The last couple of months have been a roller coaster between my school’s verification visit, leaving my school district (tomorrow), becoming an independent consultant, and my father being put into the hospital to receive three heart stents. Even though it’s been happening all at once, I always believe it’s for the right reasons and there are lessons to be learned. In our last episodes, we were talking about the ATL Communication Skills. Communication is about finding our voice and helping others to get more informed about the world around them. Sometimes, we have to discuss difficult and uncomfortable subjects, to help our learners better understand the systems of inequity, justice, and accountability. This morning, I woke up to Juneteenth, a new federal holiday put into effect by President Joe Biden. For many outside of the United States, this is nothing special. Yet, it’s a day that changed everything for so many lives in my country. It got me thinking about how do we give voice to the voiceless in our country and all around the world? On June 19, 1863, black slaves being held in Galveston, Texas were notified that they were free due to the Emancipation Proclamation. They were the last people to be set free, since the area was considered quite remote. Juneteenth took place more than a month after the Civil War ended and 900 days after President Lincoln signed the proclamation. Juneteenth was a significant time in our history. All of the racial issues we have experienced in the past year stem from it. Yet, many children in our public school system don’t know it exists. The existence of slavery in our history has been put under the rug and the sting still rests on the shoulders of many Black Americans. Their ancestors were the only ones who were kidnapped, sold to another, and told they were now only ⅗ of a person. Last year, I remember watching an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking about the Emancipation Proclamation that it “freed” the black man to a life of poverty. They were free, but they weren’t afforded the same opportunities that were promised in the U.S. Constitution. Dr. King tried to have a second emancipation proclamation put into place to deal with segregation issues at the time. During the past three years, I have worked in an at-risk, predominantly Black American school in one of the poorest areas of Houston, TX. During that time, I have learned a lot about my white privilege. Although I am half Asian/white, I recognize now that the way I look has impacted the opportunities I have received. In addition, I’ve come to understand the difference of opportunities afforded to light versus dark skinned black people. It’s a fact. I have seen it time and time again, even within its own culture. I’ve also seen multi-generations of people who have missed their calling to be greater, because certain systems keep them oppressed. As I reflected further, our nation was founded on the backs of indigenous and foreign people. The Chinese came to our country and laid every railroad track through much back breaking work. Through their industry and innovation, they began to flourish by creating businesses. As they prospered, there was envy by certain populations that they were expelled from the country after 10 years and were ineligible for naturalization. The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law on May 6, 1882 and was in effect until 1943. I remember in university I truly understood the Indian Removal Act of May 28, 1830. I cried for a couple of days after I learned the truth. President Andrew Jackson, the same man on the $20 bill, signed an order that would remove all native tribes from their ancestral lands to snowy Oklahoma. Based on tribal and military records, approximately 100,000 Native Americans were removed from their homes with little or no possessions. About 15,000 died during the journey west. For many generations, Native Americans became wards of the state. They had little or no hope of opportunity off their reservations. Alcoholism and poverty became a rampant theme you would see in these remote places that native people called home. In the past 20-30 years, some tribes have turned their protected lands into a profitable business by opening casinos. Since this turn of fortune, I’ve heard many local politicians try to cash in on these casinos, but the lands are protected. Just to be clear, they still pay federal income taxes, but they are declared an independent state and don’t need to pay state income taxes. Once again, someone is trying to take what is rightly theirs for their own gain. Every country has indigenous people who have been mistreated and oppressed. What can we do to stop these things from happening? I think this is where communication skills are so vital to spread our message to the greater world. How do we get our students to act in the same way? In the present day, I cried the same way when I heard about the Uighurs, the Turkic people in Northwestern China. These are peaceful followers of Islam who are being kidnapped, taken to ethnic cleansing camps, and stripped of their cultural identity. Over 3 million have entered these camps and about 1 million are currently being detained. Many of them are never returned and put into slave labor around China. How is this being allowed to happen in our present day? I’m sorry to be so heavy this week, but this to me is the importance of building communication skills in our learners. How are we giving them the agency to learn about these injustices and advocate for the rights of others? I promise to return to light programming next week and continue on our ATL journey.
