A Diverse Community of Learners
Annie Schroeder has been a faculty member at St. George Catholic School in Seattle for 15 years, teaching practically everything, from kindergarten to fifth grade to middle school science. For the past few years, she’s taught fifth grade half-time while acting as the school’s development director, and is now teaching fifth grade as she serves as the school’s vice principal. St. George is a small, culturally diverse school, with a current enrollment of 150 students in prekindergarten though grade eight. “We have immigrant families from the Philippines (more than 50 percent of our students), Vietnam, Mexico, other Central American countries, Samoa, and China,” Annie says. “About 15 percent of our students are African American. Caucasian kids are the minority here.”
“Teaching and learning in such a diverse community is an absolute joy. Our children don't need classes in diversity, it’s just part of who we are,” Annie says. She takes this diversity into account as she plans lessons for her fifth-graders, and it was a challenge to plan American history lessons for students who have little personal connection to the subject. “We honor civil rights all over the world,” she says, “so looking at a period of great change in the social order in the U.S. made sense.” The pivotal period of the early 1960s civil rights struggle became the focus of Annie’s Intel® Teach Program unit plan. "Civil rights are very important to our school community. Another great reason for focusing on civil rights in the 1960s was so we could read a wonderful book together that portrays the era: The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963.”
Technology: Scaffolding for New Learning
Technologies old and new were instrumental as Annie prepared her class to read the novel that supports their study of civil rights in America: The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 (by Christopher Paul Curtis, Delacorte, 1995). She wanted her students to become familiar with life in the times of the Watsons so they could appreciate the gravity of what befalls the family. As Annie elaborates, “This period in American history means a lot to me because I was alive when the events happened. I couldn’t assume a common experience or history for the kids—they’re too young, and they can’t even draw on their parents’ experiences; most of their parents come from other countries.” From studying the Jim Crow laws to listening to “Yakety Yak” (protagonist Kenny’s favorite song), students used the Internet as a powerful resource for getting ready to read.
An old technology found new purpose in Annie's class, too. In The Watsons, the family’s belongings are stuffed into the car for their trek from Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama, and their record player gets a place of honor. Annie recalls, “I realized kids wouldn’t know what a record player was! It figures prominently in the story, so I went rooting around in a back closet and found one under a lot of junk. I borrowed some records from another teacher, and the class listened to them. Kids were interested in the weird old technology, and they could appreciate the record player’s significance in the story.”
For anyone who considers teaching about the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, Annie recommends another resource as well, the film 4 Little Girls (Spike Lee, director;available on DVD from HBO Home Video). “It’s a little above the fifth-grade level, but I showed it in bits and pieces. Kids really remembered the images in the documentary, such as Sheriff ‘Bull’ Conner turning water hoses on little kids—it really brought it home to them.”
Getting up to Speed with Technology
Due to a considerable grass-roots effort, St. George is up to speed with technology. Annie notes, “Our community has focused on raising funds for technology over the last few years. Our parent group has had a concession at Safeco Field [where the Seattle Mariners play], and the parents did all of the wiring for the school computer network. We have a jog-a-thon every year, and for several years the proceeds from that funded the purchase of computers.” Annie is a resourceful person, and as the school’s development director she sought and was awarded a Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT)grant as well as a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant. The school now has a networked lab and five or six networked computers in each classroom.
Annie’s technology interests used to be one step ahead of the school’s resources, but happily, she says, technology resources are now in place. “As the technology improves I can do more with this teaching unit,” Annie says. “I’ve embellished it already since we’ve gotten Internet access—kids can do more research online, and take online quizzes.”Annie credits the success of her teaching plan to the structured planning time the Intel® Teach Program course afforded her. “It was a real benefit to me, to have a dedicated period of time to develop a teaching unit I valued. The Intel course gave me an opportunity to think about how technology could add quality to these lessons. It was at heart a curriculum course, not just an applications course. I gained a lot from the class, and from the teachers who participated with me.”
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