Making Classrooms Culturally Sensitive

It is felt by many that as American schools and educators become more and more sensitive to the diversity of their community, their students can be guided to appreciate and respect these differences and to coexist peacefully. Various combinations of cultures such as African-Americans, Irish and German-Americans, Hispanics, Chinese-Americans to name a few, are learning how to work and live together while maintaining their own cultural heritage. The students of today who embrace their cultural heritage are trying to keep the values of their parents and grandparents, and still fit in with the students and cultures surrounding them. This dual search often confuses students and causes anxiety as they seek their own identity but attempt to live with other cultures. School systems and individual schools themselves can be extremely powerful agents in this process by providing insights to difficult cultural questions and issues facing students. Of course, a diverse school faculty can help by modeling behaviors that encourage classrooms to be settings where differences can be observed and studied. These same classrooms can help students begin to share, respect, and learn how to work with others. But it all starts by discovering and acknowledging individual and cultural differences and then by focusing on those things common to the group. To get a better picture classrooms that strive to be sensitive and aware four steps/stages for investigating cultural differences in classrooms have been developed and will now be discussed

Recent Developments: Louisiana Medical Malpractice Law

The article discusses the Louisiana Supreme Court\u27s decision in case Oliver v. Magnolia Clinic, and explores developments in Louisiana medical malpractice law related to prescription, expert witnesses and summary judgment. Topics discussed include damages for medical malpractice actions under the Medical Malpractice Act (MMA), the prescriptive period applicable to medical malpractice actions under the Louisiana Revised Statutes, and the Patient\u27s Compensation Fund (PCF)

Ultrastructure of Teliospores and Promycelium and Basidiospore Formation in the Four-Spored Form of Gymnoconia Nitens, One of the Causes of Orange Rust of Rubus

Orange rust of Rubus is an interesting disease because of the fact that it can be caused by three different rust fungi that produce virtually identical symptoms. One is Gymnoconia peckiana (Howe in Peck) Trotter, which is a demicyclic species, while the other two are endocyclic forms historically referred to as Gymnoconia nitens (Schwein.) Kern & H.W. Thurston. Although the spores produced on infected Rubus leaves by these latter two forms are morphologically identical to the aeciospores of G. peckiana, they actually function as teliospores. However, the teliospores of one of the forms gives rise to two-celled promycelia that bear only two basidiospores, while teliospores of the other produce four-celled promycelia bearing four basidiospores. Here, we examined the teliospores of the four-spored form along with the sequence of events that lead to basidiospore development. Developing and mature teliospores were binucleate, and we saw no evidence that karyogamy occurred in these spores. Upon germination, both spore nuclei migrated into the promycelium and underwent mitosis to form a total of four nuclei. Four transverse septa then developed, creating four uninucleate cells. A tapered sterigma arose from each cell and gave rise to a basidiospore. These findings indicate that the basidiospores of the four-spored form of G. nitens were formed in an asexual fashion

On the rational subset problem for groups

We use language theory to study the rational subset problem for groups and monoids. We show that the decidability of this problem is preserved under graph of groups constructions with finite edge groups. In particular, it passes through free products amalgamated over finite subgroups and HNN extensions with finite associated subgroups. We provide a simple proof of a result of Grunschlag showing that the decidability of this problem is a virtual property. We prove further that the problem is decidable for a direct product of a group G with a monoid M if and only if membership is uniformly decidable for G-automata subsets of M. It follows that a direct product of a free group with any abelian group or commutative monoid has decidable rational subset membership.Comment: 19 page

Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble: A Call to Create Identity Affirming Spaces for Black Youth to Grow As Agents of Change in Early Childhood and Elementary School Classrooms

In their early years, youth begin to notice race, develop attitudes related to race, form their own racial identity, and make decisions based on race. Adults can play a critical role in teaching about and affirming Black children’s developing identities. As educators passionate about the success and wellbeing of Black children, we envision spaces where energy is divested from surveilling, suspending, and expelling Black children and energy is invested in working to address educational injustices, particularly through the cultivation of identity affirming spaces for Black youth to grow as agents of change. In this paper, we share how the first author worked virtually with elementary and middle school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The students in the class read complex texts, asked and answered questioned, and used information gained from the text as well as their lived experiences to better understand and confront injustices in order to imagine future possibilities for Black youth in and outside the classroom. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of cultivating identity affirming spaces in early childhood and elementary school classrooms. With young activists at the center, we can dream up spaces where activism is encouraged, sociopolitical identities are formed, and “good trouble, necessary trouble” becomes the foundation for systems-level change