Hall, Chapter 6- October 4.

On page 114 of Hall’s book she talks about participatory pedagogy and how teachers should move away from traditional teaching and more into constructive teaching. One kind of participatory pedagogy commonly found in many adolescent immigrant community-based language programs is the problem-posing approach. In this approach, students discuss the problems they face in the community outside the class and talk about it inside the classroom. I agree with this approach and believe this approach should be taught in schools. It helped me when I first moved into the United States. I believe my 2nd grade teacher used this approach in her classroom. Although I already knew a bit of American culture from my American father, I learned most of it after moving into the United States. What I learned took time and over that course of time, I encountered several problems where my Philippine culture often clashed with the American culture. My 2nd grade teacher knew the problems that I encountered and had lessons based on my problems.

Now that I am an elementary teacher myself, I want to use the problem-posing approach when teaching cultural problems students can encounter. I believe though that even teaching cultural problems can have difficulties of their own. For example: One of my undergrad classes that prepared me to teach reading in the classroom taught us how to teach and read a book based on two mommies. We were to read the book in class and discuss what having two moms would be like. Ofcourse it’s easy to use the problem-posing approach in teaching the idea of having two moms, but when it actually came time for me to teach it during my student teaching experience, I couldn’t do it.