[Critical Reflection Paper] CRP2 EDJH (Made 2024 Fall Semester)

Students’ funds of knowledge are as variable as students themselves, if not moreso, and as such should innately affect how you teach students on an extremely deep level. No lesson can be perfect for every student, every class, every period, every school, it’s just not possible, you have to make alterations, take into consideration what is best for each of those things. By understanding students’ funds of knowledge a teacher can find a plethora of ways to directly connect what they are teaching to the lives of their students. Further, by engaging in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy instead of forcing mainstream white middle-class culture on students and assuming they will respond to it, one can grow a deeper connection with their students and ensure that they leave their classroom feeling respected and educated and move forward with their lives knowing that who and what they are is accepted and wonderful.

I believe a fantastic way to get to know students is through discussion, through asking questions and responding to questions, through engaging students and encouraging them to share whilst sharing yourself. One must be careful not to push too far or overshare, but it is necessary to share some with your students, and they will only respond to you if you share with them and make them feel like you are a person just like them. By asking them about their favorite foods, music, shows, clothes, holidays, etc. a teacher can gleam a surprising amount of information, and moving beyond that and asking about hobbies, family activities, past experiences with certain relevant topics, etc. one can begin to gain an even deeper understanding of their students and what they can do to connect their class with them. When one discusses a historical figure, it can incredibly important to explain why they need to be taught about and understood, and if you connect that historical figure to the lives of your students they will go from being someone they don’t care about to someone who, for good or bad reasons, they are invested in learning about.

Metaphors and similes are some of my favorite things to use when teaching, I learn extremely well through comparison thanks to my neurodivergence, so that tends to be how I teach, and when you understand the funds of knowledge your students are working with, what they possess and what they lack, you can alter your metaphors and similes accordingly. If some of your students love baking, then perhaps the creation of the Constitution of the United States of America was a lot like baking a cake from scratch without a recipe. Further, if you know your students tend to come from a working-class and/or impoverished background, referring to things you might be familiar with from a middle or upper-class perspective could be alienating and fail to convey what you want to. Students may not have two parents at home, they might not have a bedroom all to themselves, they might not even want those things for a cultural or personal reason. If you speak without thinking and try to connect subjects to things familiar to you but not to your students you will inevitably cause problems for them.

Students will come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures and discovering those and weaving them into lessons will make them feel like they belong. One cannot simply appropriate Dia de los Muertos and throw up some sugar skull imagery and hope to make their students feel like they belong, they must learn about their students' cultures and share their own culture with them, engaging in a thoughtful exchange of ideas. One of the best ways to make students feel like they are seen and that their backgrounds are understood and taken into consideration is to engage in community based education. Finding ways to get your students involved in their local community, finding ways to connect what you are teaching to the things they are going through and doing on a daily basis, getting local figures involved in your classroom, all of these things will help students see the power of what you are teaching and understand how it applies to them. With community based education one will rarely hear the question “Why?” instead they will frequently hear the question “How?” and that is one of the best things a teacher could ever ask for.

In Mr. Earle’s classroom there are students who have disciplinary issues, who have wealths of academic knowledge, who know sports like the back of their hands, etc. but rarely does Mr. Earle ever engage with these things in his teaching, use them to his advantage. He speaks with the students on their level throughout his class, but he doesn’t use what he knows about them to engage them in their education. Sports metaphors might be trite, but when you have a football player in your classroom and you know your students aren’t uninterested in sports in general, you should take the chance to try to add a few in. Students who have disciplinary issues might actually be responsive to learning about rebellious and troubled historical figures, seeing themselves in those you talk about, so emphasizing the struggles of different figures and relating them to, of course generalized rather than specific, disciplinary issues students might face or troubles they might have at home or out of the classroom, could be extremely beneficial to those students.

It is only by understanding our students, their knowledge, their limits, their weaknesses, that we as teachers can excel in teaching them what they need to know to succeed. It is only by engaging with those things that we can connect to our students on a level that will allow them to succeed. It is only by using those things that we can connect students to what they are learning and get them involved in their own education. Students are the center of the classroom, and what is at the center of our students is just as important as they themselves are.