Anna Tyrlik

EDP 318E
March 10, 2014
Deb Heard
How Do I Adapt A Classroom To A Variety Of Background Experiences?
Inquiry to Curriculum
Who am I?
I come from a house where Sunday night family dinners were an every night thing, where
we took family vacations and where going to college wasnt just an option but it was expected. I
grew up in a conservative suburb of Washington DC, where I hope to return after graduation in
order to teach. It is within that area that I feel most at home. My parents have been married for
28 years and I dont see any way other than to marry one guy for the rest of my life. I was not
raised in a religious home but I was baptized catholic when I came to college.
The town that I was raised in was a very conservative town where it was expected for us
to head to college and receive a bachelors degree. We pretty much were expected to hold a job
throughout high school, take higher level classes and go to a strong university for school. I feel
as though this has shaped my teaching style and personality because Ive become accustomed to
working with that type of people and the pace at which they function. Many have said that
Ashburn has southern hospitality with northern pace of life and I agree whole-heartedly with
that statement. Moving to Ohio has caused a large culture shock but has also taught me a lot
about the Midwestern style of life, which is at a slower pace and with much more caution about
what people are saying.
My teaching beliefs were mainly shaped by my senior year field placement for Teacher
Cadet. I worked with a teacher, who did not believe in public humiliation of children for
punishing them, who thought that every child should be challenged and who made me want to
teach what she taught. My teaching style is adapted from hers because I am my own person and
cannot exactly emulate her teaching style. One key event that shaped the type of teacher I hope
to become is when my supervising teacher would quietly tell her students to take away a cube or
give the group a clip for a table type competition, which served as a reward instead of
punishment.
Ohio is currently in the midst of the transition to Common Core. This is the new
national curriculum that most states are choosing to adopt for their state standards. I am trying
my hardest to master this new set of standards but it is difficult when I have taught with and am
accustomed to Virginias Standards of Learning. These SOLs as they are appropriately
nicknamed, are written in language that is simpler to understand than common core standards
and are more logically organized than Common Core, in my opinion. For me, this set of
standards along with the simplicity of lesson planning in Virginia is making me feel homesick
for that learning style. One thing I am not sure about is if because of the standards having a
slightly higher standard, the teachers are trained differently. I am noticing a different attitude
about teaching in Ohio than in Virginia and one possible reason for this is that Virginia does not
participate in Merit pay for teachers.
As a senior in college, I have worked in one position on a board of executives for the Ice
Skating Club team. For the position of fundraising chair, I was required to lead and organize
hockey clean ups. I realized through this process that I was better at leading my example,
allowing myself to take a step back and not having to be in the midst of everything while still
maintaining a position of power. My leadership style in the classroom has been changing and
adapting to each new set of students that comes into my classroom. I have been trying to develop
a way to monitor behavior while also not feel as though all I am doing is reprimanding and
disciplining my students. Through EDT 474E, I created a classroom management plan that
helped me realize where my feelings lay and how I could effectively work with students in
conducting behavior corrections in a positive manner.

Challenges in Education Today
For me, the challenge of creating a welcoming environment that is culturally accepting is
one of the larges issues I will face as a new instructor. When I was growing up, we were taught
to not see race as a defining factor of a person though the thoughts of the matter were still
underlying. Most of the teachers I encountered were children during the Civil Rights era and
partially witnessed first hand the racial inequalities presented then. Today, we are working
towards a society that is not only culturally accepting of others but also allows students to
express themselves and feel accepted for who they are inside. One way I hope to remedy this is
through working with many cultures and presenting them in the classroom through various
holidays and presentations. This is will be difficult, especially as a first year teacher but I feel as
though when students learn about different cultures, we allow them to become a global citizen
and experience different aspects of the world before they reach middle school or even high
school.
