The New York Times Magazine published an article ostensibly about President Obama's mother, but with some insights useful to us who are interest in culturally appropriate education. The author attributes the President's demeanor to his years in Indonesia, where a low-key, unexcitable persona is considered appropriate. Prior to reading this, the wisdom to which I had been exposed was that because he was the first African American running for president, he had deliberately suppressed anything that might be considered "black rage" and therefore frighten certain segments of the voting public. The Indonesian connection makes more sense to me based upon my own experience as a teacher of culturally diverse students. Some cultures encourage eye contact and others do not. Some prefer competitiveness and others cooperation. Some parents encourage and others discourage children's participation in adult conversation. When a teacher is from one culture and the student from another, perceptions of untruthfulness (why won't you look me in the eye?) or ignorance (never raises a hand, does not participate in class discussions) and cheating (shared answers) can interfere with mutual understanding. How do we handle this as teachers and as students? My younger daughter has a learning disability. Once it was diagnosed and she became old enough for self advocacy, she would say to each new teacher, "I can take notes, or I can participate in class discussion, but my LD prevents me from doing both at the same time. What do you prefer I do in your class?" What would be a similar conversation that could take place between teacher and parent or student? How could a parent coach their child about appropriate classroom behavior?

Context is everything

Working with a student Monday on Business Math, the issue of contextual learning came up again. We were learning about disability insurance. The first part of the chapter was a review of arithmetic: multiplying by percentages, adding numbers with two decimal places, etc. No explanation, no context, just problems. The student is a nice, obedient kid, so he just muscled his way through (he had some problems with long division and multiplication of multi-digit numbers by each other). Finally, I asked him if he knew why we were asked to work these problems. He admitted that he had no idea.
I explained to him that benefits to be paid are often expressed as percentages of monthly or yearly income.
Then, we continued with the chapter, which explained the hows and whys and legalities of disability insurance and then finally that benefits to be paid are often expressed as percentages of monthly or yearly income. How hard would it have been for the textbook authors to put the explanation first and then given the problems? Knowing that the result needed to be in dollars and cents would certainly have helped him.