Finish!

Resume Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9: Interpretations (Last Chapter)

• Professionalism and Community 

Students in American urban classrooms do not have a choice—they must meet the requirements of modern life or be resigned to poverty, even though their families may represent a myriad of traditional cultures offering alternatives and lessons for modern life. The negotiation of a balance between the competing loyalties of traditional kinship and urban America takes place in schoolrooms and teachers need every multicultural insight available as they conduct that process. Teachers, however, are not simply instruments of modernization and professional expertise. Teachers have loyalties to identities and images from traditional cultures and local communities embodied in one or many generations of their kinfolk. The task of professional transformation must respect and address these loyalties in order to provide the optimum instruction for low-income, immigrant, and non-White students (Zeichner and Hoeft, 1996).

• Image and Respect: The Choice to Teach 

Teaching as a profession lacks color. Teachers, as professionals and regardless of their race, gender, class, or any cultural identity, allegedly possess a general or universal expertise that can be applied to any student within the well-managed world of the school building. To suggest that teaching might have color and that racial or other identities could be relevant in the recruitment and effectiveness of teachers is to call into question the very definition of a profession. In the world of urban school teaching in the United States, race and racism are endemic. Schooling is conducted within a social context that embodies racial assumptions and practices on an everyday basis and that rests on a history of racism. If we are to understand the ‘color of teaching,’ we must come to terms with the role of racial identity in the selection, recruitment, and retention of the teachers desperately needed for the students of urban America in all of their cultural diversity, economic deprivation, and subjugation to the racial myths ingrained in American life.

Note: 

Thank you for all the readers who have read my blog :)

I'm sorry if i have a lot of mistakes, because i'm still a students that need more knowledge.

Resume Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8: Recommendations for Recruiting Students of Color into the Profession 

As we look at recommendations for increasing the actual numbers of minority youth choosing careers in teaching, we must identify solutions for all aspects of the problems facing students of color as they move through schooling and compete for careers. After all, professional careers are going to continue to be available only on a competitive basis. The skills needed for eventual success must be acquired early in their educational lives, along with the motivation to face the often inhospitable confines of college and graduate study. Clearly, we need to increase the levels of achievement for African American, Latino, and Native American students beginning in the early grades and continuing through college (Vegas, et al., 1998). We also need, however, to seek ways to make the teaching profession attractive to students of color so that all groups are eventually more represented in future classrooms.

There are several recommendations for recruiting students of color into the profession:

1. Improve school education 

2. Improve the image of teachers 

3. Encourage students 

4. Involve parents

5. Stress the importance of education 

6. Provide early teaching-like experiences and bring in role models 

7. Recruit in the community 

8. Enhance financial aid options 

9. Increase salary of teachers 

Resume Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7: Reforming Teacher Education

• Criticism of Teacher Education Programs 

According to the majority of informants, traditional methods of training teachers are no longer adequate for the needs of today’s children. Teacher education programs and their faculties were heavily criticized for a lack of awareness of, and detachment from, public schools. Many informants considered their training in colleges of education as a waste of time; some even saw it as detrimental. A recurring criticism of teacher education programs was that they were too theoretical and did not relate to the reality of the classrooms. The typical program of a year of theory prior to a few weeks of student teaching was seen as a farce. 

• Recommendations for Changes in Teacher Education

Over half of the informants recommended that the major change needed in teacher education programs was to involve students in a variety of school and community settings early in their undergraduate experience. Other suggestions included: 

1. Involve parents

2. Prepare teachers to work with diversity

3. Prepare educators to train teachers

4. Increase the range of pedagogical skills to work with diverse student populations

5. Increase understanding of the social, economic, and political realities of the profession

6. Require seminar-style lab classes

7. Increase access to and support in college. 

Resume Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6: On Race-matched Teaching

The basic belief underlying race-based role modeling is that ‘Minority teachers can relate better to minority children.’ (20/AFm) If we follow this contention, there is an even greater urgency to increase the number of teachers of color. Such an assumption, however, leaves us with numerous questions: Do children learn better from people most like themselves? If so, should Latino teachers be expected to teach only Latino children? Are African American teachers less able to teach European American kids? Do we select and train teachers differently depending on the clientele? Do students of one skin color learn differently from students with another color within the meanings of color provided by a culture? Or are there other issues involved that at times can override coloration? According to the teachers of color interviewed, socioeconomic status and exposure to inner-city kids deeply inform teacher attitudes as to whom they want to teach and how they teach. The educational and professional background of family, type of schooling received, immigrant status, time in country, regionalism, and even age further complicate the shaping of these teacher attitudes. 

