Week 10

I thought tonight’s class was very helpful, insightful, and beneficial to elementary social studies instruction. Reviewing the list of stereotypical/bias books that are used in the classroom setting was incredibly eye-opening for me. While I know that these gender, cultural, and racial stereotypes exist in our past and current literature, the topography of those issues weren’t as obvious to me as they were tonight. Demonstrating tokenism in literature was helpful in recognizing those pieces, even if subtle. For me, that brings up the larger issue  about teaching to the difficult subject areas in elementary in a safe and appropriate way. There are so many pieces to consider to ensure that you are able to teach about subjects such as slavery and the Native American’s without bias or stereotypes included in your content. I wonder, are the books that we looked at on the website placed on a ban list for classroom literature, or was this just a representation of books that teachers are using in their own lessons? Also, was Happy Birthday, Mr. President removed from just Scholastic or pulled from shelves altogether? I would love a curated list of books without these bias/stereotypes to keep in my toolbox for the future. If I am being honest, this practice left me feeling a sort of particular ignorance about my ability to immediately recognize the stereotypes or biases in literature without this guided activity. I am happy to have been given this experience to mold my decision-making moving forward.

I appreciated the lesson review, especially since we were able to look at assessment/instruction at the first-grade level. For me, this activity was beneficial in many ways and forced me to think outside of the box. I do think it was difficult to look at the lesson/assessment first and then work backwards to do the actual design but I was able to work through some of that using UBD strategies.