Effectiveness on Teaching Ideas and Picture Books

The picture book that I will be evaluating today is Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Before I dive in, a bit of background on this book is Chrysanthemum is a little girl who has a very unique name. Growing up she loved her name, until she went to her first day of school and got made fun of because of it. She would complain to her parents and they would always say your name is "absolutely perfect" (Page 20). Eventually a music teacher, Mrs. Twinkle stood up for Chrysanthemum and said it was a beautiful name. This gave Chrysanthemum great confidence and all of the students who made fun of her, wanted to be called a flower name. Now that we know a bit about the book lets move on to evaluating it. 

This book shows that it is a good and okay to be unique. If this book were to be read in class it would encourage students to express pride and be confident without denying value and dignity to others. This book shows how making fun of peers can hurt their self confidence and how it affects them even at home, so I feel like students would see that just because someone is different from them doesn't mean that they should be called rude things or be made fun of.  This would allow for students to have an understanding and respect for others and let them feel confident in their own identity. 

This book reflects that everyone has a different identity and there isn't a person that is the same. It shows us that we should feel proud about our identity by having Chrysanthemums parents tell her that her and her name are "absolutely perfect" (Page 13). I think this book is good to read to students, so that they establish identity. This also establishes that it isn't okay to judge someone or say hurtful things based on others differences. 

Overall, I would use this book in my future classroom to show my students that words hurt and again it isn't okay to judge someone on who they are, what their name is, or what they do. This book will teach students many things including classroom relationships, which I will touch on in a bit. 

Some instructional ideas that I feel like I can use in my future classroom is the lesson plan for the "Where I am From" poem (Welcoming Schools) and the classroom relationship technique from the article Creating an Identity-Safe Classroom by Edutopia. 

The first instructional idea I will evaluate is the "Where I'm From" poem. What is a "Where I'm From" poem? This poem is a way for the teacher to get to know their students (Page 1 of Welcoming Schools Lesson Plan). This poem allows for students to talk about their family, where they live, activities they enjoy, religion, basically anything they feel like is important to them. This poem is meant to be inclusive (Page 1 of Welcoming Schools Lesson Plan) and it shows how students all have their own identity. This activity does acknowledge students multiple identities by having different aspects that tie them to many groups. For instance, a student could put that they go to church every Sunday with their parents. That would tie them to a Christian identity, as well as a son or daughter identity. 

This poem would also nurture positive social identities to multiple groups in society depending on what a student put on it. This assignment has many steps to make sure that the students feel "more comfortable sharing about their families and living situations when they write their poem (Page 2 Welcoming Schools). By doing this, students will be confident in what the write. This means that what students put on their poem is something they have a positive attitude to. For instance, a student could put something about enjoying math as well as something about swimming competitions every day. Using context clues we can see that they have a positive attitude about school because they like math and swimming because they do it every day. This would put them in different groups of being an athlete and being a student. 

By having the steps to make sure students feel comfortable in what they write, this invites them to feel confident and express pride in themselves. Students won't feel cautious because the teacher in this lesson plan showed how many families are diverse (Page 2). This also lets them have a healthy self esteem without denying the value of others experiences because again they know everyone has a different story. The students will know that because their situation is one way doesn't mean their classmates is the same and they can respect that. 

Overall, I really like this instructional idea. This poem allows for students to express themselves and not fear that they will be made fun of. It lets them show the teacher who they are and what their background is, all while having a fun experience. This teaching idea/ lesson encourages students to embrace their identity and it is definitely something that I will implement in my future classroom. 

The next instructional idea that I would like to implement in my future classroom is the Classroom Relationship technique. This technique has the teacher be warm, kind, and available while learning and has positive student relationships (Edutopia). I feel very passionately about having good student and teacher relationships in order to have a good class. I know that in my personal experience I have always trusted and done better in classes where I had my teacher be kind and helpful to the students. For instance, I had a high school teacher who always checked on the well being of me and made sure that I understood everything. I had a good relationship with this teacher and did great in the class. She still continues to impact my life and how I do school today. Whereas, I also had a teacher who didn't want anyone talking (students relationships) and made us just sit in her class. This class didn't have a good environment and overall made everyone dread going to this class. This goes to show that relationships in a classroom are extremely important.

This Classroom Relationship technique lets students express their pride and be confident without denying value and dignity of other because it makes sure that no one is "humiliated or criticized" (Edutopia). This technique allows for students to have good relationships with their peers by treating them kindly and with a respect. The teacher ensures this happens by treating their students the same way and being attentive to create a sense of belonging (Edutopia). 

In the article Mexican Americans Don't Value Education by R. Valencia and M. Black, it states that "100 Latino students (overwhelmingly Mexican Ameri-cans) deemed at risk by their school districts." Having classroom relationships creates a sense of belonging, so if teachers and students would be kind and create trust than some of the Latinos may have not be seen as at risk. I feel like if the teachers tried (like in this technique) than these students in the article wouldn't be seen as outcasts. What I am getting at is, many people can be impacted negatively (personally, mentally, physically) by the relationships they create, so this instructional idea ensures that students and teacher are creating positive ones.

This instructional idea also allows students to acknowledge multiple identities. In order for students to create a relationship, they have to share information about themselves. This will show the students that they may have some similar identities and different identities. For instance, students could share the identity as a daughter, but not share the identity as a sister. 

I feel like this instructional idea is very important because it creates the concept of kindness and understanding in your classroom. It shows that having good teacher-students and student-student relationships is important for learning and that relationships can impact how a student is viewed. Overall, this is something that I felt strongly about prior to reading into and now it make me want to implement it even more!

Work Cited

Where I’m from: Family, community and poetry. (n.d.). https://assets2.hrc.org/welcoming-schools/documents/WS_Lesson_Where_Im_From_Poetry.pdf

Cohn-Vargas, B. (2015, October 21). Creating an identity-safe classroom. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-an-identity-safe-classroom-becki-cohn-vargas-dorothy-steele

Valencia, R.R. & Black, M. (2002). “Mexican Americans don’t value education! On the basis of the myth, mythmaking, and debunking.Links to an external site.

” Journal of Latinos and Education, 1(2), 81-103.