Strategies for Diversity

A few years ago, I was at Chapman working towards my Single Subject Credential. One of the requirements was to student- teach at a high school.  And boy, was that an interesting experience! With two 9^th grade and one 11^th grade core English class, I had my experience with teaching a widely diverse group of students. While I think I was a little over my head, there were strategies I attempted to help give everyone a voice in the class.

With so much diversity, I thought that having the students free-write about a variety of topics we were discussing in class would help students find their voice about the topics. Everyone has something to say, even if it is some form of misreading. Tagging along self-exploration of these topics with low-stake writing, the students can get into groups of their choosing. Hopefully, this will cause students to contribute before a bigger class discussion.

Besides strategies for developing class discussions, I want all my students to develop their reading skills. I think using smaller, but challenging articles or readings that works with a double-entry journal. By encouraging students to read through the reading and just write what they think they read, takes off the pressure for understanding every specific little thing about the reading. We will also be re-reading material and developing our discussions about the reading.

As for writing, I think all of the students will benefit from process-driven writing that centers on multiple drafts and conversation about writing. We will also focus a lot on the rhetorical situation with context-driven writing. Writing situations that allow students more flexibility in their writing and dissecting the discourse that the context belongs will allow students from a variety of linguistical backgrounds to do the work.

Grading will be on individual improvement and based upon only those things taught in class. Small grammatical problems will only be assessed if students worked on these concepts beforehand. Comments written to the students on their essays will be individual with only a few things identified as needing to be changed/worked on.