helen's_welcome_letter_edse4100

Dear EdSe 4100 students, Welcome to this class! The purpose of this introductory letter is for you to learn a little about the two of us who will be teaching you this semester and also to get you started with guiding you through some initial steps in using this Moodle online component of our course. So first read a bit about [name of student who is co-teaching course with me] and myself below, and then be sure to complete the initial steps described in the Getting Started part of this introductory letter here. Thank you!

Helen's introduction
I (Helen) will be your primary instructor for this class (yes -- that's me in the photo on the right, in my kayak this past summer with my puppy Peanut). We are also very fortunate to have Anna Hewitt joining us this semester as my co-teacher. Anna was a student in this EdSe 4100 class last semester and is doing a volunteer practicum with me with semester. Her role will be as a co-teacher, sharing in many of the planning and teaching responsibilities of this class (but not in grading). Anna will say more about this when she introduces herself below. I am really looking forward to working with you this semester. Of all of the classes that I have taught over the years at UMD (I'm in my 22nd year!), this is one of my favorites. This //Teaching in a Diverse Society// course really inspires me because it gets at the heart of why I always wanted to teach, and why I still love teaching today: I want to try to everything in my power to make a difference in the lives of ALL students. This class helps us explore and learn together about what makes each student unique, and how to reach and teach //all// students based on a complex mixture of factors that makes them each who they are.

Although I have been teaching since 1980 at a variety of different levels, each year I feel as if I become even more committed to and passionate about helping prepare teachers who can go out into the world and really make a difference in the lives of their students. To help you understand why I feel this way, and why I believe so much in this class, I want to share with you a little bit about what brought me to this point:

The roots of my passion and commitment lie in my growing up under apartheid in South Africa, and witnessing the devastating effects that an unjust social and educational system had on the lives of students. I saw how education could be misused and abused to keep some people in positions of subservience while at the same time being used to create endless opportunities for others. I saw how profoundly teachers could affect the minds of young people by what they taught, how they taught, and by the ways in which they treated their students. I recall, as a young child, sitting outside the back of our house with Maria, a Zulu woman who helped my parents raise my brother and me, and who was like a second mother to me until she died two years ago. Maria told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be because I was white. She held up her hand, fingers pressed together, and showed me the difference in height between her middle finger and her little finger. She pointed to her middle finger and said, "Some people are born up here." Then she pointed to her little finger, "Others are born down here. That is how it is meant to be here." Even as I wept at the injustice of this, I understood how she had come to accept this both because that was all she had ever been taught as a black child in South Africa, and also because of the reality of her experiences as a black person growing up in an unjust society. And I vowed then that it didn't have to be that way. With the naivety of youth, I was filled with a passion to change this inequity and to make a difference in some way. The way I chose to do this was by becoming a teacher. I believed I could make the most difference in people's lives by helping them learn to make the changes for themselves.

During the course of my career I have come to recognize that this belief (that students can make changes for themselves if they learn the necessary knowledge, skills, and self-confidence) was very naive and rooted in my white privilege. Certainly teaching students how to make changes for themselves is part of the equation, but I have come to the realization that as an educator my responsibility must also be in seeking to address the other part equation, namely the systems of oppression and inequity that perpetuate the gaps between the haves and the have-not's. This is why I chose to work with pre-service and inservice teachers to help create classrooms and schools that could nurture,value, challenge, and inspire, //all// students. Teaching is an awesome responsibility: I believe //every// teacher makes a difference in the lives of //every// student she or he teaches. But what is so crucial is that this difference is not always positive. The nature of the relationship between teachers and students is such that our influence as teachers is rarely neutral. I believe it is our responsibility to make a positive difference. We can help to inspire in our students a love of learning, or we can drive them to hate and resent formal education. We can guide them so they believe in themselves and what they can do, or we can shatter their confidence and leave them filled with self doubt. If we look at the many studies on so-called "at risk" children, what makes the difference between those who drop out of school (and all too often out of life) and those who stay on, time and time again is the presence of a supportive adult in their lives -- very often a teacher -- someone who stood by them and didn't give up.

