Promising Practices

My day started off by having to get up unusually early and making myself presentable for the Promising Practices conference. When arriving to Donovan Dining Center there was many people already there but getting my folder was easy and took no time.  When I sat down and looked through my folder I was disappointed at first that I had not been placed in sessions that I had chosen but after reading about them I thought it could still be a good and fun experience.

My first session was Students with Special Needs: What You See Isn’t Always What You Get with Heather Dubrule.  In the Promising Practices pamphlet it says that this session is about “addressing common misconceptions of students with disabilities. Participants will use cooperative and hands-on activities to gain a greater understanding of students with special learning needs and discover how to meet these needs in an inclusive classroom.” I thought that with this description that the session would be very helpful since I hope to become a special educator, but I felt as though the session was not like the description. The session talked about what you can do to help a child with special needs in your classroom but everything was for singling that child out and what was not answered was how would you single out every student if they all needed special help?

One of the first activities we did was we had a worksheet and there were pictures on the screen from the projector and we had to match the pictures with the descriptions on the worksheets of 8 children. The descriptions ranged from “I have Rett Syndrome, a form of Autism that will eventually cause me to lose the ability to speak and walk,” to “I am bipolar, and need the assistance of my 1:1 aide to make it through my school day,” to “My mom is in prison and I live with my grandma- I have a hard time focusing in school because I’m worried about my mom.”  When reading these descriptions I just stared blankly at the paper and the pictures and thought to myself how is it possible to match these descriptions with the pictures? The pictures were not of like a child with a crutch and the description saying a child sprained their ankle, the descriptions and pictures were of things that were not possible to match together. I left my worksheet blank because there was no way I could write down answers. The instructor gave the answers to some of the pictures, only the ones where the description was of a disability and she said that you could not tell that the child had a disability which was very true. I thought this was important though because unless you were told someone had a disability then the chances of you not knowing that they had a disability are high.

We then did an activity which related to Lisa Delpit’s article, The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children. In the activity we had to decode a paragraph in a certain amount of time. When the instructor said time was up I had only decoded a few sentences. She then said imagine if how the paragraph was when we were trying to decode it always how we saw it. This reminded me of Delpit because it is like the code of power and the child who reads the passage and have to decode it will be left behind and confused unlike the child that is able to read the passage fine and in the right amount of time. This session also reminded me of Delpit because we talked about “talking with kids” and understand the kids need or how to explain it to them. What the instructor was saying what we need to do was be explicit with the student and that being explicit might be one of the most important things to do with a child with special needs. I thought this was the most important piece of information that I had learned from my first session.

After my first session I went back to Donovan and waited to head onto my second session. Although I did get useful information from my first session, I was still left with many questions. This did not happen at my second session though which was Get Up Out of Your Seat! The importance of Teaching Concepts to Young Learners through Music and Movement with Michelle Nonis and Jessica Borges. I thought this session was very enjoyable. The instructors were two teachers from the Henry Barnard School and we were actually in Nonis’ classroom. They showed us videos from their classes and how they teach lessons with using music and movement. Researched has shown that movement and music has helped improve brain function and has helped teach concepts in the classroom. I thought this was very interesting. The teachers had different songs to help teach topics such as time, money and one about the body of an insect. The kids were able to get out of their seats and sing and dance which helped them memorize what they were singing about and by moving they were not bored and wanting to learn. The instructors showed us many songs that could be used in the classroom to help teach topics and I thought they were all very interesting.

After the second session I went back to Donovan where we ate lunch and prepared for the keynote speaker. The keynote speaker was Dr. Dennis Shirley who left me confused. I felt as though his speech, which was about the Mindful Teacher and Multicultural Education, was very long and I thought the points he was trying to make were confusing. At one point of his speech I thought he was done but then he seemed to start with another topic. He talked about how there is a hidden curriculum that teachers use but it is not the one that they are suppose to be using. I think if the curriculum that the teachers are suppose to use does not get the same outcome as their hidden curriculum that they use then I do not understand why the hidden curriculum is not what they are suppose to use. At the end of Dr. Shirley’s speech he said to know your vision which I thought was a good way to end his speech.

My overall experience at Promising Practice was a good one. Although it was a long day, I think the sessions were the right amount of time and I was not bored. I left the conference with newly learned information and was happy with my experience.