Chapter 6 Turning on Learning Before-After Lesson Plan Analysis Paper Unfortunately in the United States, people generally think

in terms of individual opportunity. Few often ask the larger questions of Who says so?, Who benefits most when people believe it is true?, How are we taught to accept that it is true?, and What alternative ways of looking at the problem can we see?. Further more schools are usually not democratic places like the authors in Turning on Learning point out. The power structure and flow of decision making takes on a top down type of structure. Multicultural education places justice, democracy, and sustainability at its core center. In order for a teacher to educate students in this approach they must first be familiar with issues that are of concern to the communities that their school serves. A teacher must also be careful when teaching because they can inadvertently end up teaching stereotypes and reinforcing ignorance. The goal is to empower each student to ask questions and not passively accept the perspective of the dominant class. This can be a difficult skill to teach. Learning to listen to other points of view can be difficult and requires patience and respect due to the fact that there may be a number of differing opinions or even a product of ignorance; while still others may have been taught that their viewpoints dont count. The first before and after lesson plan I choose was on the Environmental Studies. The main differences between these two lessons was that in the after lesson plan the students needed to research the issues in their own community and how people were solving them. They needed to write a letter to the community newspaper, state or federal representative presenting an environmental ecological problem and offer solutions to the problem. Tour a local factory and learn what steps the owners had taken to reduce emissions for pollution control, how it affects the local community, what the financial price was, and what the social and financial price would before the community. Not only did they need to look to see how these issues were affecting their community, but how they were also affecting other countries as well.

The second before and after lesson plan I choose to do was on the Rate and Line Graph. In the before lesson plan the basic idea of the lesson plan is to only teach students to complete a data table and express rates as a percentages. This is a very math centered activity. The after lesson plan asks students to complete a rate table but to also compare poverty rates among different racial groups. This brings in the concept of there being a difference between different racial groups and allows for a discussion on racism to begin on the topic. The changes in the Rate and Line Graph lesson plans is allowing for student to start talking about the issue of poverty and racism. It allows for students to start asking some difficult questions regarding this topic. The second lesson plan allows the teacher to get available data from the state and local agencies so that students will be able to relate this information to their own community and discuss poverty in a very personal sense. This allows students to start asking some difficult questions about why there is such a difference and how racism plays a part in poverty. The changes for the second lesson plan for the Environmental/Ecological Study was appropriate. I believe that the after plan has students investigating and attempting to eliminate environmental problems in their own community. I believe that it also takes this a step further by having students not only investigate problems in their own communities, but in other countries as well. It also goes so far as to teach the students a new respect for how the environmental problems are dealt with in other countries and asks students to identify if the U.S. policies and practices are creating problems elsewhere. This is a very important step because unfortunately the US is not a leader in environmental issues, it actually can be thought more of a country that are creating many problems for the environment and it is very important for students to be aware of issues like this. I believe that the changes in the Rate and Line Graph lesson plans are very much appropriate when it comes to social justice. It encourages a dialogue to begin in the class room on the issue of poverty and

racism. Students are encouraged in this lesson plan to explore this topic. Such questions like the differences in wages between females and males can be discussed and also how can a family earning minimum wage survive and what type of quality of life are they expected to have. Another good question for the students to think about is what the difference between low and high paying jobs is and who makes that determination. Is it a fair determination and why? Such as: does a lawyer do more work than a worker at McDonalds? Who makes this determination and Why? As a student I would have to say I found this type of approach being taught sparingly in my high school years. My English teacher was often giving us assignments in which we created essays about our ideas on the equality of woman and equal pay or the rights of woman to have abortions. These topics generally engaged me in the assignment and brought out a passion for the writing assignment. I found the assignment took on a new purpose and suddenly school work and how to write a good essay wasnt so bland, I had to present my stance on a topic and support it with facts. There was a sudden reason as to why I was learning these writing skills. I was being able to put them to use in order to work on swaying someones way of thinking. I was using them to help me debate the issues that I felt strongly about. It finally meant more than just a mere grade in the book, a reason to pass the course, and get my credit for completing the course. As I observe in the classroom I can see how these topics still engage students. They help show the students to question what is being told to them and think critically about it. It helps to empower the students and show them that they can make a difference and they can do so with the skills and education that they are learning. Everyone has their own opinions on topics and as human beings we like to share these opinions. These opinions and beliefs help show the students why science is important. The act of experimenting and testing hypothesis are critical in proving scientific ideas and gaining data. Debating and talking about

controversial ideas helps us to use science concepts in real world examples. These types of assignments show why learning these types of concepts apply to our lives and why as teachers we are teaching them. I believe as a future teacher especially in the area of science this approach has merit. I remember how relevant to my life these types of approaches were in my English class in high school. There are many topics that are controversial in the area of science; from the topic of evolution to the subject of environmental responsibility and the role of corporations in pollution. These are real world issues that will help the students identify with and scaffold learning of the topics that as a future teacher I will be teaching.