Thus my goal in this class is to help guide you in your journey to becoming a teacher who will inspire your students, believe in all of them, and never give up in your quest to help each one of them succeed. The focus of almost all of your work in this class will be in developing your understanding and beliefs about what makes students unique and how we, as teachers, can best support their learning given who they are and what they bring to their learning experiences. I will keep challenging you, asking you to reflect critically on your prior beliefs and knowledge and upon your and your classmates' evolving knowledge and beliefs. In order for us to feel safe in looking openly and honestly at current and evolving beliefs, we need to be deeply respectful and supportive of each other in all aspects of our class. I do not expect you all to think and believe the same things, either at the start or end of the course. However, I //do// expect you to keep an open and critical mind as you look at the complex issues in this class from multiple perspectives. I also expect you to challenge me and each other respectfully and with kindness, so that we can help each other develop and defend our own approaches to teaching in ways that strive to meet the needs of all of our students. Best wishes for a wonderful semester!

Helen Mongan-Rallis

For your first activities in our class web area please do the following tasks:

 * 1) Under week 1:
 * 2) Click on the link to the "Background Information Survey" and complete this online survey
 * 3) Click on the link "Online forum: self-introduction." Read Anna and my introduction, and then post your own introduction.
 * 4) Click on the assignment link to the Pre-Survey, and follow the directions to download, complete, and upload your pre-survey.
 * 5) Syllabus: Please read through it carefully and pay very careful attention to the course expectations, noting especially:
 * the requirement that you //begin at your apprenticeship site no later than week 3 of the semester, completing at least one hour per week until week 10// when you will be your school every day.
 * the //grading policy and criteria for passing the class//: We really, //really// want you to succeed and excel at this class, so it is imperative that you understand what is expected of you! Please ask me in class or at any other time if you have any questions about this.
 * 1) Explore the different components of our course here within Moodle, and come to class with any questions that you may have about the course or any aspect of the online components.
 * 2) Read and prepare for week 2: see Moodle site under Week 2.

Overview of how to use our Moodle site:

 * 1) **System requirements**: any computer with Internet connection. Recommended browser: Mozilla Firefox (download free at http://firefox.com)
 * 2) **How to access Moodle:**
 * 3) Go to the myU portal at [|http://myu.umn.edu] and sign in with your Internet ID and password --> click on the my courses tab and navigate to our course.Once you have located our course, it's a good idea to bookmark it on your computer so that you can link directly to it each time without having to go through the portal.
 * 4) For users connecting via a dial up or slower connection, it may be quicker to connect by linking directly to our course site from Helen's Home page at: [|http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/] --> then click on the link to our class.
 * 5) **Editing your profile**: when you first start using Moodle, you should set your personal preferences. To do this, click on your name in the upper right corner of the Moodle screen, and then go to the "edit profile" tab. This is where you can upload a picture of yourself (you will be asked to do this after our first class).
 * 6) **Navigation**:
 * 7) **To access resources** within Moodle, click on the link to the resource where it is listed under the middle section of the course. Under each week I have a variety of resources for you to review, such as reading external sources (see links to other web pages), viewing web pages that I have created (such as this one), listening to podcasts or other audio files, accessing assignments (such as the presurvey), and so on.
 * 8) **To move to previously accessed pages**: it is best to use the breadcrumbs (list of links at the top of the page), but you can also use the back and forward buttons.
 * 9) **To minimize scrolling**, you can make only the current section visible by clicking on the white square icon that is at the top right of an individual section. This expands or collapses sections. When sections are collapsed, you can use the "Jump to" menu that is on the bottom of the course home page. Try it!
 * 10) **Organization**: The Moodle window is organized in two columns:
 * 11) The left column is the administrative block and also provides links to different components of the course and tools for your use. For example, the section link block that enables you to link quickly to different sections of the course; a block showing you who is online and using the course at the same time as you, and a block with links to all of the different categories of resources used in the course.
 * 12) The central column contains the course content, and is broken down into sections, one for each week or topic. This will be the area that you will use most.
 * 13) **Composing messages in Moodle forums** or posting into Moodle wikis or other Moodle documents: Rather than composing directly into Moodle when you are entering text into a document (e.g. such as responding to a discussion in one of the forums), it is a good idea to compose your response using a basic text editing program (such Text Edit on Mac or Notepad on Windows). Then copy and paste your responses from the text editing program into Moodle. This precautionary step will save you heart ache and headaches if for some reason your Internet connection goes down during the process of you posting your response in Moodle! As an extra precaution: Save your text edit responses on your computer (in a folder for this class) so that you have them to refer to later without having to go back online).