Ms. Monomial

Culturally relevant pedagogy involves teaching in a way that displays a cultural understanding and involvement.   Being able to accomplish this in your classroom involves a major time commitment to understanding and involving yourself in your student’s cultures.   I work to build my cultural understanding of my students by simply getting involved in school events and holding conversations with them, just getting to know them as people, not just as students.   As a white woman teaching primarily black males, I have some ground to cover.   I do that by being open and kind and genuinely interested in what my students are involved in.   I go to their games, watch their recommended TV shows, and listen to their favorite artist.   This also helps me to build a rapport with them and improve the classroom environment in general.   In my school, cultural relevant pedagogy is very important to the highest level of success.   In order ...

The growth mindset is a core value in my teaching and in my classroom.  I have worked to build my classroom up as a “happy place,” where negative attitudes and conflicts are not permitted.  When something like this does come up, I regularly will stop what I’m doing to address it and come to a solution.  In the entirety of this school year, I have not had a single fight in my classroom, administered a single detention, or removed a single student from class, something that very few other teachers in my school can say.  I am very proud of this.  The time that I dedicate to not only teaching students about my content, but conflict resolution, communication, and general tolerance has without a doubt improved my students as humans and as members of society.  I frequently use the growth mindset to reinforce that, as many students who get into trouble take it as an un-fixable issue with themselves.  They will get into an screaming match with someone and the...

I teach in an extremely urban Baltimore community.   This area is primarily low to low-middle class homes with significant irregularities in home and family life.   Student home life is vastly unstable with minimal to slight structure.   Many students are homeless, in group homes, or in foster care placements.   Students who live with biological family are generally single parent homes or a step mother/father situation.   The vast majority of the school population is African American, with another significant amount of Hispanic students as well.   There is an extremely small amount of Caucasian and Asian students in the school.   The Hispanic population in the school is almost entirely in the ESOL program, and a significant amount of these students are new to the country.   The school is categorized as an ESOL center due to the high concentration of English Language Learners.   The community and demographics of my class...