Prompt 4

Prompt #4

Teachers bring their personal history in to their classrooms. Their personal experiences create advantages and challenges for teachers. Often, ones experiences and sociocultural background contribute to their attitudes towards others. My personal experiences intersect with Mrs. Smith’s second grade students, at Led Zeppelin Elementary. Before moving to a rural area at age ten, I lived in Providence. I attended George J. West Elementary School. Many of my classmates were Hispanic, African American, and Asian. My school environment mirrored the neighborhood I grew on as well. Furthermore, I know what it is like to dismiss education as important, having struggled to get through school days throughout elementary and high school. Often, failure in school is not a reflection of ones intelligence. I also know how it feels to have role models, encourage and influence education. A position I would like to provide for individuals deviating from education themselves.

This makes for an authentic teacher who feels very comfortable around students of different ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds. Demonstrating my authenticity and gaining my students’ trust will pose a challenge. Creating a classroom they feel comfortable to express themselves will be challenging as well. As a teacher, I will promote the “Affirmative action pedagogy,” as described by Megan Boler. This will serve as a huge challenge, as I will address expressions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. I did not encounter issues such as this in Mrs. Smith’s second grade class, but I expect to encounter this in a High School. More importantly, as a future educator in secondary education, I will not allow my students to use overt, or covert expressions of hate. Challenging such widely used expressions of the dominant class will be my biggest challenge as a future educator.

My experiences in Providence shaped my attitude towards individuals of different sociocultural and ethnic backgrounds. America exists as a melting pot of cultures. I witnessed a fraction of America’s melting pot in the neighborhood I grew up on, composed of different cultures, languages, and ethnicities. I attended class with many of the same kids that lived on my street. The kids I played with were bilingual. For example, one friend’s parents spoke Spanish, and my friend spoke Spanish and English. While all of the students in Mrs. Smith’s class spoke English, it is probable that some of their parents spoke another language. That I grew up around ethnically diverse individuals could be the reason I despise comments of “self-discloser.” If a classroom can exist as a “public space in which one can respond and be heard, (Boler,M. p4), then hateful or ignorant comments might be expressed by some students. Most importantly, with an, “affirmative action pedagogy,” such comments can be challenged by students who have no other venue to express their feelings. This pedagogy will present heavy challenges for me, and is probably a hard method to perfect.

In essence, my experiences in a Providence public school system, at least diminishes some bias entering a classroom. As stated, I have been around different ethnic groupings. My great grand fathers came to America from Syria and Italy. When I see ethnic families, I think of them, and see their children as my grandparents when they were younger. I feel this is an emerging perspective among my generation. Teachers with such an outlook is a requirement in order to practice Megan Boler’s pedagogy, thus providing marginalized voices in society a venue to tell their stories. One misconception I personally had was that I did not expect all of them to know English so well. I found it surprising that zero percent of the students at Led Zeppelin Elementary received ESL education services, as found on Infoworks. Furthermore, I enjoyed the school environment partly because the students were so diverse. I know there are many things I do not know about cultures. In such a case I would take time to learn about a students culture, in order to engage the student into the classroom.