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Denice Arroyo
Reflection point 3

My coursework in EDUC 606 began with reflecting on how to define culture
and how culture impacts education and my role as a teacher. As I thought about
culture, my students culture and my own culture, I began to realize that culture is
not an easy topic to define. One persons culture can be change and it becomes more
complex with more and more experiences. Culture can be who you were, who you
are and who you would like to be. Culture can be where you are and how you
respond to certain situations across settings. As an educator, its important to know
our students culture and develop an understanding of their culture to best meet
their educational needs.
The Cultural Inquiry Study began with identifying a puzzlement within my
classroom. I enjoyed using the term puzzlement versus problem, because I never
felt that my students had problemsmore like challenges that we were working
through. My puzzlement forced me to look closely at a group of students who were
constantly having challenges across settings at school. After identifying my puzzling
situation and finding out what I was really looking for I was able to analyze how
cultural factors may be influencing behavior and participation within the classroom.
As I gathered data and researched literature relevant to my puzzlement, I began
seeing cultural trends in the research that related to my students. Learning about
my students culture and identifying research based strategies that had proven
successful was inspiring! I was encouraged to know the my students culture was
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playing a role in their performance at school and I was just at the beginning of
knowing how to best support them.
The information I learned about cultural influences of students who come
from a low socio-economic background with non-traditional family structures led
me to the application of my research and create an action plan to enhance their
development in the classroom. As I monitored my students success I was excited to
see progress of my action plan. It was progress that could only be attributed to
taking into consideration my students culture and using it to better understand who
they were and how to best provide them with the support they needed.
This course helped me to realize that its acceptable to acknowledge culture
and when its done in a culturally competent manner it will benefit students that are
culturally, linguistically and cognitively diverse. This project also helped me to take
the step of doing real action research within my classroom with my own students.
As I reflect back on where I started at the beginning of the course to where I am
now, Im excited about how empowering it was to monitor my students learning and
see what specific areas needed additional support and the change I could make in a
matter of weeks. This course has shown me how action research can be
systematically achieved with success in the classroom and I plan to continue this
type of research with my future students.