Rama Kadri

Professor Howland

UCLA EDU-X 426.3

11 March 2018

Week 8: Let’s Apply: Personal Reflection

I truly feel as though this course has offered me a great opportunity to reflect upon my

pedagogical perspectives, as well as the ways in which they inform my everyday instruction,

especially with regard to my English Language Learners.

For example, this class has sincerely reinvigorated my passion, and even deepened my

understanding and appreciation of what scholar Luis Moll calls students’ “funds of knowledge,”

or, to paraphrase, students’ home lives— their home languages/Englishes, their literacies, and

their passions. Breaking through the figurative “fourth wall” of the classroom, and intentionally,

as well as meaningfully, seeking to acknowledge and incorporate elements of students’ funds of

knowledge into my everyday teaching practices, in my opinion, deepens my pupils’ learning and

engagement with learning as a whole in considerable and incredible ways. I also feel as though

by inviting students’ outside worlds into the classroom, we can in turn meet students halfway,

and hopefully, as a result, work to close the achievement gap and the gap in relevance that

students often do not see when teachers negate their home lives.

Furthermore, expanding upon my perspectives of literacies, and integrating multimedia,

for instance, will allow me to captivate learners’ attention and also allow me to introduce them to

21st century literacies that they will certainly use as they move forward in life, regardless of what
career they intend to pursue. This, once again, can also function as the foundation for reaching

those who might otherwise feel disinterested in English Language Arts. My goal, ultimately,

after reading Elizabeth Daley’s article, especially, is to make sure to bring learning to life, in this

way, and push my students to deeper understandings and inspire more innovative ways of

learning.

Moreover, this course has also encouraged me to consider the importance of the five core

components of reading, and has allowed me to take a step back in truly thinking about how I

scaffold my students’ language development through these specific strategies, such as

vocabulary acquisition, and comprehension, to name only two. The Photobomb essay, in

particular, gave me the immense opportunity to pause and ponder what I already do, as well as

the ways in which I can develop this further, in the future. This assignment in particular offered

me a chance to grow as an educator, as I feel that before this course and specific task, I often

jumped straight into analysis with my students, before striving to access their prior knowledge,

develop and discuss key vocabulary, and even cover foundation comprehension. I am extremely

grateful that I had the chance to reflect further in this way, especially for the benefit of my

students.

In giving thought to thematic instruction, and the ways in which we developed our

subsequent, quite detailed lesson plans, I feel as though this approach pushed me to go into great

depth in considering particular key tropes that I want to serve as the foundation of my lessons. In

the case of my lessons, specifically, I chose to focus on the ways in which heroism was

exemplified through the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Developing comprehensive reading and

writing based lesson plans revolving around a major theme ultimately gave me the chance to

organize my lessons in far more structured ways than I have done previously. In fact, these are
lessons that I hope to implement next year, as I feel they will offer a strong foundation,

especially to my English Language Learners, as they are centered around a common, and yet

multifaceted element. This will allow them to have a “sun” around which their analysis will

“orbit” around, in turn allowing them to go deeper into the vast solar system of critical thinking,

if you will. I foresee that this will help to structure my lessons in stronger, more meaningful

ways, and will push their analytical skills in significant, rigorous, and relevant ways.

Overall, I feel extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to participate and engage

with these types of readings and assignments. I genuinely feel as though these tasks have pushed

me to consider thought-provoking questions, led me to expand upon my pedagogical

perspectives, approaches, and strategies, and have ultimately made me a more thoughtful

educator to those who matter most—my students.

Thank you, Professor Howland, for a great class J!