"The primary goal of culturally relevant teaching is to empower students to examine the society in which they live and to work for social justice (p. 142)."
Though this way of teaching can be a lot more challenging than traditional approaches, I think that for your students, this is the way in which EVERYONE should be teaching. It is so important for students to be making those connections between home and school; much research has been done that students that can make those connections are able to learn so much more. With the author talking about students working toward social justice, I can only think that she is talking about Banks' transformative approach to teaching (there might be another approach after that that I'm really thinking of); which lends itself to service learning. This in tern leads a teacher to go above and beyond what is expected of them.
What I really don't like is how when teachers are asked if they want to be the teacher that is involved with the community and the lives of his/her students they tend to shy away. "I'm not being paid to do those types of things." I feel that it is my job because I am responsible for the students I will be teaching. If I want my students to be literate and successful, I am surely going to organize a field trip to the library to get them all library cards, or go out of my way to make sure that my students' parents know how to set up a literate environment for their children. It is so easy to blame the parents when your students come into your classroom without being able to read, but it is lame that teachers won't go out of their way to help those struggling parents!
If you want your students to really learn something and have it stick with them forever, service learning is the way to go. If you want to teach content in your classrooms and can easily tie it to literacy practices then service learning is a great way to do so. Its a matter of how much you want to do outside of the regular 8-3:00 school day. Ask yourself this question; "How successful do I want my students to be?" Depending on how successful you want your students to be, then that is how hard you will have to work as their teacher; inside and outside of school.
Teaching is such an empowering profession (as this chapter states) because culturally relevant teaching enables students to take charge of their learning, instead of relying on the teacher to give them their knowledge. Instead the students own their learning.
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I completely agree! Those 'apprentice' situations are the most beneficial for student learning. They are also the most challenging because students are not only required to comprehend necessary information, but also synthesize, apply, and evaluate their knowledge. The higher systems of thinking expand learning far beyond pure comprehension.
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