End of Book Reflection:
Through this class and the exploration of this book I’ve come to be analyze my own teaching practices. I am challenged to face my thinking of urban schools, and address that since I have no direct experience in an urban setting that I do have misconceptions about schools like Quincy. I know that the experiences I’ve had with students in an urban setting are almost identical to those I’ve had in suburban settings, and I know and completely believe that kids are kids no matter where they come from. Whether about urban education, learners from various ethnic or religious backgrounds or students with disabilities I need to approach teaching, not with a deficit model of thinking, but rather asking what can students bring to the table.
I don’t know if my views have been changed, so much as cemented. I have no real experience teaching in an urban setting so many of the things discussed in Holler if You Hear Me I have never experienced first hand but the themes, the major thoughts brought up in Michie’s chapters easily relate to experiences that occur in every classroom. The more I read and the more I learn about other classrooms the vision of what I want to create for my own classroom becomes more and more clear. I want to teach my curriculum with relevancy to student experience, I want to give students a voice in class, to allow them to be teachers as well as learners. My goal is to create a space where students want to learn, where they feel valued and able to share their experiences and participate in the class learning. I understand that I come into the classroom as biased and that I need to continually challenge these biases, and work to create a classroom free of bias so that my students are learning material not my opinion. No matter who they are and what challenges they may face a student is a student and deserves my respect, attention and my concentration as an individual.
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