0 Comments
Communication is a complex process, so how do we capture it in a specialist classroom or while receiving additional help with supporting teachers? Just like a homeroom teacher, it requires continual practice in new ways, so students can have those aha moments. This process will take years to develop, so it requires us to constantly chip away at it. When thinking of a specialist class, it’s about making the vocabulary come to life in your context through visuals and experiences. What does it mean to have form in PE, Music, or Visual Arts? This will look completely different, but exploring the variables that affect form over again will help to reinforce this concept. As a supporting teacher, it’s about getting students to use the language of learning at their level and slowly growing the learner’s capacity and access. Your work is repetitive. We appreciate this work, because it’s during the small group sessions with you that students are able to make connections in their communication development. Just a reminder my friends that there are many things that a teacher can do to set the stage for communication to come alive in the classroom. Here are some tips:
Now, let’s zoom into one of the communication sub-skills to see how we can immediately apply it to our practice. I chose a sub-skill that can be malleable to all specialists and supporting teachers. Information and Communications Technology (ICT)When we think of communication skills, we naturally consider how to use information and technology to help us better understand our world. The IB outlines certain skills that learners need in order to leverage their ICT skills. The impact of media representations and modes of presentationIn your classes, students are eager to show what they know. The academic rigor in your learning situations is the same, but the way it’s presented can be more accessible to learners. How are we getting learners to access and understand media messages through your course lens or objective? I think this would be fascinating. For some reason, I see a video in my mind of the effects on health and weight management. It’s amazing how powerful an image or video can make to motivate and clarify misunderstandings of what is healthy. Most kids think a bag of hot chips and donuts at lunch everyday is “healthy” as long as they eat their sandwich and fruit. When they are able to have these aha moments, do they get to present them to the group somehow? In a science lab, if they learn the difference between a mixture and solution by doing media research and experiments, how can they show what they know to the rest of the class? Are we allowing students to be co-presenters of the learning experience? Make informed choices about modes of communicationCommunicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and modalitiesAll teachers can use this as a vehicle for creating effective messages. It’s all about showing a variety of communication strategies and tools that learners can transfer to a new situation. This is always our goal. It’s about being intentional that we use multimodal strategies on a daily basis to provide repeated exposure. It’s that simple.
You would think communication is so easy, but it’s been one of the most challenging ATLs for me to uncover so far. I think it’s because communication is more than expressing one's ideas. It’s about the audience, how your message is received, and how to respond. Then, we layer on media messages, it goes into a deep place with multiple possibilities. In this episode, I am going against the norm and choosing a different ATL than the early years. It spoke more to me as an upper elementary teacher. One of the things I struggled the most with my students was getting them to analyze and interpret information and connect to their own lives. This is a difficult thing for most adults to do, so imagine being an eight year old trying to tackle it. When I think of communication skills, I naturally see learners trying to make meaning of what is being presented to them. At this age, they are trying to determine if the message is clear and usually there are many misconceptions along the way. This is why learning how to communicate and deciphering the message of communication is so important. Just a reminder my friends that there are many things that a teacher can do to set the stage for communication to come alive in the classroom. Here are some tips:
Now, let’s zoom into one of the communication sub-skills to see how we can immediately apply it to our practice. Interpreting What does it mean to interpret information? How do we know if our interpretation is not correct? These are questions we pose to our learners to get them to think deeper about the information they are processing. Interpret visual, audio and oral communicationWhen you consider this task, it requires a lot of scaffolding on the part of the teacher to help their learners to understand the meaning and symbolism of a text and sounds. It’s about presenting the same type of information over again, in a non rote memorization way, that will help students to grasp these concepts. We usually think of beginning readers when we hear sound and symbol relationship and often focus on other areas such as fluency and comprehension. I’ve often been fascinated why a child in third grade can’t read. Could it be that they were close to understanding, but teachers deemed they were “old enough” to know how to read, so they stopped the support? I don’t know. What do you think? Understand the ways in which images and language convey ideasI have always loved using images, audio, video, and personal experiences to convey a message to my students. I guess it’s because this is how I learn best. The beautiful thing about this process is the meaning can be different for individual students based on their life experiences and schema of the world. I find this process fascinating. By presenting visual cues, we are able to help shape meaning of language for our students. I love watching developing writers have aha moments and furiously seek the words to express what it means to them. This is how we shape our understanding of the world and recognize the importance of bias, power, and control. Recognize the meaning of kinesthetic communicationBody language is equally perplexing at times. I can recognize the typical glazed over look in the eyes when the information is too much or over heads. Crossed arms and heads down is equally recognizable. What is more difficult is understanding what is going on deep in the mind while the body is calm and collected. This is a tad bit harder. I think learners can easily recognize when their teacher or peers are disgruntled or disconnected with tasks. They struggle to understand the subtext of emotions through body language. We need to expose them to different types of body language and what it may mean, so they don’t inadvertently offend or hurt others through their lack of understanding. Be aware of cultural differences when communicatingThis is where open-mindedness comes to life. When culture enters the picture, we need to be highly aware of our differences and similarities. Culture shapes how we see the world. Naturally, we need to teach our learners how to recognize these differences and to interpret the meaning. Sometimes, we may not fully understand how others receive our message, so the only thing we can do is craft our message that reflects cultural sensitivity.
