RESILIENCY IN ACTION:
TO ADAPT, PERSEVERE,
AND SUCCEED DESPITE
ADVERSITY.
University of
San Diego
Christine Kane
Aja Booker
Fall 2011
ALL OF US ARE LEARNERS
Think of something you learned how
to do recently.
How did you learn how to do it?
Who helped you? What helped you?
What steps did you take to learn it?
I DON’T SHINE, IF YOU DON’T SHINE
The ways we organize classroom life should seek
to make children feel significant and cared about -by the teacher and by each other.
Unless students feel emotionally and physically safe,
they won't share real thoughts and feelings.
Discussions will be tiny and dishonest.
We need to design activities where students
learn to trust and care for each other.
Classroom life should, to the greatest extent possible,
prefigure the kind of democratic and just society we envision
and thus contribute to building that society.
INTELLIGENCE & EXPERIENCE
Students who under-perform often have backgrounds that
have not primed them for mainstream schooling ’s ways of
learning, speaking, reading, and thinking.
They are immigrants, great -grandchildren of immigrants,
speakers of non-mainstream dialects, special education
students, and others who have not been immersed in the
academic thought and talk that is valued in school.
These students need rich experiences that supports their
content knowledge, thinking skills and literacy skills.
Students need curricula and teaching that connect to their
cultural and cognitive roots, and they need accelerated
learning because their high -performing peers do not just
linger around, waiting for them to catch up.
SUPERHEROES NEED NOT APPLY
 Scaffolding and Rescuing are not synonymous.
 Both rescuing and scaffolding stem from a
foundation of collaboration and assistance.
 Both are helping behaviors.
 Both scenarios denote a more capable person
(the tutor) supporting a needier individual (the
learner). Despite these connections, rescuing
and scaffolding can often be polar opposites.
 The primary difference: AGENCY.
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY
Vision is the ability to see the opportunities
within your current circumstances.
Funds of Knowledge (Moll)
Academic Self-Efficacy vs. Self-Confidence
Removal of Ego
“NO OPT OUT” STRATEGY
 I Don’t Know…..Yet.
 Addresses two common problems:
1. Eliminates the possibility of opting out by avoiding the "I don't
know" response to a question in the classroom.
2. Useful in helping earnest students who are trying, but honestly
don't know the answer.
 The basic belief is, a student who doesn't know or is unwilling to
give the answer to a question, should give the correct answer
even if he just repeats the right answer.
Format 1: You Provide the answer; the student repeats the answer.
Format 2: You provide a cue; your student uses it to find the
answer.
“RIGHT IS RIGHT” EXPECTATION
 Right is Right, is about the dif ference between a student
being partially right and 100% right.
 It is the responsibility of a teacher/tutor to be sure the
student gives a correct answer. If the answer is not totally
right, the student may falsely think she can do something that
she can not do.
 Accepting a partial answer from the student is not good
enough. When a teacher/tutor holds out for a right answer,
he/she is demonstrating to the student that they are capable
of getting the answer as right as their counterpart peers who
are successful in class with them.
HOW WILL I MEASURE SUCCESS?
Who is physically involved in completing
the work?
Who did most of the talking? What type
of questioning (closed/open-ended)?
Who is exhausted after a lesson?
FUTURE SUPPORT: CONTACT INFO
San Diego Global Vision Academy
www.sdgva.org
Aja Booker email:
aja.booker@sdgva.net
Christine Kane email:
christine.kane@sdgva.net