Learning Outcome 12: Foster respect for individual’s abilities and disabilities and an understanding and appreciation of variations of ethnicity, culture, language, gender, age, class, and sexual orientation
No classroom is a culturally sterile place. Each individual student that enters your classroom carries with them a different and complex view on society, discourse, culture and how they interact with all of it. Students often feel that they cannot share their feelings on any of that for fear that they will be out casted, put down or ignored by their peers and their teacher. By creating a community in your classroom that is built upon respect, trust and understanding of diversity students will be able to gain insights into the world around them.
Both of my placements were located in communities that were culturally diverse through ethnicity, language and class. This afforded me the opportunity to begin to understand how students interact with in this world where so many different backgrounds were coming together daily. I chose to bring in images, music, and texts that would give students the opportunity to teach me how they saw the world. This often happened through the use of texts to help supplement the focus text. The influence that these texture texts had of the focus text was huge and it was often where students were able to interact the most with their thoughts on culture, language, and society. Some of the best discussions that were held in my 11th grade inclusion class came from putting an image or video up on the Smart Board and having students express what they knew, how they saw the image and what they felt the image told the world. Often times students would find that they were each an expert in their way of thinking about that prompt, and they were able to teach all of us how they saw it. This avenue of self discovery made students more aware of how the way they thought, where their backgrounds were and how their peers thought all came together in furthering our understanding of everything. Each student wanted to talk and share how they were influenced to help others gain more insight. By including these insights into instruction daily, students began to develop ways of thinking about language, texts, images and so much more in so many different ways.
While many of the focus texts I was asked to focus on were what are considered the traditional standard for English Language Arts classes, I was able to bring in texts that ranged from authors of various ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. Students were often encouraged to bring in works that interested them and made them question something. The skills that were developed by looking at all of these different works by authors from all different backgrounds helped students develop an understanding of the world around them and how they interacted with it. It was often through discussion that students could learn about all of the other worlds that their peers functioned within and how they did so. Going forward as a teacher, I need to continually push myself to include a wide range of authors that can connect with my students, along with teaching them new and different ideas.