Chapter 5 - Making Connections

Our job as educators is to make the connection of the subject matter with the student learner. This seems like a simple thing to do, but many of us fail to make the connection. Sometimes this is the result of experience, cultural differences, and prior knowledge of the student learners. As educators, we are not great in all things and we have multiple intelligences as well, so how do we leverage our intelligence with the student learner to make connections, particularly with abstract concepts to a group of learners with vastly different prior experiences. We adapt and push beyond the limits of mediocrity, especially when the proposed concept is foundational in nature. This month, we are in Black History Month and there are events and celebrations throughout the month, particularly in the African-American community. Today, I attended my father's church and their was a ceremony for two trailblazers in politics. He happened to be one of the honorees. On my way home, I wondered how do you teach the concepts Jim Crow and institutional racism to youth. They seem like abstract concepts to folks that have never experienced it directly, especially when that era seems like it was far off in the past. For example, I thought that the Poll Tax was something used after Reconstruction until Brown vs. Board of Education. In recent years, I asked my dad which presidential election did he first vote in, and he told me Kennedy verses Nixon. He had to pay a poll tax in Richmond, Virginia. Before that question and discussion, the poll tax was just another concept without any foundation or background. Could you imagine that the segregationalist philosophy was so strong to deny education to African-Americans that a county school system was shutdown in order to evade the Brown vs. Board of Education decision? Compare and contrast the education conditions in school districts today that have inadequate facilities, books, and staff that are not making the connection with many youth in dropout factories. Would kids be as apathetic to learning if they had the prior knowledge of the struggle legally and socially to achieve parity in education? I follow the philosophy of he who does not know his history is doomed to repeat it. Many of the struggles for social justice did not come without a price, some paid the ultimate price of death so others would have a better life. References Burmark, L. (2011), They Snooze You Lose: The Educator's Guide To Successful Presentations