Wed+1-11

What questions do you have about languages and cultures in your future classroom?

**Guiding Questions:** What questions do you have languages and cultures in your future classroom?  What is culture?

**Before Class:**
====1.) Go to [|www.tolerance.org/tdsi/], join, and log-in. ==== ====Go to Learning Resources and watch a couple of videos. ====

2.) Read the following articles.


4.) Read every word of the syllabus and make sure you understand it.

During Class:
1.) Read the following quote:

Defining culture in ways that foreground deficiency or inadequacy in cultural communities

attributes a kind of uni-dimensionality and pathology to entire groups and makes culture a

blanket term that erases existing variance and complexity in individuals and their communities.

Consider how metaphors such as the culture of poverty, cultural deprivation, cultural

mismatch, cultural difference, and cultural dissonance are used to explain a deep-seated problem

most often attributed to the non-dominant communities themselves. Culture here

invokes a persistent, unchanging, and generalizable deficit in the community in question.

And, by leaching out heterogeneity and complexity, richer and more dynamic notions of culture

that would be more adequate to explain an individual or community’s history, practices,

and repertoires are replaced with

• rigid, narrow, and unitary views of culture;

• a kind of universality that is comprised largely of all that is negative; and

• a one-dimensional and pathological lens through which we view cultural communities. (Gutierrez, 2006, p. 44)

2.) Watch the video. What do you see Starkey doing? What did he mean that "white people had become black?"

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3.) Watch Kris Gutierrez’s interviews on teaching tolerance.org. []

Brainstorm and record your thoughts on what culture means.

4.) Read the following quote. Who is the they in "they are tactile?" What is Gutierrez critiquing about this statement?

Addressing learning styles as traits also seems to be a common way to prepare teachers to make the link to diversity (Guild,1994; Matthews, 1991). Clearly, teaching to a difference that can be labeled (e.g., learning modalities) sounds appealing toteachers who have limited resources, support, or training to meet the challenges of new student populations. An observation by one high school English as a second language teacher illustrates the application of a common perception reported in our studies of English-language learners:

I think it’s also very important to include. . . multimedia techniques because we have a group now in school that is very diverse in their learning strategies. You know most are visual language learners, so if you give them something they can see or touch, they are tactile. That gets to them; they can understand that.

Create a T-Chart that contrasts culture and repertoires of practice. Include the problems that Gutierrez describes.

5.) What questions do you have left from the readings? What other questions do you want answered about languages and cultures in your classroom?

6.) Reflection for the week. Start your journaling now. Remember that this will be turned in eventually. You can use this question as a starting point or summarize your thoughts from the readings and today.

What does it mean to take a cultural-historical perspective to teaching and learning?