Dustin Ryan

Culture and Inclusion

11/20/15
Professor Pluciennik
Week Three Reflective Essay
My school, Bishop Elementary, in Bishop, CA serves a fairly diverse population. We
serve the Paiute Native reservation, making up about eighteen percent of our student
population. Not all of the Native American students are Paiute, however. There are also
Shoshone, Navajo, and some Alaskan Native students. We also serve a large number of
English language learners, coming from Mexico, El Salvador, Per, Honduras, Guatemala,
and a number of other Latin American countries. Thinking about the Likert Scale, I would
rate my school at a 4. I rated each category by 5, and got an average of 4.57. For the sake
of improving on those areas, in which I rated us a 4, I will call it an overall 4.
As research indicates, schools that effectively serve a diverse student population
promote literacy, deliver grade-level curriculum/content, organize instruction innovatively,
protect and extend instructional time, expand teachers roles and responsibilities, address
students social and emotional needs, and involve parents in their childrens education. I
will address each of these characteristics, to the point of which I see my school attending to
them.
Promoting literacy is my schools number one goal. It is a critical area, and our
focus. The second focus being mathematics. Some ways in which we promote literacy is
by having our current reading curriculum aligned to the Common Core. We are using CA
Treasures, which was not CCSS aligned. With the help of teachers at our school and
around CA, we were able to pull CCSS aligned resources to follow the curriculum we have.
Next year, we will be adopting a new CCSS curriculum. We are currently in the process of
piloting options. A second way we promote literacy is by hosting a literacy night for
parents. We use CTA funds to get a variety of grade level text, in both English and Spanish,
from Scholastic, and share these with the parents. We also share some ways in which
parents can support literacy at home. The school also uses Raz-Kids, an online reading
program in which students read at their level, and progress as they pass books and
quizzes. Each student, K-5, has a login, and can access the program at home if they have
access to a computer, or another device such as a tablet, or iPhone. We also have a Title I
reading program, called Explorers. This is an intervention group pull out. Students read in
their group for 40 minutes, working on phonics and decoding skills, as well as vocabulary
and grammar skills. This program serves 2nd through 5th grade.
We deliver grade-level curriculum and content. We are still making the transfer to
CCSS. We use a CCSS math curriculum, Bridges, which is very interactive. It is a problem
and inquiry based curriculum, and we are able to differentiate instruction as needed. Next
year we will be adopting a new ELA curriculum, and we are looking for one in which English
Language Development is embedded. We currently teach 30 minutes of ELD per day. To

reduce the need for 30 minutes in the afternoon, or more pull outs, and embedded program
may give us more time to focus on science and writing. We currently spend 20-30 minutes
a day writing, minimum, using Step-Up to Writing. Many teachers carry writing over into
science and social studies. We are also in the process of transferring to the Next
Generation Science Standards. We have a science liaison, who has taken our previous
science curriculum, swapped out themes between grade-levels, and aligned it to the NGSS.
This is one area in which I cannot give our school a 5. I feel like the pull outs, can
sometimes be too much. I think that having an embedded ELA/ELD curriculum will help out
in this regard. However, I wonder if too much support sometimes gets in the way. One
problem I have in my own classroom, are the few below grade-level students, who receive
support from nearly everything we offer. It is a challenge to make sure they get their
science and social studies, or writing instruction for the same amount of time as the at or
above grade-level students. This is why I try to integrate where I can, teaching writing skills
during science, or reading science articles related to our science curriculum during ELA.
This helps them to get the instruction that they may miss in the afternoon, due to pull outs.
Integrating instruction like I attempt to do, as do other teachers, is one way in which
our school organizes instruction innovatively. We also have many opportunities to travel to
conferences in CA and NV, for math instruction, science, literacy, and technology. Teachers
get to travel to one conference per year, and we come back and share at our staff meetings,
what we have learned, and what might work for others in the classroom.
Teachers roles and responsibilities have been expanded. We are a small
community, with a population under 5,000, including the surrounding towns that we serve.
Our school is large, being that we are one of two in the area. We have a student population
of just under 900. As we have 5-6 teachers per grade-level, we all have different
responsibilities. We sit on committees for ELA, math, assessment, technology, science, and
more. We meet weekly within our Professional Learning Committees, and share what is
happening in each of these.
Addressing student social and emotional needs is another area I think, as a school,
we can work on. As stated before, with the demands of the curriculum, our literacy and
math goals, and all of the pull out services we offer, it can be a real struggle to find time of
SEL lessons. Some teachers make time to do it, maybe pushing aside PE for an afternoon,
or taking time at the end of the day. We have a school counselor, as well as our
administrators that will come into our rooms and teach SEL lessons based on request.
Parent involvement is a challenge. We have a high number of low socioeconomic
students, and parents who speak a language other than English. Even though we do have
a bilingual support team, it can still be a challenge to involve these parents in their childrens
education. In my classroom, the only parent volunteers I currently have come from a higher
socioeconomic background. I have sent out newsletters to get more involvement in the
classroom, but it hasnt happened yet. This is the case for many classrooms. We do host a
math night, along with the literacy night. We have large turnouts for both of these each
year.

Delpits theme, from what I have gathered, is that we can do so much more if we
take them time to try and better understand our students, and their backgrounds. Knowing
where they come from, what their home life is like - in terms of what is valued and
respected. As teachers we all get a sense of the language spoken, and the income of the
household. Developing a relationship or rapport with students is critical, to begin giving
them instruction. I have noticed a huge change in one student of mine in particular, since
taking this course, and reading Other Peoples Children. She is one of my lowest
students. For the first month of school, I was worried. She didnt speak to me much at all.
She is one of the students that I have, who is in nearly every pull out. I was concerned on
the amount of progress she was making. Her parents came in one day, 5 minutes before
the morning bell rang, to tell me they had a concern about their daughter being bullied. I
was not aware of this. This was happening on the playground, and mostly in Spanish. It
was a reality check for me. I needed to develop rapport with this student, so that she would
feel comfortable coming to me with any issues, in class or on the playground. I have been
consistently working on this, and though she is still making slow academic progress, she is
beginning to open up to me, and communicate more. She has this great attitude in class,
and is really putting in effort. I expressed this with her parents at the conference, and at the
end asked if they still had any concern with the bullying. They said, that hadnt heard
anything new. The atmosphere of the conversation with the parents was completely
different this time. I think the parents felt as though I was on her side, and could see the
difference. According to Bowman, it is crucial that schools listen to the voices of the
excluded minorities (Cultural Diversity and Academic Achievement). I think this example
illustrates that. As a school, we also work toward this with our liaisons and our bilingual
support team. Though, we have some steps to take to improve the education of a
multicultural student population, I feel we are making appropriate accommodations, and do
feel that it is a concern and goal for our school