert flintknapper, Dan Wendt, will be measured and analyzed in accordance with the Hamline University Archaeology Lab Debitage Analysis Protocol. Assessing the data collected from these nine experimental collections allowed me and my fellow researcher, Eva Larson (2022), to answer important questions related to middle-range theory, the technical significance that certain attribute measurements bring, and potentially to be able to locate diagnostic differences between lithic reduction strategies used, based on the data collected
Incorporating Interactive Outdoor Learning Into Everyday Curricula
Get PDFAs the state of our environment continues to worsen, it is important now more than ever that students become environmentally literate. Defined as an individual’s knowledge, attitude towards, and engagement with the environment, environmental literacy works to decrease environmental issues (Artun & Özsevgec, 2018). Although high school environmental science courses act as an introduction to environmental issues, they often lack experiences within the environment itself. Seeking to answer the research question: how can educational materials be used to integrate interactive, outdoor experiences into everyday classroom curricula, a unit of curriculum was developed for high school students enrolled in environmental science. Incorporating educational pedagogies such as place-based education, and developmentally appropriate practice, this curriculum uses Wiggins and McTighe’s theory of backwards research design to better connect students to their environment
Utilizing Experiential Education in Nature-Based Settings to Impact Pro-Environmental Behaviors
Get PDFSpending time in nature can have many effects on a person. I wanted to find out if one of these effects was a change in behavior regarding sustainable actions and mindsets. The research question posed for this project is: How does experiential education in a nature based setting impact pro-environmental behaviors? After researching many different forms of outdoor education and frameworks widely used in education, I decided my project would consist of an interactive activity booklet meant to be taken to a park or natural space along the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities, or the surrounding areas. I wanted this booklet to enhance the visitors\u27 experience while creating a connection to the land. It was important to me to attempt to bridge the gap between the city elements and natural elements of the Twin Cities, in order to inform the community that they have wild lands right in their backyards. Connecting people, especially youth, with their local environment in an engaging way is an important and necessary step to creating pro-environmental behaviors in future generations. The goal of this project is to teach the public about the environment in their community in a thought provoking, engaging manner, bring awareness to the participants’ impact on the environment, and provide information on how to act pro-environmentally in order to preserve and protect the participants’ local environment