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1. I chose the American Women Exhibit. I read about amazing women who made significant contributions to different areas in our history. The contributions ranged from feminism to style, motherhood to leadership and glamour to athleticism. Women are powerful and have shaped our American History. The value of using primary sources is that they are the original document that all secondary sources come from. They give you the first look at the topic they represent.
2.The three areas I feel fit my teaching style are 1)Engage school staff in discussions and activities that offer an opportunity to explore attitudes, beliefs, and values related to cultural diversity and cultural competence. 2)Gather and organize resource materials related to culturally diverse groups for use by school staff. 3)Network with parent, family, minority community, and faith-based organizations concerned with the needs of diverse students. Solicit their involvement and input in the design and implementation of initiatives for culturally, linguistically, racially, and ethnically diverse groups. The reason I picked these three areas is because I always feel strongly about gathering information about a topic, in this instance cultural diversity, so one can be more informed. I feel that resources come in many forms including articles, books, people and organizations and it's important to tap all of those resources. I also feel that it is important to encourage others to gather information and have discussions amongst each other to come up with action plans to promote and support cultural diversity.
3. I chose a brief biography about Neil Armstrong that was provided by NASA. It told of his Personal Data, Education, Special Honors, Experience and NASA Experience. This link was for reading levels 3-6. I selected it because my son, whose in 3rd recently did a book report on Neil Armstrong and has had a real passion for space and astronomy this year.
4. I used the puzzle makers section. I think this is a really cool link. I have always loved word and number games and feel that it is an important and fun part of education. Many adults still find enjoyment and challenge in doing the weekly crossword puzzle, wordsearch or Sudoku. This website provided a simple way to tailor puzzles towards whatever topic or level you are working with. I would definitely use this section to make learning fun, but challenging.
5. I found the topic of Multiple Intelligences fascinating. I knew that people learned in different ways. I've witnessed it in my own children, but I never knew how many different intelligences existed. It is extremely important to investigate these differences and understand how to best teach to these differences. In the past the accepted way of learning has been in line with High Linguistic, Logical- Mathematical, and Intrapersonal Intelligence learners, leaving out several other types of learners. It's wonderful that educators are looking at the less traditional intelligences and starting to teach to those intelligences. I think we could start to see a lot less frustrated students, as well as teachers and parents.
6. I chose a lesson plan where students create an Identity Poster explaining who they are and information about names, heritage and family history. This helps students to understand each other better and hopefully lessens the amount of teasing and name-calling that goes on. I would use this as a beginning of the year lesson, in order to set the stage for what is not tolerated, as well as a way for students to get to know each other.
7. All of the questions in the EdChange Equity & Diversity Awareness Quiz were enlightening. I was surprised about most of them. The two I found most interesting were the ones about how much the annual earnings of the average full-time U.S. worker is roughly equal to the daily earnings of the average CEO in the U.S. and how even though crack cocaine (largely used by lower income people) and powder cocaine (largely used by wealthier people) have the same amount of the drug per gram, the amount of the drug required to get a sentence of a mandatory of 5 years in prison is hugely different - 5 grams for crack cocaine and 500 grams for powder cocaine. I think these standards are very unfair. Although I do believe people deserve higher wages based on education, job responsibilities, time in position, I don't believe there should be such a huge gap in the amount the average full-time worker makes and a CEO. I also think it's discriminatory to have different sentences for basically the same crime. The law seems to definitely lean in favor of wealthier people, who can also afford better attorneys and less often will end up serving those sentences anyway.
8. Netiquette score = 80%. It is important to teach students proper netiquette because they need to know the appropriate ways to function in a cyber community. They need to understand that just because it is a virtual world, that they still have responsibility to be upstanding citizens in that world.^5