Pecha Kucha : Culturally Responsive Teaching: Finding Identity
August 2013, I Lisa McDonald, eagerly waited in my first classroom for my twenty two new students that I would be teaching for the next 180 days. Being fresh out of college, I thought I was prepared for this new endeavor. I passed all my classes, completed my student teaching, and thought I had been taught everything I needed to know. Boy was I wrong! I understood that some of the students in front of me came from bilingual homes and varied in their language development. What I was unprepared for was the social emotional and disconnect that these students feel sitting in a classroom. Day after day, I witnessed disengagement, anxiousness, and hesitancy to speak and participate. Questions swirled around in my mind, “was it something wrong with me as a teacher”, “were my students bored and being disrespectful”, “was education not important?” I think the hardest part was I couldn’t completely relate. I feared not being able to connect and build relationships with my MLL ...
