Humanizing and Teaching: A Challenge

         Lilia I. Bartolome’s article “Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy” recommends teachers to work on being more understanding with cultural differences between themselves and their over-looked students.  Teaching technique is important, yes, yet it needs to be supplemented with better understanding of kids who are from different backgrounds.   

         Bartolome writes that being an effective teacher includes the ability to have students connect new information with prior experiences.  The only way they will be able to access the material is to make personal connections to the material (much like us teachers reading this article for class!).  I’d come across this idea before, linking students’ interest to the learning at hand, although it had never occurred to me that you need to consider not only what pop culture they may connect to, but also the other factors Bartolome mentions.  In my experiences, race has not played a huge part in the schools I’ve taught at, but class has, and I was able to connect to the article through this difference found at the schools I’ve worked at.

         I haven’t noticed any teaching techniques that I’ve tried to use to modify towards kids from more working class backgrounds (compared to the white collar kids), although I did notice that I try to treat them a little differently when I interact with them when I’m not teaching them, like when we’re chatting about the weekend or what’s going on with their family.  I do try to reach out to those kids more on a mentoring level.  I should now extend that idea to my learning methods, something I hadn’t considered.

         The best way for me to compare the ideas behind this article is to compare the themes to a recent issue I had in one of my classes.  I’m currently teaching a unit on Sherlock Holmes in my Mystery Stories class.  Part of the curriculum calls for watching an episode of one of the several Sherlock Holmes TV series out there.  Last year, we watched one clip from the classic British series from the 1980s.  The kids were bored to tears, unable to connect to it, and I’ve been attempting to try to find something more interesting/connecting to them.  Luckily, the BBC has a much more modern series, and I’ve been able to pull from that.

         The new series is an improvement because it uses technology to enhance and update the series.  They still use the same standards found in the 1890s stories, yet they have reflected on the changed culture in order to keep it relevant.  Dr. Watson reports on Holmes’ adventures through his blog, and they use laptops, GPS, and camera phones to solve cases. 

         It’s similar to the idea that we need to discover ways to connect with kids from other backgrounds, always updating our methods, while sticking to our backbone methods.  Knowing what are good teaching methods is only one layer to being a good teacher.  You must be aware of how some of the information may be coming across to a few of the students in the room, even if they come from a background you aren’t familiar with, like the native Hawaiins who typically learned in their families through ‘talk story.’  If you are unfamiliar with their background, it would be good to learn from it, not only to be a good teacher, but a more well-rounded person.  Understanding the historical specificities of their culture and how the school and town have responded to it can be important to make them connection whatever you are trying to teach.  Teachers should constantly reflect on their ideas and methods, even if only a couple students are reached. 

         A great example of this idea reminded me of an article I read about a teacher in a tough, Katrina-destroyedschool in New Orleans.  The white teacher was working primarily with poor black kids who were obsessed with Lil Wayne.  Instead of ignoring the music, the teacher dove into the phenomenon, and was able to connect with the kids and the city by adapting to their experiences.  Kids wrote essays about the rapper and made references to his lyrics as answers to questions.  It appears the teacher was able to make stronger bonds with his troubled students, visiting them at their homes and when they were hospitalized from gun shot wounds.  The music of the time allowed the teacher to understand what was going on much more with the students.  

         Overall, Bartolome seems to argue to be self-aware of the choices we make in our classrooms.  There are no sacred cows.  We can always improve.  Don’t put on blinders and try to keep an open mind.  Be a static, living, breathing teacher, not a cemented in your ways cliche.