Another challenge I am facing in relationship to racial and economical aspects is that
students are aware of differences between lower and higher economical status even though they
may not demonstrate competencies for understanding the differences. Students are aware of what
the others are wearing, what types of toys they have in their homes and what types of jobs their
parents are working. As a child, I remember knowing what jobs my parents had and how others
compared in importance to it and what were lower class and higher-class jobs. Even though I
was not in a public school for a large part of my life, I had friends who were and they would tell
stories about the differences. Now, being on the other side of the matter, I see the differences
between children in poverty stricken areas and areas of higher income and the conversation
topics are quite different. Within areas of larger income, students would ask for electronics, wish
for this of materialistic value and dont worry about the basic necessities of life. With the
students that I have this semester, I see a vast difference in their writing and the experiences they
have with growing up in a lower income area. Many of my students tell stories about typical
experiences I had growing up such as going to a hotel, spending time with my family and playing
video games. For my classroom, I hope to create an environment for learning that explores these
experiences and allows students to build upon them through my lessons instead of introducing
ideas that are foreign concepts for them such as giving an excuse for not wanting to go to bed.
The classroom is meant to be one of the safest places for students to be during the school
day. Students have the potential for coming from a variety of different home environments and
should feel as though school is a haven from the chaos or civility of the home environment.
Majority of the classrooms I have seen, are well organized and create a sensible learning
environment. With the new rise of school violence, many parents have a tendency to fear sending
their child to a public school setting. Personally, I wish for each child to find a home and a sense
of belonging within my classroom. I hope to allow students to be themselves inside the walls of
my room, allow students to not fear that something wrong will happen and for students to have a
semblance of a balanced life. One way I hope create this environment is to allow students to
share their personal lives at the beginning of the day, make sure that all learning styles are
addressed through each lesson and ensure that the classroom is not too chaotic through a
schedule which contains little variation between the days of the week.
One last issue I have seen in the classroom relating to poverty and race was the
connections made for text to self seemed to be a far reach for the students. Many things that we
take for granted as college student or I take for granted because my family is of a high social
class are dreams for the students we are interacting with on a daily basis. I feel as though
teachers attempt to make lessons for students who are identical to that of which they grew up
with but in reality, students are quite different due to having been raised in a society surrounded
by technology, constant conflict in the post September 11
th
period and many civil rights
movements. These students require lessons, which are individualized for their needs rather than
generalized for their age group. One way of adapting lessons to their individual needs is to use
technology as a resource instead of the enemy. A teacher might create an interactive whiteboard
lesson for students to come up and manipulate on the board or she might allow students to
conduct research on laptops and the Internet.
Overarching Question
When I look back upon the texts we have covered in class and the tensions I have
covered above, I feel as though the one that jumps out that most is about creating a curriculum
that would apply to each student and contain material that each student is capable of relating to.
The article the Heart of a Teacher talks about how in order to teach, we must first love
teaching and teach from within us. The article states how we may know every technique
perfectly but we will not be able to apply them without compassion for our students or the
unique inner qualities a teacher possesses. To work within this tension, I must be able to have the
compassion to work within the school district I am hired for and create connections for my
students through which they can relate to. The question I am daring to pose is how do we create
a curriculum that will relate to and be understood by a majority of the students in the classroom,
if not all?
Method of Investigation
Within the field experience, I hope to expand upon this tension through observing my
teachers instruction further, asking questions about how the curriculum is designed in my school
district, and wonder about how I can create a set of lessons that would reach the lives of many of
my students. For observations, I hope to look into her lesson plans, interact with my teacher and
take in at a deeper level the room arrangement in hopes of understanding her planning process
and see where I could change her plans to create a lesson which my students will understand and
benefit from.
For curricula questions, I hope to look into the binder my teacher uses for her lesson
plans, which was provided by the county and analyze the lesson plans they have created for her
to implement. I hope to speak with the other kindergarten teachers in hope of understanding why
certain parts of the curriculum are included in teaching and others are not. Another thing I hope
to discover is why the curriculum for kindergarten has gotten so advanced from the time I was
attending kindergarten.
The last thing I hope to look into is how to create curricula or lesson plan, which would
apply to majority of the students I teach. I hope to achieve this goal by researching what the
students background knowledge is for a topic that I hope to teach, and then through observing
their backgrounds, I would look for texts or materials that would likely relate to those
background knowledge. This would ensure that students are learning ideas and concepts through
lessons that directly relate to their lives.