[EDUC-2120] Discussion Topic for #2 - Jigsaw Classrooms Can Change Southern Culture

Discussion topic for Module 2

Read the weekly research article about the Jigsaw Classroom technique.

After reading, can you list any advantages or disadvantages of this technique?  Also, can competition add to the cause of prejudice?  Refer back to the Koppelman text to support your answer.

My Response for This Prompt
I loved and hated reading this week's research article.  I loved it, because it validates my own plans for group instruction methods and implies that they should be quite successful.  I hated it, because it is almost as if someone stole my thunder from forty-something years in the past.  I have given much thought to overcoming the problems faced by my own childhood/teen classmates and me.  I have thought about the nearly homogeneous social/political/economic environments in which we were raised.  I have thought about the different teachers we had, their strengths and weaknesses as educators, and I have considered the best manner in which to incorporate the mindset changes that rural and suburban southern communities need most and have traditionally resisted the hardest.

The South, unfortunately, still lives in a highly stratified mindset.  Too many children live in poverty with little physical reserve left over to engage in intellectual pursuits.  Men of color and women of all colors espouse a full range of socially acceptable or unacceptable opinion, often seeing the needs of their own In Groups ahead of the needs of any other group, even when the underlying interests of those groups truly coincide.  Moreover, far too many white men go their whole lives wondering what all the bellyaching is about, claiming that it was not so hard for them, so people should stop whining so much and just buckle down as they did.  There is significant competition for resources among the various resident cultural groups in our state, which can lead to competition in the classroom when students arrive with homegrown prejudices in tow.  Our research article for this week leaves no doubt that Aronson was correct in noting that the “competitive atmosphere of the typical classroom only served to fuel the fires of inter-group hostility” (Reese).  His Classroom Jigsaw method “was born of the need to change the atmosphere from one of competitiveness to one of cooperation” (Reese), and could go a long way toward overcoming prejudice-sparked competition in the South’s rigidly traditional public schools and communities.

The public school cluster where I live now is a world of difference from the socioeconomically homogenized environment of my youth.  As I shared in our discussion last week, there are so many people from different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds currently living in Gwinnett County that language barriers are a significant problem at our schools; our teachers have to “Jigsaw” almost as their default setting.  The educators I have been privileged to meet here in Gwinnett do not engage in the sort of victim-blaming that was the norm in the 1970s/1980s.  Back then, it was publicly held to be the “foreigner’s fault” for coming here and encountering difficulty in school, and their children were often told, “if you’re going to live here, you can at least learn to speak the Bible’s language.”  Academic failure was also openly held to be the fault of children of color for “drinking the Hand Up Kool-aid,” and they were often told “you should just try harder and, if you’re lucky, you can be as good as the rest of us.”  Some of our teachers would even seem put out by lower income students who had trouble grasping concepts because the SES problems their family faced made schoolwork incredibly difficult, and chastised them for missing things in class that “normal white kids everywhere are smart enough to get”.  Our textbook defines victim-blaming as “a focus on the group being harmed by societal prejudices [with insistence] that society doesn’t need to change: The group needs to change.  Victim-blamers urge individuals to stop being so sensitive or so pushy, to work harder, and to quit complaining.  Group members are told they are responsible for whatever problems they must overcome” (Koppelman 39).

Here, if a child has trouble keeping up, it is the educators’ direct responsibility to get that child (and their family) on track.  This is partly due to our teachers’ inherent desire to give Gwinnett kids the best opportunity possible, and partly due to residential reprisals should it come to NCLB probations. It is a relief to know that I will work for a school cluster that truly wants every single one of its families to have a better life via education and community-sourced outreach.  I cannot describe to you how deeply thankful I am that I will get to be an educator in this time where it is acceptable to call people out on their prejudiced assumptions, their bigoted words, and their discriminatory actions, and to live in this forward-thinking school district.

REFERENCES FOR THIS DISCUSSION POST

Koppelman, K.L. and Goodhart, R. L. (2011). Chapter 2: Understanding prejudice and its causes. In M. Mattson (Ed.), EDUC-2120: Education GA Perimeter College North (pp 25-41). Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Education.