Resume Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5: Asian American Teachers

• Immigration and a New History for Asian Americans

As one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in America, Asian Americans provide a unique challenge to our understanding of diversity. The influx of Asian immigrants since 1965 has led many urban schools to reconsider stereotypes not only of the so-called ‘model minority’ Asian American but also of who in fact makes up the socially constructed and ill-conceived term ‘Asian’ (Hartman and Askounia, 1989; Nakanishi and Nishida, 1995).

• The Image of Teaching and Asian American Teachers

The Asian American viewpoint, and this is defined here by interviews with teachers of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Pilipino and Vietnamese backgrounds, was frequently explained in terms of cultural background. Traditionally, the status of teachers in East Asia has been very high (Baruth and Manning, 1992; S.J.Lee, 1994; Y.Lee, 1991). Based primarily on Confucian values that dictate respect for relationships and hierarchy, Asian cultures have placed teachers in the educated, if not ruling, elite (Smith, 1994). Although this is gradually being eroded by materialist influences that tie status to accumulated wealth (Goodman, 1990), the teachers interviewed had been raised under the more traditional system. 

• Asian American Resistance to Teaching as a Career 

As of 1994, Asian American teachers constituted less than two percent of all K-12 teachers with a mean of only eight Asian Americans each enrolled in pre-service teacher education programs in the United States (AACTE, 1994). Low involvement in teacher preparation is not because of any lack of success in education generally.  Given that Asian Americans, in the aggregate, enjoy relatively high academic success through to the level of graduate study, reasons for their lack of involvement in teacher education must be found that vary from the reasons for other minority groups whose low college attendance and graduation levels provide the most obvious explanation for lack of participation in the teaching profession. 

• The Problematic Issue of High Standards Set by Chinese Traditions of Schooling 

So what is the source of these attitudes that apparently cause the hesitancy toward, if not resistance to, teaching as a career? Ironically, the answer seemed to reside in Chinese culture itself, more specifically in the high regard for teaching and the standards set by Chinese culture for teachers. As one informant said: ‘You have to think of yourself as a great person to be a teacher.’ (188/ASf) In Japanese, the term erai hito explains this concept. This was not simply hesitancy on the part of youth who have not had adequate experience educating others; rather, informants claimed that the title of teacher had to be reserved for those who neared perfection. ‘If there are ten qualities that a teacher needs and Chinese people do not meet all ten of those qualities, they will consider themselves not qualified to be a teacher’ (156/ASf) or ‘Young Asian people do not see themselves as good enough to be a teacher’ (182/ASm) were comments sprinkled throughout the interviews. To tell others that you were interested in becoming a teacher verged on arrogance, not only because of the assumption that you were qualified beyond reproach, but also that you had the audacity to assume that you could teach other people’s children to a standard that would be acceptable to Asian parents. 

Resume Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4: Native American Teachers

• Native Americans and Their Struggle to Survive Schools 

Native Americans have a long tradition of educating their own children whereby many ‘teachers’ participate in the training (Marashio, 1982). Elders serve as guides for the younger members of the tribe. Children watch, listen, and follow long before they act. Ironically, for many Native peoples it is not even a question of choosing between acquiring the skills, knowledge, and lifestyle of mainstream middle-class society or retaining one’s cultural identity and traditions. Native peoples struggle to understand how they can gain self-sufficiency, free of dependence on the ‘outside’ world of federal agencies, which are often flawed with bureaucratic and political agendas, a dependence paradoxically created as a legacy from federally provided government schooling guaranteed by treaty.  

• Native Americans: The Image of Teaching and Respect for the Profession  

Part of the difficulty in establishing a positive image of teaching or imagining oneself in the profession of educating others is that much of what is taught can seem irrelevant to the needs of traditional and/or working-class families (Stiegelbauer, 1992). For Native people, negative images of schooling have been passed down for generations. Even though students themselves may not have gone through boarding schools, young people have heard the stories and internalized the messages.

• Native Americans Address the Low Participation of Indian Students in Teaching

Native American informants were more cautious in identifying the reasons for low participation of their people in the field of teaching. For many Native youth, the prospects of continuing on to college in order to acquire a teaching credential were thwarted not only by their family’s traditional views but more significantly by poor academic preparation and, hence, low graduation rates from high school and college (Wilds and Wilson, 1998).