This episode really stretched me, because these are hard to do. As an adult, it can be difficult to read into the context of communication exchange. We often misread the message, which leads to a lot of confusion and mess. Imagine being a young child navigating this landscape. All we can do is consistently support this development and hope it sticks. I’m also a struggling PYP educator like everyone else trying to grasp it all. If anyone has any suggestions, please post them on my Twitter @thinkchat2020 or LinkedIn @Lu Gerlach. I would love to expand and grow in this area too. It's time to think like a pirate. When I think of a pirate, I think of a brave risk-taker who faces uncertain challenges for forethought and determination. They work together as a team or rely upon the captain to charter unchartered waters. By doing so, they develop a resiliency to change and major setbacks in their journey. This is why it took a special person to become a pirate. Now, we are applying our understanding of pirates and applying it to our role as educators. Do you have the courage to try new methods to ensure that agency is happening in your practice? Join the conversation with Ali Ezzeddine and myself as we engage with each and the topic of agency. It's one of the most chats I've had with a fellow educator in a long time. You can watch it below. When I think of communication skills, I can’t help but think of you early years teachers. Our youngest learners are so curious about the world around them that they want to continuously ask questions, add comments to the learning topic, and make connections to their everyday lives. At times, it can be overwhelming the sheer amount of questions that early learners ask, but isn’t it beautiful at the same time? They have such interest in the world around them and they don’t have problems voicing their ideas or opinions. In this episode, we are going to examine the communication skills that our young learners need to be able to harness their message and provide ideas in a logical manner. But first, let's look at some of the skills we as educators need to model, so our learners are able to apply it to their own practice.
The communication sub-skills help us to see a broader picture about how we can communicate in a variety of ways.
Just like last time, we will take a deeper look at the sub-skill criteria and see how we might break it down, so it’s easier for students to access. ListeningAs an early years teacher, one of the key skills we establish is listening. Our learners know how to speak about many things, but it's a bit harder to stop and truly listen to the ideas and passions of someone else. Here are so ideas on how to deepen this practice. Listen to informationThis seems like a natural thing for young humans to do. Yet, it takes a great deal of restraint on the part of our youngest learners to truly listen, not hear, each other. They are so eager to share and connect that listening is truly a skill they must require. Listening requires young learners to listen for inflection in tone and vocal pauses. They often misunderstand these parts of communication, which often results in them interrupting a conversation inadvertently. How do we get our youngest learners to listen? They must engage in skills that build their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills to become better. This is what balanced literacy means. How do we do it? I think this is completely up to the teacher, but one thing I’d reinforce is the balanced approach to literacy in learning stations, small group work, and activity centers. The repeated chance to play with these skills will only allow our young people to become better communicators. Listen actively and respectfully to others’ ideasI have made my fair share of mistakes when engaging with young learners. You have to be careful in how you phrase certain questions, because all of the class will be answering at once. You know what I mean. In my limited experience with these fabulous young people, they just want to be heard and seen. They need to be taught the various ways to communicate with others in whole and small group settings. I’ve seen a lot of educators assume they know how to manage themselves until chaos erupts. I think role plays make a huge difference in these situations. It allows learners to understand different social cues without being affronted personally. They are playing a part in a play about someone who is not listening and ways they can correct their behavior. I know that this strategy is old school, but I have found it works wonders. Ask for clarificationsGetting students to advocate for themselves is one of the hardest things I’ve struggled with as an educator. They would rather go to the dentist and get teeth pulled than tell you they need clarification or they don’t understand something. Thankfully, most of our early learners don’t yet have the social pressures attached to their learning. They just need support in advocating for their needs. They often don’t know how to advocate, which is the struggle.
One thing I’ve used with students is colored cards (red, yellow, and green) that represent the traffic light. I ask them to hold up the color that shows if they understand how to do something. If this is not available, I have them use their thumbs up, down, and sideways. I still struggle with getting young learners to share what they need. They don’t mind tattling on someone else, but they often won’t tell you about themselves. Well that wasn’t so bad. Join us next time as we explore some social skills. |
Categories
All
Archives
February 2025
|