The Importance Of Teacherly Responsive Teaching

When I was first presented this task of interviewing another educator, I was apprehensive because the concepts that are being addressed in the prompts are so important to a teacher’s personal teaching philosophy. These prompts almost appeared to be questions that one might hear at a job interview for a teaching position. I did not at first want to subject a colleague to these questions, as they require so much deeper though and inquiry from the teacher. That is why I first answered the questions myself. I feel that the responses to these questions are the center for a teacher’s approach to culturally responsive teaching.
As an English Language Learner educator, I felt that these were questions that I had not had the time to specifically address …show more content…
He wants to provide enjoyable and entertaining activities to bring parents into the school that is not entirely educational. Before I read his response, I answered this question myself and found that this question was difficult because I was seeing myself as a realist and an optimist. I was thinking about the regular communication that I hope to develop with my students’ parents throughout the year. I feel that I am similar with my beliefs to Rick Lavoie and his article entitled, “The Teacher 's Role in Home/School Communication: Everybody Wins”. He highlights the importance of the ease of the relationship that is established between a parent and the educator when there is an open-dialogue between them. He also discusses the use of a bi-weekly newsletter as I discuss in my response with the audio or video newsletter on the class’s website. On the other hand, I did not consider what the school can do to foster the school-family connections as Educator A did in his response. His activities seem to be very pragmatic in that he hopes to establish a social relationship with parents where it is organized, diversified, and practical based on student interests. This follows the description of a typical pragmatic curriculum as seen in Philosophical Foundations of …show more content…
The question, “What assets and challenges do diverse learners bring to the classroom?” was the response that that I most looked forward to reading from my colleague because of how I share several student with him throughout the year. I was looking forward to seeing his perspective on what he felt the challenges were and was not surprised by his response. In actuality, I was not surprised by any of his response, as we are very similar with our perspectives towards diverse learning. We both understand the time and effort towards planning for diverse learners and the effort it takes to create and implement new strategies that may be a hit or miss depending on the class and the student’s abilities. However, we also agree on how diverse learner bring so much more into the classroom based on their own experiences and insights. I did appreciate the point where he discusses that an asset of having diverse learners in our class is the addition of the challenge for planning for these students. These learners provide educators to think outside of the box and engage with colleagues in order to create the best learning environment and situations for these wonderful students. To sum up, I was not surprised by Educator A’s responses as we are both open and welcome to the opportunities and the challenges of teaching