Putting Cultural Competency into Practice: The Empathy, Patience, and Respect Enacted in Full-Time Student Teaching after Study Abroad
Faculty Sponsor(s)
Kena Avila
Location
Jereld R. Nicholson Library: Grand Avenue
Subject Area
Education
Description
As teachers we are called to provide all our students with enriching and challenging curriculum that values and honors culture, language, and identity, while advocating for our students to reach their goals. This is the service of teaching that calls us to become advocates for our students. Framing the teaching and learning of our English Learner/Emergent Bilingual (EL/EB) students in this way requires us to examine our own cultural lenses and biases in deep intentional ways where we can critically examine systems and structures that favor some students and disservice others. As a group of pre-service teachers traveled, studied, taught, and reflected during a semester abroad, themes of service, responsibility and advocacy emerged as necessary pieces of becoming a culturally competent teacher of EL/EB students. These themes became evident in their practice during a full-time student teaching experience where the same student teachers who studied abroad demonstrated empathy, patience, and respect with their EL/EB students. While we cannot solely attribute these qualities directly with the study abroad experience, when examined as part of a cohesive teacher education program that focuses on reflection and the development of culturally competent teachers, the data from this study confirms that intentional experiences of education, immersion, and excursions benefited student teachers as they put their own theories into practice with K-5 EL/EB students.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Mackenzie; Namiranian, Vesta; and Seymour, Morgan, "Putting Cultural Competency into Practice: The Empathy, Patience, and Respect Enacted in Full-Time Student Teaching after Study Abroad" (2016). Linfield University Student Symposium: A Celebration of Scholarship and Creative Achievement. Event. Submission 72.
https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/symposium/2016/all/72
Putting Cultural Competency into Practice: The Empathy, Patience, and Respect Enacted in Full-Time Student Teaching after Study Abroad
Jereld R. Nicholson Library: Grand Avenue
As teachers we are called to provide all our students with enriching and challenging curriculum that values and honors culture, language, and identity, while advocating for our students to reach their goals. This is the service of teaching that calls us to become advocates for our students. Framing the teaching and learning of our English Learner/Emergent Bilingual (EL/EB) students in this way requires us to examine our own cultural lenses and biases in deep intentional ways where we can critically examine systems and structures that favor some students and disservice others. As a group of pre-service teachers traveled, studied, taught, and reflected during a semester abroad, themes of service, responsibility and advocacy emerged as necessary pieces of becoming a culturally competent teacher of EL/EB students. These themes became evident in their practice during a full-time student teaching experience where the same student teachers who studied abroad demonstrated empathy, patience, and respect with their EL/EB students. While we cannot solely attribute these qualities directly with the study abroad experience, when examined as part of a cohesive teacher education program that focuses on reflection and the development of culturally competent teachers, the data from this study confirms that intentional experiences of education, immersion, and excursions benefited student teachers as they put their own theories into practice with K-5 EL/EB students.
