Transforming Teacher Education Program

I really loved reading this article and I think this article should have been sent to the administrator of Neag School of Education who designed the school’s curriculum. I feel like I would have benefited much more by taking a multicultural class before doing by student teaching. I definitely agree with Ms. Moore theory that students need to have class to discover their biased opinion in order to increase multiculturalism and diversity in the classroom. The book club is a great example of student discussing their misconception and opinions on multiculturalism. This is especially an important issue for science teacher because it’s very difficult in integrate culture in the classroom on regular basis. When I was doing my student teaching I tried numerous ways to integrate culture into my curriculum such as reading NY times articles, emphasizing minority scientist and incorporating student daily life into class activities. However, I still find extremely difficult to incorporate culture into a subject which is mainly facts. I love biology because of its structure, complexity, and uncharted discoveries and I want all of students to have the same feeling about science. Overall I thought that the article was very good but I was disappointed that it didn’t have any concrete example of implementing a class activity dealing with diverse students.

This article also raises a major concern about the typical courses curriculum in order to become a teacher. As educator, we know that America is diversifying at very rapid pace. We are going to face many challenges ahead if we don’t change our education system. Teacher education program need to drastically change in order to balance the cultural change and attitude. Teacher need to be adequately prepared to understand and relate their content to meet diverse student backgrounds. At this institution we only had the opportunity to take multicultural classroom in our master year. Most of the students will graduate and teach students with only one or two classes in diversity and this is definitely not enough. We also need to take classes which deals with special need students and differentiating class material. Overall I agree with the author that we need to transform our teacher education programs.

First Days of English Language Learner Student

Over the weekend I went to New Jersey to visit my distant family who has just arrived from India. I was talking to one my cousin who is attending Edison High School, NJ about her experience in the high school. I was really surprised to find to that she actually skipped school after going there for two days. My cousin is in the twelfth grade and she is semi proficient in English. She was enrolled in the English medium speaking school and she lived in Bombay which is one of the biggest city in India. In Bombay, predominantly of the people are bilingual and are exposed to many of the western traditions. She told me that after the first day she got lost in the school system. There was no one there to show her around and she kept on arriving late to classes. She said that she got frustrated and angry that she wasn’t able to locate her classes that she just bailed out of school. I asked her “why didn’t you ask for help?” She said that after the bell all the teachers had closed their door. She said she couldn’t find anyone to help her and I am sure that she must have felt really nervous about just wondering in the hallways. I told her that she shouldn’t skip classes anymore and that she could get into big trouble. In India the student’s were allowed to leave school in High School without severe consequences. She didn’t know that she could get in trouble if she left school. I thought this was very absurd and weird that the school didn’t provide adequate help and support to a foreign student who has just arrived to this country. This raises lot of questions in my mind. What are the support systems of incoming EL Learner? Who is responsible for helping the EL learner to adjust to the new environment? Who checks up on the progress of the EL learner? Does this occur in all school or just in urban schools? Who is responsible for familiarizing the students to the high school environment and rules? We have read a lot about the challenging facing teaching the EL learner but we have never shed a light on the support system. Most of these students arrive to the high school with very little background and language skills. How can we just leave them stranded? How can we expect EL learner to make progress in the classroom if we can’t adequately support and accommodate them to the transition of American school system?


I agree with the article “What’s language got to do with it?....” that there is a didactic tension that exist between teaching students and how student perform science in the classroom. This problem is reoccurring theme not just in EL learner but non EL learner as well. During my student teaching I realized that it is very hard to find a good science lab which incorporates the content as well as student surroundings. Most of the experiments are old and come from lab manuals which were written in the 80’s. Most of the labs have very little incorporation of technology and student’s surrounding. The labs are very boring and irrelevant to the students. We need to incorporate and design more labs which assimilate student’s culture and the science content. It is very hard to develop labs that meet these criteria because most of the labs don’t take into account culture diversity emerging in the school system. I definitely agree with the authors when they state that students comprehend more when they are given opportunity to perform science. But I wonder do the currents labs take in to account student diversity and its relationship to the content? I believe that most of the labs need to be revised and refined so that they meet the student culture and content. Students learn the most when they are motivated to do solve a problem which forces them to think critically. We need to throw way labs which focuses on following set of procedure without taking consideration into students everyday life.