Blog 4 (3.5): Reflection on Kohn's "What to Look for in a Classroom" and Cultural Pedagogy

Kohn and the classroom tour had me reflecting on my own personal classroom experience. I came from a public school system where there was a stark difference between the good and the bad teachers at my school. With those differences came a difference in the environment of which we learned. The classroom walls were barren, the desks in rows facing forward, teachers teaching from their desk front and center in the classroom, and just bored faces across the room. The way Kohn talked about not just the material objects in the classroom but the attributes of the people and students inside the classroom itself. I have seen firsthand the balance of both in my classrooms and how usually the teachers who care about their students are the ones whose classrooms reflect that care. It makes me think about how in my last FNED 101 class we would spend time reflecting about the environment the class we were observing was in because it was an illustration of the kind of education going on within the building. Additionally, for the culturally pedagogy video I went to a mostly white school where the terms of culture were not greatly discussed. While it didn’t seem to be such an apparent issue since most of the kids shared similar cultural backgrounds, many of my friends felt under represented in the ways that our education standards were saying was normal. School is not supposed to make us feel separated because of our differences. It’s supposed to highlight them in their honest and natural form and our diversity to create an improved perspective on our world. It would make me angry when the perspective of the teacher or the education standards would represent their common “norm”. There are so many unique cultures that should be celebrated and embraced within our education so we can learn new perspectives and strive towards a better education and morality. The article How to become a reflective teacher speaks about reflective teaching and talks about it in a way that is similar to the manner Kohn and the video were illustrating. To create a better classroom environment the teacher has to work on enveloping the understanding of her students’ culture.  I think it helps take a closer look at the actions of the teachers themselves and how those actions can reflect the classroom environment. I think a question to leave with is how can we as teachers create the environment that Kohn was describing that helps support students while still reflecting our independent dispositions?