Adriana's FNED 546 Notebook: Thoughts & Takeaways

Author: Christine E. Sleeter Text: "The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies" Reflection Map showing the routes of the Trail of Tears, highlighting the forced relocation of Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, and Seminole nations to present-day Oklahoma. Something I've been thinking about since reading Sleeter's piece is how Indigenous history was presented in my high school state history course. Oklahoma has deep ties to Indigenous nations, and the subject was approached from a very limited perspective. Sleeter argues that ethnic studies improves student learning and engagement because it centers histories that are usually left out, validates students' identities, and teaches critical thinking about systems of power. Curriculum is never neutral; the content schools choose to teach shows whose knowledge counts. Growing up in Oklahoma, the Trail of Tears was treated as a one-time tragic event of the past. In ...

 Author and Text Author: Shannon Renkly & Katherine Bertolini Text: “Shifting the Paradigm from Deficit Oriented Schools to Asset Based Models: Why Leaders Need to Promote an Asset Orientation in our Schools REFLECTION I’ve resonated and connected to this reading the most out of all the articles we’ve seen this semester.The overwhelming majority of my work experience has been as a nonprofit community partner or an experiential educator. My role allowed me to meet and connect with hundreds of students, and I enjoyed bringing a different perspective to the classroom. I would affectionately call what I did as ‘guest starring’ in a class when I’d come share a guest lesson, lead a field trip, or engage with students in an after school program. So what does it mean to ‘guest star’ with a class? I would say there are 4 main rules/guidelines: No grading. Showing up and genuinely participating is what counts! No long-term discipline. My job is to come in and share m...

Author and Text Author: Jean Anyon Text: What “Counts” as Educational Policy? Notes Toward a New Paradigm Reflection This reading did not offer many ideas that felt new to me.  As someone who's experienced poverty as a child and worked with hundreds of students and teachers in the K-12 system as a non-profit educator, Anyon's claim that educational outcomes are shaped by economic and social policy as much as by the work done in schools was a familiar sentiment.  While I agreed with most of her analysis, I also found myself frustrated by how unrealistic her proposed shift in think feels in terms of what can actually be done to improve conditions for students in the near future. Infographic showing how poverty influences school performance, illustrating that schools in low-income communities often have lower achievement but can still foster significant growth -- and highlighting how traditional evaluation metrics can unfairly penalize them. I grew up believing that if I g...

  Author and Text Author: Sal Khan Text: The Broken Model ARGUMENT In a world that's constantly changing, why do some systems stay the same?  Sal Khan argues that the American education system hasn't kept up and is holding today's learners back.  As I read his piece, I kept thinking in evolutionary terms : just as traits persist in species because they were once useful, many educational practices survive not because they work today, but because they once did.  QUESTIONING CUSTOMS In the chapter Questioning Customs , Khan urges us to question why so many educational practices have persisted: is it tradition or do they actually work? Like evolutionary traits, these practices survive not because they're still useful, but because they once served a purpose in a different context.  Khan observes that the education system is incredibly stubborn, holding onto practices even when they no longer serve students.  Like an organism clinging to outdated traits, schools...