Top 3 Ideas for my Teaching Tool Box

Cada cabeza es un mundo/Each mind is a World
Every immigrant student that comes to our schools is a reflection of their cultural upbringing and this shapes and controls their ability to adapt to Canadian society. When I see a student for who she really is, a human being, I begin to do my job as their teacher. A student's cultural background influences whether they can do homework or not, how she sees me as her teacher and my communication with her parents. Each student's cultural heritage and languages enriches the classroom and her prowess in living in a bi/multicultural world helps her to be in the long run a richer individual. Immigrant students need to realize that their language and cultural abilities are an advantage in their personal and future professional life. The more that I can learn about the cultures that make up my school's culture the better teacher I will be and students will feel welcome, empowered, validated, and safe to learn in my classroom.

Merge the student's world brain with their school brain (Buehl pg 17-18):
Our challenge is through innovative teaching help students to make connections between what they learn to their world. We need to make learning relevant and ask students to complete projects that engage them not enrage them . James Henri a Teacher Librarian from Australia introduced me to the concept of the school library not as situated in the school but the school in the library and then he further challenged me to think of the whole world as our library. Our students live in a virtual world with few barriers and we ask them to do poster projects about a short story they read. We need to challenge our students to learn how to be more effective local and global citizens. Anything less is betrayal.

Be Strategic about Strategies
Dare to try new strategies with classes but be strategic in choosing strategies as they have to be a means of fulfilling learning objectives. Bruehl states that "what the students are learning is more important than which strategy is used" (7) so we fail students if we just text frame and RAFT them to educational death . Solid curricula is the foundation of all learning. Use a variety of strategies to meet the diverse learning styles of all our students and be aware of how our learning style influences how we teach. Talk to other teachers and teacher librarians about the strategies that they use and build in mini professional sharing sessions into your school year that promote authentic learning.