Power of Perspective
Power of Perspective
One of the most important jobs as a teacher is to create a community where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. At the beginning of the year teachers take time to talk about the classroom dynamic and students roles in the classroom. They work on building a foundation of expectations and comfort between students. This foundation is built upon all year as students and teacher grow together. One way to strength this community is to make sure students have an understanding of empathy and compassion through different perspectives. While teaching we want students to absorb the content but we also need to teach them how to be kind and caring people. This way we maintain a healthy environment where we can be successful together "every day, whether nothing out of the ordinary happens or a tense situation arises." (Muhtaris & Ziemke, 2020)What is Perspective?
Perspective is defined as our individual way of looking at things, events and people. Do your students see a rainy day or a chance to play in puddles? Is the glass half full or half empty? (Taran, 2013)
There are four levels that impact your perspective:
1. Feelings and Thoughts- This level is based on growth and fixed mindsets. How do you react to certain situations? If you get your english paper back with many corrections needed do you see this is an opportunity to grow or see yourself as a failure? Teaching students to have a growth mindset will help them focus on the good in every situation.
2. Words- Teaching students how to positively interact and communicate with each other. The words you choose can either help a conversation along or bring it to a negative ending. Giving students the opportunity to practice discussing with each other while agreeing or disagreeing will make them stronger conversationists in the long run.
3. Actions- Words and actions are interconnected. What does your body language say about you when you are talking with someone? "Mean words show up in bullying behavior. Words that are helpful fuel actions that are caring, which in turn reinforce a positive perspective." (Taran, 2013)
4. Choices- Even if an automatic response is negative (such as interrupting in class), students can choose not to react the same way (they can raise a hand when they want to talk). The transition to a positive choice is faster if the student receives positive recognition for the behavior. (Taran, 2013)
Teaching Perspective:
Teaching perspective can still be done through online learning. Giving students the opportunity to communicate with each other through video dialogue, written dialogue or oral dialogue with online platforms such as:
You can provide students with ebooks or live read alouds and continue to have discussions about author's perspective and the perspective of different characters. You can also watch short films that provide students with the opportunity to break part character perspectives. Both of these films provide opportunities for students to identify character feeling and discuss what they think the meaning of these videos are through different perspectives.
Connection to the Text:
The Try-It "Ask Questions to Understand the Author's Perspective" (Pg 117) and "Think from Another Perspective" (Pg 120) provide students with supports when starting to analyze the perspective of others.
- Understanding Author's Perspective: Allows students to consider why the author wrote a story. What were they trying to teach you? You can choose for students to look at a story, video or picture and provide them with questions such as the ones in the chart below to help them see what questions can be asked to learn more about the author's perspective.
- Switching Perspectives: Allows students to come up with their own thoughts about the text/video/image. Compare them with a partner or other characters thoughts and share both their own ideas and others.
Resources:
Here is some extra information about perspectives:
Here are some lessons and resources about kindness, community and empathy to support perspectives:
Great post, Harley! I loved your title, it hooked me into reading your post. I agree that teaching perspective is powerful and an essential part of literacy instruction. I liked how you broke down perspective into four levels. I've never seen a model like this, but it helps the reader to understand what to look for when analyzing a character's perspective. While reading this section, I also realized that this model can apply to stories (both fiction and nonfiction) in addition to real life. You can use these factors to teach children how to analyze the perspective of a character, or even the perspective of a classmate or figure in history. I love that analyzing perspective can apply to both literature and real-life. This also coincides with the text's discussion of empathy; being empathetic requires understanding and acknowledging the feelings of others, or in other words, taking their perspective. The additional resources you provided at the bottom are also extremely helpful as well. All in all, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post! I like the perspective you took on this idea. I also like how you Incorporated the try it from the text in this post because I have felt while reading through this that there can be a lot attributed to perspective when it comes to literacy. I like how you introduce the topic and give a break down for the readers. I think it is important for people and our students to understand that there are multiple ideas or actions that can impact the perception one has from reading. Your connection to digital literacy is very informative and is important to see how this can still be taught during times of distance learning. Thank you for sharing this post!
ReplyDeleteHey Harley! I really enjoyed reading your blog and think that it is important to create a community where all of the students feel comfortable to share their own opinions because they know that their fellow classmates will understand them. It is important to teach students to take everybody’s perspective into consideration so that they can put themselves in someone else’s shoes and provide empathy. Something that stood out to me and your blog was a teaching perspective and how you provided fantastic ways of connecting and communicating with our students through video dialogue, written dialogue, or oral  dialogue. Due to this pandemic, many teachers have to utilize things such as flip grid, Google meet, and zoom to talk to their students. I think that these are fantastic resources that not only are beneficial now but also can enhance our students learning once we are back in the classroom with them. Even if we have face-to-face book clubs, we can utilize these digital platforms to further enhance the discussion once the students go home. Overall, really great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda, what a great post. It is extremely important to set up community in the classroom and part of that is encouraging empathy and compassion to gain more perspective. I like you touched on the four levels: feelings & thoughts, words, actions, and choices. Shorts are a really great way to teach perspective in the classroom because not everyone has the same take away from experiences. It is a great was to start discussion and to be active listeners while others are sharing what they found. The teacher can also guide the discussion by asking students to watch and focus on one aspect throughout the entire video. After, let the students discuss what they saw, how they felt and why that feeling came about during the viewing. Adding different ways that a student can respond is a great way to provide resources for them to reference. Perspective that allows for children to show empathy and compassion is important for classroom discussion but also as a life skill.
