Kenny Chen

Please post any comments and questions and any concern you have. Thank You.

Principle 7: Students should learn about the values shared by virtually all cultural groups (e.g., justice, equality, freedom, peace, compassion, and charity).Principle 8: Teachers should help students acquire the social skills needed to interact effectively with students from other racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups.Principle 9: Schools should provide opportunities for students from different racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups to interact socially under conditions designed to reduce fear and anxiety.School Governance, Organization and EquityPrinciple 10: A school’s organizational strategies should ensure that decision-making is widely shared and that members of the school community learn collaborative skills and dispositions in order to create a caring environment for students.Principle 11: Leaders should develop strategies that ensure that all public schools, regardless of their locations, are funded equitably.AssessmentPrinciple 12: Teachers should use multiple culturally sensitive techniques to assess  These principles are derived from research and practice. They are designed to help educational practitioners in all types of schools increase student academic achievement and improve inter-roup skills. Another aim is to help schools successfully meet the challenges of and benefit from the diversity that characterizes the
United States and its schools                         

When I was a reading a article from my math method class, I was a little bit upset that the article was just focusing implementing multicultural mathematics education for white, black and Hispanic students. I didn’t find anything that it mentions about setting accommodation

for Asian students. The article doesn’t seem to be effective to help out all students from different culture background.

Alternatively, I found out twelve principles school should establish in order to approach ideal multicultural mathematics education effectively. The first six essential principles are summarized below.Teacher Learning                                                                                                 Principle 1: Professional development programs should help teachers understand the complex characteristics of ethnic groups within
U. S. society and the ways in which race, ethnicity, language, and social class interact to influence student behavior.Student LearningPrinciple 2: Schools should ensure that all students have equitable opportunities to learn and to meet high standards.Principle 3: The curriculum should help students understand that knowledge is socially constructed and reflects researchers’ personal experiences as well as the social, political, and economic contexts in which they live and work.Principle 4: Schools should provide all students with opportunities to participate in extra- and co curricular activities that develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes that increase academic achievement and foster positive interracial relationships.Inter-group RelationsPrinciple 5: Schools should create or make salient superordinate crosscutting group memberships in order to improve inter-group relations.Principle 6: Students should learn about stereotyping and other related biases that have negative effects on racial and ethnic relations.

In order to reduce my stress and to help all my kids out, here are some of the short term and long term solutions that I come up with.
1)Set up postive classroom atmosphere, greet the
students anytime to come in the class.
2)Encourage students who don’t do the homework to
copy down the one that I go over on the board. Let
them know they can still get partial credit.
3)Stamp students’ index card anytime they participate.
The number of stamps they have counts toward the
participation points and extra credit.
4)Let disengaged students to know they can get some
bonus points to raise up their grade if they are
wiliing to work on a special project.
5)Try to set up problems for quiz and test are
similar to the one students have experienced on
lecture note, classwork and homework.
6)Take out the worst who is the leader of all the
trouble makers out of the class. Call the parent
and set up parents-teacher conference. Let the
parent to sign the contract form.
7)Invite parents to come to observe their children in
class, especially the trouble makers’ parents.
8)Write daily progress report to parent and ask them
sign in case they have no time to come by.
9)Never put students’ name on the board for warning,
write down their name privately.
10)Suggest students to come after school for tutoring
rathering than telling them to come for detention.

Setting up intervention classes for low level students might be one of the great approaches for school. However, having the bad mix of misbehave and low self esteemed students in the same class just torture the teachers. It’s just a challenged task for me to teach three Algebra A intervention and one Geometry P.Most Students in my intervention class are not stupid, but they are just lazy and having problem to concentrate. Some of them are easily distracted by the others who are talkative. Some students who are highly active just get up their seat any time they like and walk to the pencil sharpner pretending sharping their pencils. Some of them even carve on the desk anytime you don’t see them what they are doing. Some of the them who are not willing to learn just sit down and draw. It is nightmare everyday for teachers to deal with those lazy, careless, disrespectful students.

My school site rarely provides math teachers any curriculum materials to set up lesson plan and assessment; especially when I was getting started to teach all  the intervention classes, I had no idea where to get started. The only reference I had was a standard pacing guide, then the rest of that is all by myself. With the tremendous support from Edhelper.com, not only I can easily download the corresponding worksheets for the in-class work, homework, quizzes and tests, but also I can use those variety fun puzzles as the group activities for my intervention classes. Furthermore,  I like the waythat website offers teachers to pick and select the topics and difficult levels to create study worksheets. Also, the word problems are realistically reflecting  the need  of Algebra I and Geometry in people’s daily life.To help my students prepare for the upcoming CAHSEE, I apply a lot of those word problems as my teaching resources. Most students are effectively engaged  and in the process of improving since they have been practicing the similar problems related to the CAHSEE released questions.

The website that I like the most and it is really helps me a lot is namedEdhelper.com. Many math teachers spend extra hours to create worksheets and interesting math activities in class in order to get student engaged . One thing I always remind myself, working as an intern math teacher is supposed be working smart, but it is not working hard. Edhelper.com is the best  teacher resources website I trust and recommend to the other math teachers because you can find many practice worksheets and fun activities related with varieties of math topic from basic arithmetic  to Geometry

In my Algebra A and Geometry class, I always remind my students to show work and box up the final the answer. However, some students only give me the answer. Also, I encourage students to make up all the missing homework so they still can get some partial credit. Occasionally, few students are willing to do it. I want all my students to realize that success in math is built on the hard work and scarify of time.

In contrast, students believe that success in math is based on intelligence and shortcut. There is no shortcut to bring success in math. A bright student might use less time to complete his or her math homework than a struggling student. But the situation can be changed if that struggling student can be more aggressive to ask question and pays the best effort. Besides of incongruent believe, another issues that I concern is that students including A and B students forget what they have learned easily. Homework is one of the ways that students can get practice on the new learning materials. Also, assigning old materials in homework can give students opportunity to review and help teachers to assess students’ prior knowledge.

Despite all the negative factors that I have to handle, I am still looking forward to help all my students succeed in math. For the students that I ever taught before, the one I am teaching now and the group I will teach in the future, I don’t expect them to remember me, but I guarantee they learn something useful from me.  

I still remember the quotation that I wrote for the graduation year book in high school, “The most important thing is not the grade, but it is the knowledge and skills”. Six years later, I still use the same kind of theme as my teaching philosophy. Grade can not last forever, but knowledge and skills can.      

As a math teacher working in a high school this year and junior high last year, I discover many students are coming to school for grade, but not for education. For example, I have some African American students usually ask me how to raise their grades so they can play football or basketball for the school. Some students even beg me to give them at least a D or C so they can pass Algebra A and move on to Algebra B. Parents even check with me on a weekly bases regarding their sons and daughters’ performance. High expectation from parents or guardians, tremendous peer pressure and influence of multimedia not only destruct the perspectives that students see education, but they also ruin the value of education.