Mattson, M. (2014). Chapter 2 lecture notes: Understanding prejudice and its causes [PowerPoint slides]. GPC iCollege, EDUC-2120-001. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from https://gpc.view.usg.edu/d2l/home/485701

Reese, S. (2009). Classroom connection: The jigsaw classroom [PDF document]. In Techniques Magazine: Connecting Education and Careers. Association for Career & Technical Education. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from https://gpc.view.usg.edu/content/enforced/485701-CO.710.EDUC2120.30523.20144/2120Jigsaw%2520Article.pdf

[EDUC-2120] Discussion Topic #1 - Non-obvious At-risk Student Groups

Discussion topic for Chapter 1

Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward a group and persons believed to be part of that group. What are some groups, like the example of the atheist used in the power point, which are not obviously based on culture or race, whom teachers need to be aware of in their classrooms as possible targets of prejudice? How will you guard against prejudices yourself as a teacher? 

My Response for This Prompt

From personal experience, I offer for discussion two student groups of which teachers should be aware as possible targets of classroom prejudice.  These groups include children who are physically small for their age and children are academically advanced.  Each of these groups suffers varying levels of prejudice from public social stereotypes, and teachers need to guard against their own ill-timed reactions in addition to making their classrooms a culturally positive haven from bigotry and discrimination.

Children who are small for their age are susceptible to bullying because their bodies are often physically weaker than their age peers in larger percentile brackets.  Smaller children are often slower in running games because their legs cannot cover as much ground or unable to meet the objective in activities where physical strength matters.  Because of this, they often earn playground monikers that reflect "loser" stereotypes, which subsequently leads (in far too many cases) to name-calling and bullying.  Because busy adults have a tendency to lump together as "troublemakers" all children involved in playground mishaps or classroom incidents, smaller children are asked questions such as "well, what did you do to make her/him want to hit you?" or "you just need to learn to be tougher skinned and then the bigger kids won't bother you."  Victim-shaming legitimizes the prejudice that leads to bullying by teaching small-stature children that adults cannot ensure equal footing for all students, and by teaching bullies that society does not blame them for abuses they dole out, that blame lies with the victim(s) instead.

As with the “Asian math whiz” example from the chapter lecture, children whom are academically advanced also need protection from stereotype reactions from the adults in their lives.  It might seem obvious that these children may be open to teasing or bullying from other students, but teachers must be on guard against their own internal prejudices where gifted students are concerned, too.  Just because a child is smart does not mean that s/he is automatically proficient at all intellectual pursuits.  There is more than enough pressure on these students to succeed, so it is often difficult in the extreme for them to admit that they need help with schoolwork.  We must strive to be the teachers who open doors for all of our students and not the sort of teacher that responds to a request for help with "Why, Johnny, you're so smart! Surely, you don't need help with this, now do you?"  Not only does this display of confirmation bias publicly demean the child, but it marks the teacher as a willing party to societal prejudices rather than as an authority figure dedicated to overcoming them.  The student is asking for your help, after all; why are you going to ignore their plea in favor of an incorrect, stereotype-based assumption?

Our textbook teaches that "the values we choose are influenced by our membership in groups defined by such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class; however, the ultimate decision to embrace certain values is up to the individual" (2).  As an educator, my goal is to make my school a safe place everyone who walks through the door.  To do that, it is my responsibility to be actively involved with both the student and staff populations.  I can make my Zero Tolerance for Intolerance policy clear up front, working with my students to develop a Classroom Bill of Rights that lays out the responsibilities of peer behavior and the repercussions for breaking our rules.  I can also work with parents and other staff on bringing tolerance education into our school through anti-bullying and cultural sensitivity programs such as the PBIS system (3) in active use at Norcross Cluster schools.

WORKS CITED IN THIS DISCUSSION POST

1. EDUC-2120 GPC-specific textbook.  Chapter 1, Afterword,  pp.17
2. Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. http://www.pbis.org/