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How Culture Impacts Teaching and Learning: Our Mexican Students. Cultural Differences: How Culture Impacts Learning. Why? Who? How?. Why?. WHY?.
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How Culture Impacts Teaching and Learning: Our Mexican Students
Cultural Differences: How Culture Impacts Learning • Why? • Who? • How?
WHY? • By the year 2026 the current number of LEP students in our schools (8 million) will conservatively approximate 15 million students, or 25% of total elementary and secondary school enrollments. IT WILL BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR TO SERVE IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL SETTING, OR EVEN IN ANY PRIVATE SCHOOL CONTEXT, IN WHICH THE STUDENTS ARE NOT RACIALLY, CULTURALLY, OR LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE.
WHO? • U.S. Census data shows that the Hispanic population grew faster in Georgia than in any state in the nation from 2000 to 2002. This story of growth is repeated throughout the Southeast in North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama. • At the same time, the 2002 report by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research states, “the lowest Hispanic graduation rates are in the Southeast and Hispanic children in Georgia are less likely that anywhere else in the country to graduate on time with a diploma. Two out of three Hispanic children in Georgia’s class of 1998 didn’t earn a diploma with their colleagues.”
Situational Context • 40% live in poverty • Rural Mexico: 25 million farmers, lack of infrastructure • Living conditions • San Luis Potosí, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Zacatecas
Schools in Rural Mexico • Instruction limited to elementary grades • “School Fees” • Teacher salaries ($7.70 per day)
Value Orientations • VALUE ORIENTATIONS • HUMAN NATURE basically good mixture good/evil basically evil • RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN humans dominate harmony nature • HUMANS AND NATURE • RELATIONSHIPS individual group oriented collateral • BETWEEN HUMANS • PREFERRED PERSONALITY doing growing (spiritual) being • TIME ORIENTATION future oriented present oriented past
Value Orientations • Family • Patriarchy • Religion • Time • Space
Cultural Differences Between U.S. and Mexican Education • Ownership • Value • Perception
Learning Styles • Cognitive (Global versus analytical) • Communication (Indirect versus direct) • Relational (Collective versus individual)
Specific Strategies • Create heterogeneous learning groups • Process writing, reciprocal teaching, whole language activities • Acknowledge and use existing student language
Specific Strategies • Deficit-based model: educators acknowledge that reasons for historical academic underachievement of Latino students could be inappropriate cognitive, cultural, and linguistic teaching methods, but do not believe that their own teaching methods cause students’ problems; it is the students who are the problem.
¿Preguntas? • jholzman@kennesaw.edu