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! I really enjoyed your blog post on the power of perspective. It is really important for us as teachers to form a positive classroom dynamic between the teacher and the student. I actually never knew there were four different levels that can impact an individual’s perspective. It is important that we teach students how to understand other’s perspectives through feelings and thoughts, words, actions and choices. I feel like a lot of the times if these levels don’t get taught directly, we end up teaching them to students through literature. Students can see these four things occur between characters, and then can relate it to their own lives. I really like how you included how teaching perspective can occur through online learning. Since the pandemic, all schools had to shift to distance learning, and being able to still include this into your lessons is really great. I also liked how you included the short film, “The Present” by Jacob Frey. That is a really awesome video to show to students for them to learn about perspective. The text did have a lot of Try Its that related to your blog post, but the ones you included were perfect! Thanks for a great blog post on perspective – there are so many good resources in your blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! I really enjoyed reading your post. I have to say, I believe creating a classroom community is huge when being a good teacher. It is so important for students to have an understanding of empathy and compassion through different perspectives. It is awesome that you laid out the feels that impact your perspective. It makes me think more about how important one’s perspective really is. I never knew there were so many and what each level signifies. Another part I liked in your blog is how you tied it with how we are online learning. Students and teachers should still communicate with one another even at home. I have used numerous online platforms such as flip grid, zoom, and Padlet. These programs are great resources to use in and out of classrooms. They help diversify the classroom environment. They also allow students to still stay in touch while at home. This is definitely a blog I will keep in mind when I become a teacher! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! I really liked this post because I think this topic is so important. I have mentioned perspective in so many of my journal entries because I feel that student and educators can learn so much from one another. I also feel that it strongly connects to so many topics, such as the oral language blog posted earlier. I really like how you put the definition of perspective at the top to clarify what exactly it is that is being talked about here. I also like how you showed pictures of examples towards the end when talking about text. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! I really enjoyed reading your post. Empathy and perspective is very imporant for students to understand. Building that community classroom is crucial in those first couple months of school. It is one thing for students to disagree on a topic but they need to learn to respectfully disagree. My one worry going into this distance learning was what our classroom community would look like not physically be there. Thankfully technology has saved that. I loved how you showed all the different ways to still teach perspective through a computer screen. Zoom has been my best friend. Thanks for sharing the info!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley- Great topic choice for your blog! Perspective is such a challenging concept to teach students, especially younger students. One particular strategy to teach perspective that I enjoyed was the use of short videos. This is a great way to not only engage the students but to guide them to view the videos through different lenses. For example, The Present. If students watch it the first time, watch through the eyes of the boy, the second time through the eyes of the mom, and even a third time through the eyes of the puppy. Because it is such a short clip, using it multiple times is easily done. The charts are also great resources to refer to! Great work on your blog.
ReplyDeleteHey Harley! I loved reading your blog. The title really drew me in and made me so excited to continue reading. I totally agree, the power of perspective plays a huge role in the classroom. As you said, this is what teachers try to explain very early on in the year. However, this can be a difficult concept teach. It is so important for students to have an understanding of compassion and empathy through multiple perspectives. I also really liked how you explained the different levels that impact perspective. I never really thought about how much goes behind this concept. Number 4 really stood out to me, "Choices- Even if an automatic response is negative (such as interrupting in class), students can choose not to react the same way (they can raise a hand when they want to talk). The transition to a positive choice is faster if the student receives positive recognition for the behavior." This is so important to implement in the classroom right away because you do not want your students to show poor behavior. Students need to understand the ways to show positive behavior, which will be enforced early on in the school year. Great work, I will definitely think about this concept in the future!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! Great job on your blog post! I was drawn into your blog from the very first sentence, “One of the most important jobs as a teacher is to create a community where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.” This could not be more true! As educators, it is our job to create a classroom where students feel safe and protected from any judgement. Setting up this environment at the beginning of the year is especially important because this is where you build the foundation. I found the four levels that impact your perspective very interesting. These are incredibly important to keep in mind as a teacher when you are interacting with students all day. I loved how you gave examples of how teaching perspective can still be done through online learning. This can be done through tools such as FlibGrid and Zoom. I found it especially interesting that you can use these tools to have discussion about an author’s perspective or the perspective of different characters in a story. Great post overall!
ReplyDeleteI loved this post. I am a very big believer in a positive comfortable and trusting learning environment. I think this helps when we get into those situations with students when their might be different perspectives, or a disagreement. I think if you have built a strong community this makes these situations easier to navigate. I also really like the idea in your blog about perspective , but also changing perspective. The posters were very helpful. Also, the idea about questioning the author would be a great resource to asking good questions. The teaching resources were extremely helpful. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! Great job, your blog was so informative. I never thought about the four levels that impact perspective. I loved the shorts you added, so powerful and I already know students would have great discussions after watching them. Shorts are such a great way to discuss and teach students about important topics, like empathy. I like how you connected your blog to the Try Its in the text, great job. And thanks for the additional resources about kindness, community, and empathy to support perspectives, I can't wait to use them in my classroom! Thanks again and great job!
ReplyDeleteHi Harley! Your title hooked me right into this post! I've never really taken the time to think about what perspective really is and what factors help to shape each persons. When I read the four levels it made total sense to me why each person can have a completely different perspective from anybody else. I think its really important for kids to understand this too. It will only help them in the long run! I also enjoyed the short films you linked. I can see how these would be really effective for teaching students about character perspective and feeling. I think that kids resonate more with videos where they can see the characters emotion. Good job!
ReplyDelete