BLMC 672 - Peralta

1. The Personal And Collective Transformation Of Teachers by: Sonia Nieto Presented by: Nancy Hian and Brian Kehoe BLMC 672 May 18, 2009 Claudia Peralta-Nash CTEL/CLAD

4. The Personal and Collective Transformation of Teachers is a collection of graduate students’ journal reflections 6 components of “transformation” are outlined in Nieto’s essay Confronting One’s Identity Becoming a Learner of Students Identifying with Students Becoming Multicultural Challenging Racism and Other Biases Developing a Community of Critical Friends

9. Identifying with Students Students are empowered as learners when they can identify with school and with their teachers. “ When a teacher becomes a teacher, she acts like a teacher instead of a person. She takes her title as now she’s mechanical, somebody just running it. Teachers shouldn’t deal with students like we are machines. You’re a person, I’m a person. We come to school and we all [should] act like people.” (Nieto, pg. 498) Q: How is culture shared between you and your students? Teachers can explore their family history and immigration as a way of connecting with culturally diverse students.

11. Becoming Multicultural If teachers do not demonstrate through their actions and behaviors that they truly value diversity, students can often times tell. To becoming a multicultural person, teachers need to broaden their understanding about the world in general. They need to value the experiences and realities of others. Educators need to focus on the lives and priorities of those that are different. Q: What have you done to explore your diversity?

12. Challenging Racism and Other Biases Teachers need to discover the biased and racist ideologies that exist. To challenge racism and bias can mean upsetting “ business as usual” Educators need to carefully analyze school policies and practices as well as the ideologies behind them, then attempt to change those that are unfair. The following graph demonstrates how educators can work toward equity pedagogy. Q: Does racism, sexism or homophobia exist in your classroom?

14. Developing a Community of Critical Friends Teachers who can develop respectful, but critical, relationships with peers will be better able to provide support to their school. Nieto discusses her philosophical change in interaction with colleagues. Her initial belief was that teachers should avoid negative lunchroom banter regarding students but now feels it best to engage in conversations to change the discourse toward the students they teach. Q: What do you talk about during lunch? Collective relationships among teachers are needed in order to make meaningful change.