Personal Narrative: Race And Minorities In The Classroom
Race is something I have thought a lot about with my intentions on becoming a teacher. Ninety percent of our teachers today are white (Lee, Menkart, & Okazawa-Rey, 2008). With being white I will soon be apart of this standard, as well as being a stereotype of an educator because I am a woman. Going up I have only had white teachers and could count the number of male teachers on one hand. My elementary years where quite different then my high school years. I attended elementary and middle school in Texas and was brought-up in a very diverse school and large town. Thinking back on my education I remember walking through the hallways and seeing English speaking rooms and Spanish speaking rooms. Although, I had only white teachers there were plenty
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With me becoming a first time teacher I believe that it is extremely important to be open to new cultures. I want my classroom to be a place students feel welcomed and where they want to share about their own backgrounds with others. There are a couple ways I believe I could achieve these goals. One is by bringing in elements from other races, another could be information books or stories about other cultures, and lastly the most important is to have lots of knowledge on other cultures than my own. Having a diverse classroom would be much easier to learn about different races and cultures. But, living in a small town its much harder to understand and learn about race that’s how I think books and stories would help in a smaller town. In the book Beyond heroes and holidays, the author mentions how she starts off her semester with their students asking them to describe some of their beliefs about teaching and about how society works (Lee, Menkart, & Okazawa-Rey, 2008).I believe this would be a great way to teach, as well as gain a new understanding to the students’ viewpoints on race. This activity is also something that students can see their views evolving throughout the year and will defiantly be something I will be using as a tool in the
With me becoming a first time teacher I believe that it is extremely important to be open to new cultures. I want my classroom to be a place students feel welcomed and where they want to share about their own backgrounds with others. There are a couple ways I believe I could achieve these goals. One is by bringing in elements from other races, another could be information books or stories about other cultures, and lastly the most important is to have lots of knowledge on other cultures than my own. Having a diverse classroom would be much easier to learn about different races and cultures. But, living in a small town its much harder to understand and learn about race that’s how I think books and stories would help in a smaller town. In the book Beyond heroes and holidays, the author mentions how she starts off her semester with their students asking them to describe some of their beliefs about teaching and about how society works (Lee, Menkart, & Okazawa-Rey, 2008).I believe this would be a great way to teach, as well as gain a new understanding to the students’ viewpoints on race. This activity is also something that students can see their views evolving throughout the year and will defiantly be something I will be using as a tool in the