Future Promises

I promise to build trust with my students. In order to do this, I honor my students’

voices by opening the genre to allow them to write personally and personally engage with a text
in multiple ways. Valuing a students’ ability to make connections and being themselves is
important to me and supported by research that states “education is suffering from narration
sickness [because] of the banking approach. Students need to have a productive disposition”
(Freire 1970).

I promise to engage in generous reading with my students. In order to do this, I will

read some student work without an assessment that will allow me to experience their writing and
remind myself that culture, background, and experiences shape the way they write. Valuing this
is important because I am engaging in asset-oriented thinking, which will allow me to see a
student’s critical thinking skills and engagement with the content without nitpicking on details
like grammar conventions, and is supported by research that states “generous reading focuses on
how students draw upon all of their resources, linguistic, rhetorical, social, cultural, and personal,
to communicate meaning through writing” (Spence, 2010).

I promise to build a classroom community that allows my students to feel care and

compassion. In order to do this, I will allow my students to make choices for themselves while
also giving them the space to speak openly about their opinions and beliefs without judgement.
Research that supports states that students who experience a classroom community gain a “sense
of being valued and respected: they matter to one another and to the teacher” (Kohn, 2006).

I promise to shape my classroom so that it can establish a democratic and equitable

experience hat also encourages collaboration and participation. In order to this this, I will change
the classroom dynamic so that all my students have equal access to materials for class and used
in class. The classroom should be vibrant and covered in posters and information that will benefit
the student’s well-being, career choices, college realities, and cultural interests. I will also ensure
all students are seated in areas that build on their skills as learners and allowing them multiple
experiences with new students to create a nurturing atmosphere of learning, which is supported
by research that states “space matters. Not just for the physical environment it provides…but
also in terms of the meanings, relationships, and identities to be made in the spaces” (Garcia,
2015).
I promise to develop a relationship not just with the students, but also their personal

networks of support such as parents. In order to do this, I will create an open classroom where
anyone can visit while also emphasizing the important of students’ ethnic background to connect
it to the content. I want my students to feel represented and advocated for even as they read
content, they may not understand due to cultural influences and beliefs. It is important to stay
connected with families because, as the research states, “families develop social network that
interconnect students with their social environments…and these social relationships facilitate the
development and exchange of resources” (Moll, 1992).

I promise to support my EL and LTEL students to alleviate the pressure and

struggle of working on content that they struggle understanding. In order to do this, I will use
many scaffolding and accommodating strategies to ensure my EL students are getting the added
support they need, so that they, as the research states, “can achieve their highest potential”
without being bogged down or demoralized by grammar conventions (ELA/ELD framework,
California Board of Education, 2014).

I promise to support my students’ knowledge to nourish their own identities as it

relates to the content. In order to do this, I will incorporate uses of social media, video games, or
other student interests to supplement curricula in order to help them critically examine their
interests while also using them to gain a different perspective about how the content can be
related to them beyond the English classroom. Students who are engaging in activities that
nourish their interests are more likely to be motivated and interested in learning. This is
supported by research that states that “to deny students their own expert knowledge is to
disempower them” (Delpit, 1988).

I promise to help my students see the importance of their education as a way that

nurtures their well-being rather than be looking for ways to pass or succeed in a class primarily
because they must. In order to do this, I will implement activities and projects that continually
have them engage personally with the material while also creating a universal appeal that
translates what they learned to the real world. Life lessons are important if we make them clear
enough for the students to notice, especially when they are reading novels, because students
often need to be led to realizing that everything has connections outside of the classroom. This is
supported by research that states “students are often preoccupied with learning the ‘how to,’ with
‘what works,’ or with mastering the best way to teach a given body of knowledge” Teachers like
myself need to “take a responsible role in shaping the purposes and conditions of schooling”
(Giroux, 1998).