Sara Pintauro 11/03/15

Education 300

I was assigned the article Shaping Teachers Minds:

Reflections on Cultural Discourse by Marina Aminy and Aspasia
Neophytos-Richardson. This article studied three findings on a
diverse classroom. The first finding was of an ethnographic study
by one of the researchers detailing oral culture among Muslim
youth. The second finding was a about a provocative video
documentary on race called The Color of Fear directed by Lee,
Mun Wah. This documentary was designed to leave an impact on
whoever watches. For instance, one student that watched stated
that they walked away from class that night with a sense of
understanding and sympathy for those who have lived most of
their lives in this country and now are being punished by others
because of what they look like. The author of this article while
researching the affect this video has finds that everyone, teacher,
or student are presented with the possibility to encounter and
make meaning of the way we think and believe and challenge our
own prejudices, but its up to their own reflection to change their
own minds. The third finding was an essay by Sonia Nieto entitled
Moving Beyond Tolerance in Multicultural Education. The essay
was about the four levels of multicultural education that should
replace monocultural education reflected in most schools today.
The four levels consist of tolerance, acceptance, respect to
affirmation, solidarity, and critique. The author of this article
examines how this essay affects the reader which is by making
the reader reflect on actual experiences in order to connect
themselves to the essay; letting the readers evaluate the
arguments to the best of their present judgments; and allowing
the readers to have a future of applying their knew knowledge
gained from the essay to their lives.
I would say I mostly lack experiences with diversity in the
school setting. I grew up in a small, mostly white and catholic,
town in the suburbs outside of New York City. Being that taxes
were extremely high, not many people from poor backgrounds
were able to attend the schools I attended. There were maybe
one or two non-white and non-Catholic students throughout all
my classes in elementary and middle school. And those children
stayed to themselves or fit into the rest of the town besides being
the race or religion they were. As a child I didnt notice a
difference with anyone, I played games and sat next to anyone.
As I grew older the bullying and groups of friends began and the
different cultured people were singled out and clearly struggled
through their childhood years in my town. Fortunately as we got
older and all the schools in my town combined the population of
non-white and non-Catholic people in my school increased and
they were able to form their own group. Although thats the thing,
they were able to form their own group of people instead of
being friends with anyone because of the lack of cultural respect
and teachings that went on in my school district. If anyone was
bullied the teachers would treat it seriously, but they couldnt do
anything about people getting left out of things because they
couldnt force someone to be friends or think about someone a
specific way once they hit a certain age.
This is why I believe that teaching kids to not judge anyone
based on them being different should start extremely early on.
Personally I feel very comfortable with teaching diverse
populations because I dont see anyone a different way based on
their culture or how they look. Though the only thing that
stresses me about teaching it to children is handling a situation or
teaching the issue the wrong way and making a mistake or
saying something I shouldnt that may upset the parents or cross
the line in somebodys perspective. This is due to the fact that
just because I can control the way I think about diversity, doesnt
mean I can know or control the way each of my students parents
think. Personally the first thing I will make sure of is that nobody
is being bullied or left out because of his or her race or culture.
The way I would do this would be by approaching the situation
head on. I would use multiple videos or activities during class that
may not be obvious to the students that it has to do with diversity
but it would make them be open to the idea that theyre all the
same on the inside. I would keep this going all throughout the
year, making groups be completely random during certain
activities and striving to get them all to actually get to know one
each other and understand each other. My goal would be to have
all my students not even look twice at the person and think about
their race or their culture or their ethnic background and think
about them differently than themselves and whoever has the
same race, culture, or background as them.