Pedagogical Philosophy
The inclusion of demographic information should not lead the reader to believe they have a complete picture of the school community at Johnson. While 82% of students fall in the “at-risk” category, I maintain the belief that 100% of students can learn when they receive the appropriate supports, both academically and socio-emotionally. Boutte (2023) argued in Educating African American Students, “there has been an overemphasis on what is wrong with Black students and communities…the intent is to focus on what we as educators can change and what strengths already exist that we may build on”1. With this responsibility in mind, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) will be foremost in guiding the Touchstone Atlas unit. This pedagogical approach makes space for the diversity of strengths among students within the subgroup. Further, it emphasizes starting where students are but not staying there. Meeting students where they are provides a context for building understanding. When new information is presented outside of the student’s current understanding, students are afforded an opportunity to grapple with what they know and come to new understandings. CRP focuses on building student assets as they find value in their own knowledge while being open to learning from others. Students will experience this as they share their atlases with one another and revisit them to make meaning as the school year progresses and new language is discovered. Consequently, tenets of Project Based Learning, “a methodology derived from …constructivist learning theories, which emphasize[s] the role of the learner in constructing knowledge through experience, reflection, and incorporation of new information into pre-existing knowledge” 2 will also guide this unit. The unit’s goal is to promote learning transfer through these student-centered pedagogical approaches. Learning transfer fundamentally means applying past learning to a new situation. Human brains are designed to seek patterns and connections3 and the ways in which these patterns interact in a network is referred to as schema4. However, when developing or teaching a unit, educators must be aware of their tendency to see connections that students may not automatically see due to the discrepancy in experience level with the content. Students must be taught how to recognize conceptual structure. Stern holds that teachers must teach students to intentionally draw upon patterns and structures observed in conceptual relationships when interpreting new phenomena. This unit intends to highlight opportunities for students to make connections through consistent implementation of Mathematical Language Routines (MLRs)5 as students unpack a recurring artifact—supporting them in organizing new information and expanding their schema as 7th grade units build upon one another.
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