Medium Post #1 — Laziness

This is a great article and the message it has is actually very important to look at and realize. The author of this article is discussing how laziness doesn’t actually exist in the world, and that instead we need to look at the barriers that are holding back these students. The students he is talking about are the ones who don’t do their work or never want to participate in activities at school. These students are usually labeled as being lazy. The author does a really good job of disputing the claim to them being lazy. The quote that really caught my eye was when he said:

I think this is a great statement to go off of when it comes to supporting his claim. We as teachers should not be judging these students and call them all lazy. Rather, we should dig a little deeper and find the root cause of what is causing them to not participate at their full potential in schools. This is why this article is very important and essential to pay attention to. Even for students in my class I would have them read this, just so they can start thinking about things that hold them back and their fellow classmates.

In terms of connecting this article to my content area standards, I would definitely connect the article to this standard:

Montana Health Education Standard 6.2 A (Grades 6–8) — Apply strategies to and skills needed to attain a personal health goal

This standard would apply very well because it focuses on using certain skills or tools to help students reach a personal health goal. For this article, the students can identify what’s keeping them from completing certain parts of schoolwork. Once they do, they come up with strategies and solutions to where they are able reach their goal of completing that schoolwork the next time.

Another great thing to do with this article is to raise up key questions that can help connect to the students and their comprehension of the knowledge given by it. The key questions I are:

1. How do I identify what the students problems are?
2. Why is it such a bad stereotype for people to be called lazy when they don’t want to do something in school?
3. How do I talk about these problems with the individual student about what their problems are?
4. What solutions or strategies do I need to use to help this student?

These 4 questions are great to ask when presenting this article and the information it holds. They get the students thinking, and they get me thinking as a teacher about why and how I help these students who are usually called “lazy”.

If I had to connect this article to a Grand Challenge, I would connect it to this challenge:

4. Valuing World Cultures

The reason I would connect this challenge to my article is because a student is influenced a lot by their culture, even in schools. This challenge connects because it doesn’t just connect with cultures around the world, but it also connects with cultures right here in the United States. Some students grow up in a culture of violence, poverty, drugs & alcohol, and abuse. These certain cultures are a few of the many cultures that put strain on young students around the country. These strains that are created at home create unwanted strain and negative consequences in the school setting as well. A great example is of a student who’s culture they know is only one of poverty and hunger. They have gone most of their life without a steady amount of meals everyday and have not had much money to live off of in their lifetime. This creates a major problem at schools, because these students are not focused on their school work or what they are suppose to be doing. They are more worried about where their next meal is gonna come from, or something even worse. The good news though is that their have been food programs implemented into schools where students get free and reduced meals, and even get food sent home with them on the weekends. This is a possible solution to this challenge, but they bigger point is that this Grand Challenge connects well with the article I have chosen and the topic of the article itself.

If I were to teach about this article in my class there would be a specific way for me to do it no doubt. The focus I would use from Chapter 1 of the Developing Readers and Writers book is to create an IMAGE. I want to my students to read this information, and then create an image of it to themselves. In terms of choosing a routine from the 50 Routines book, I would choose the students trying to create Text-Dependent Questions from the reading. This routine would do a great job of connecting the content area standard, which focuses on using strategies to reach a personal health goal. The routine would also connect well with the Grand Challenge I chose as well, which would center around the cultures that influence or kids to not have the motivation to participate in school. All of this would come together really well in a class activity. The activity would work like this:

1. Have a discussion about the word “lazy” as a warmup
2. Students read article; come up with Text-Dependent questions that relate to the main points of the article.
3. Students are put into groups, they are given scenario about a certain student who is not participating in school because of a certain reason and their group must come up with a solution/way to reach this student and come up with a solution.
4. Present these scenarios/solutions to class

I think this activity would do a great job of meeting the needs of the diverse learners in my class, and give them a good reading and writing part of class. The article also includes a great topic to discuss and expand upon in the classroom.