Terry: Terry is one of my students with a ton of real potential, but he lacks real motivation. Understanding how social class diversity affect students I know what Terry goes through is extremely hard on him and his education. Terry and his mom are homeless; they go from family member to family members. He believes that there is no real reason for him to try nor to open up to anyone. Terry believes that he will gone in a few weeks.
So I take upon myself to ask terry to stay after school with me one day. When terry comes in I sit down with him and ask him how his day had been and just get him comfortable. Then I start talking to him about his grades and test, I let him know that he is a very bright student but I don’t think he is trying …show more content…
Every time he walks by my students are up and out of their seats, they are talking, and moving around. He is has told me that he appreciates my progressive teaching approaches; but does not seem to want them happening. I know that my instructional strategies are right for me and my class so I continue to teach this way.
I end up setting up a meeting with the principal regarding my methods. He expresses concern for my students and fears that they will not be ready for upcoming standardized test. I inform him on my lesson plan of teaching different forms of diversity. Respecting diversity, learning diversity, and gender diversity. He is pleased with the lesson plan but still does not understand why the students are up and loud. So I start talking about the learning styles and that I believe when getting students up and moving it increases plasticity of IQ. When students are up and alert their brains are working much better at retaining information and more rapidly. I let him know that I am teaching to have students learn rather than recall information. I am having them explore all the levels of DOK. With having them up, moving, and talking I am giving them the final stage of understanding which is creating something to connect the lesson with.