Standard 2. Culture as it affects Student Learning. Candidates know, understand, and use the major theories and research related to the nature and role of culture in their instruction. Because of the way cultural identity influences self-esteem, candidates understand how cultural groups and individual cultural identities affect language learning and school achievement. They use a range of resources to discover more about their students backgrounds. Candidates know that students learn more readily when cultural factors are recognized, respected, and accommodated, and they demonstrate this knowledge in their curriculum planning, material selection, and teaching. They involve students families and community members in students learning.
In my course Latinos in U.S. Schools, ESC 769, at Lehman College, we examined the educational issues affecting Latinos in the United States, with a focus on the urban school setting. During this course I was asked to write a teaching philosophy on TESOL with research to support my beliefs. At this time I took a close look at the challenges culturally and linguistically diverse learners face, their impact on language learning and academic achievement, and ways that teachers can support and instruct these students. I learned throughout this process the importance of keeping the students cultural identity in mind while creating, planning, and instructing lessons. My philosophys foundation comes from creating a safe, comfortable, and accepting environment for all learners and remembering that each student has a different background and approach to learning needs to be considered before creating lessons. This artifact demonstrates my understanding of Standard 2 because I was given the opportunity to think deeply on what my goals were as not only an educator, but also an ESL educator. In this assignment I discussed the challenges culturally and linguistically diverse learners face, such as parental involvement in education. Many cultures often will keep away from their childs school and believe that the teacher is always correct, however, it is my responsibility to invite and welcome these families into the classroom and let them know in this culture we base a lot of our education on family participation and presence. This assignment has helped me understand Standard 2, but has helped me prepare tremendously for my future classroom. It took my teaching philosophy, tweaked it, and opened it up so that it the curriculum and learning goals were more diverse and based on the student body and backgrounds. This seems like quite the difficult task but I believe with practice, it could get easier over the years; the most important part is that we recognize the culture each student brings into the classroom, and how we can capitalize and display that.