A New Sentiment Emerging

Since this semester has started, I've had this distressing feeling. This feeling like what we're doing for our students is not what we should be doing. The courses, the philosophies, the implementations--everything seems to lose its validity through my eyes. My classmates, the teachers, the students.. they're hearing but they're not listening. Is it because everyone's lives are so busy? Can we no longer stop and listen?

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Article Review: “Creating Culturally Responsive, Inclusive Classrooms”

Many techniques and strategies offered in this article are listed in the textbooks and lectured in our in-service courses, but it’s restated over and over for in-service teachers. There must be an explanation-the teachers are not applying what they learn. My clinical teacher behaves in this manner; she had a self-confidence team-building exercise required, but she modified it to her class. The class was to pass around a “shining star” and write positive comments about each other, but the teacher felt 8th graders would not take it seriously and directed students to work independently and fill it in themselves using skeleton sentences, such as “I am good at…” Her behavior contrasted the ideas I have been taught in my courses: demonstrate what you want the students to do, encourage cooperative learning, and make it relevant. So this brings me back to my earlier point. The teachers I have had an opportunity to talk to say that they have not learned much from college. What happened to them? What will happen to us? I fear that many of us are already encouraged to drop the research and practices for the easier route. Perhaps, our college instructors themselves are not relating the courses to the students. The courses do not give us the deeper impact, the relevance, or the inspiration to do more.
From reading, the guidelines do not seem like it involves a lot of time and effort to implement. What reason can there be? The teachers are trained to teach and follow, but not to lead and take a risk to do more.