Why I Want To Become A Teacher Back?

In the mid 1800s, the question of whether slavery was ethical or not was a particularly contentious matter. Slaves struggled to withstand the harsh treatments from their master’s, along with getting an education, until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery. Although slavery was no longer tolerated, the racial bigotry did not end. Fast forward to the 1950s, and racial inequality is still prevalent in society. Segregation existed in almost every aspect of life ranging from miniscule topics such as where one can sit on the bus, to more serious topics such as quality of education one child receives. This discrimination was fought through protests in the civil rights movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As an American high school student in a country still plagued with racial discrimination today, it is imperative to remember the true value of a quality education. While James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers” and Frederick Douglass’s “Learning to Read and Write” both emphasize the need for racial equality in education, Baldwin’s forceful and angry tone ultimately make his speech the more rhetorically effective of the two.

As a teacher, it is important to know and understand the racial and cultural identities of both yourself, and your students. Knowing about your students’ backgrounds is a great way to make the classroom a safe and welcoming environment. Not all educational settings emit a feeling of safety to its students, and that needs to be changed. In this paper, I will discuss how my racial and cultural identity may be the same and may differ from my students, as well as some ways in which the institution of education can be changed to be more racially and culturally inclusive.

Schools systematically subjugate minority and black students when a school’s enrollment contains a huge racial majority. If students have no exposure to persons of different ethnicities, cultures, races, and religions, then these students will experience culture shock when they confront “other” people. Even in our class, we talk about black and minority students as another group, one that differs from “us.” We think about the inequalities in school systems as problems we need to fix, not as problems that have influenced our thinking and affect us as prospective teachers. For example, a white graduate student with

African American students account for the larger majority of minorities in public schools in the United States. Most areas in the northern part of the United states and coastal areas are ethnically diverse. However, down south this is not the case. Students of color will experience a harder time in the education system. African American students meet the obstacle of educators who will not want them to succeed based on a preconceived thought. In fact, Caucasian teachers make up for 85% of all

African Americans are not the only ethnicity group to be singled out with behavior. Racial and ethnic minority students report experiencing low teacher expectations, having less access to educational resources, being placed on lower educational tracks, and being steered toward low-paying employment (Kozol, 1991; Olsen, 2008).This low expectation is causing

The role of an educator throughout an individual’s life is often downplayed. Their position as a teacher is to help students apply concepts of math, science, etc., in a classroom setting. Despite this, they are seen as pointless and temporary. However, there is an implicit role educators have when it comes to race, and the impact is enduring. Their “silence speak volumes,” and the “students are listening” (Pitts). In Jamilah Pitts’ article “Don’t Say Nothing” from the fall 2016 issue of Teaching Tolerance, she successfully uses pathos and call to action to show the negative effect an educator's silence has on students during moments of racial tension or violence.

Who we are and how we are treated as children is directly correlated to who we will become as adults. Spoken by Lyndon B. Johnson, “Until Justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” These words are echoed throughout the educational system that is put in place today. Jonathan Kozol, an award-winning writer and public lecturer who focuses on social injustice in the United States, reverberates these words in his article, “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”. Kozol proves his mastery in persuasion by the facts he provides and the personal anecdotes from teachers and students.

When we were younger we were often told that we can be whatever we want to be. As a little girl around the age of three or four I use to always say that I want to be a lot of things. One day I would want to be a doctor and within a couple of days I would say I wanted to be a princess. In my mind everything was possible no matter what it was and my mom was always there to make me believe that I could be anything I wanted to and that anything was possible. That lesson stuck with me for a long time, even until this very day. In this article Boston Teacher Residency, it tells us how one had begun to value their education. He admired his 8th grade Civics teacher, Mr. Fulton, which was of color. He gave background of the teacher which informed us that he was a man

This paper examines how white privilege continues to be constructed today within schools and how teachers have a large role in it. In today’s society, many can go through their lives without understanding what it is or how it effects other people. White privilege is how a person’s lighter skin color benefits them directly from birth and that person doesn’t have to do anything in order to gain these privileges. These privileges are good and usually don’t have any negative consequences for the person receiving them. However, those who do not have white privilege face discrimination and end up paying the price in the future. This paper will uncover the hardships that people face when dealing with white privilege in schools, how it continues to be constructed in society, and how we as a society can become more aware to this problem.

I believe that with motivation and guidance, children of all backgrounds can harbor success in the educational world and receive the skills they need to have a successful and prosperous life. It is a teacher’s duty to encourage lifelong learning, consider individual learning styles and aptitudes, and self-reflect on how to improve. My experiences as an engineer, a person of color, a pre-service teacher, and a STEM advocate have culminated together to form my educational values and philosophy.

Upon the premise of further exploration, Mari Ann Roberts found a definition of what is meant to care for underachieving African American male students. Roberts surveyed eight African American teachers to attain their point of view of what it meant to care for their students which included informing them about how to survive in the racism of the United States of America that they will and are exposed to (Roberts 456). The discussion of political clarity was addressed by several teachers to help students understand “the importance of education and emphasized that they believed, for Black people, academic achievement would eventually equal equality” (Roberts 458).

Becoming a culturally responsible educator is at the forefront of education to help reduce the disproportionate representation of students of color (Dray, Wisneski, 2011). Establishing and maintaining classroom management for many educators can be difficult when the student comes from a background unfamiliar to the teacher. Issues arise when a teacher tries to make meaning out of a concerning behavior from a student who, the teacher has a cultural disconnect. Teachers rarely know how diversity affects how they interpret students’ actions and the way they interact with their students. Teachers may misinterpret a cultural difference as lacking self-regulation. If the teacher is in a low socio-economic community, then that one student can turn into the majority or the whole classroom. This can lead to a mishandling of classroom-management. Dray and Wisneski (2011) agree that diversity is not problematic, but it is the response of the individuals and institutions to diversity that can be problematic. An effective teacher must be culturally responsible, maintain quality teaching, and establish clear classroom routines to manage a student-centered classroom.

Education is one of the most essential necessities of a personal life because without education, we would not have a brighter future. In two essays “Learning to Read and Write” and “A Homemade Education”, Malcolm and Douglass describe what they have gone through in order to become more successful in their pursuits in life. While Malcolm X lived part of his life in prison, he spent his time writing numerous definitions from a dictionary amongst the walls and tables. The elements of the dictionary motivated him to not only become a free man, but a well educated one at that. Douglass, who also taught himself, began his life in slavery. But after a series of attempts, he escapes from slavery and pursues into his

Education is a privilege given to people in a free society so they can gain knowledge and have a broad awareness of the world they live in. However, this privilege has unequally been stripped from people of color throughout history. People of color currently experience education at a disadvantage because they are taught with the understanding that they should naturally recognize the culture, when they do not. There are many steps educators can take to help students of color gain the education they deserve, but they are stuck in their self-proclaimed, righteous methods and believe change is unnecessary. In Lisa D. Delpit’s essay, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children,” she argues that there are

Learning and knowledge are highly prized in all societies, especially here in Ireland, where there is a strong tradition of respect for education. The choices that individuals make when leaving school, in particular whether to pursue higher education or not, are likely to have a long lasting effect on their lifestyle. The main purposes for a University education involve: social, national and educational purposes and for the individual personal purposes and moral development. These topics will be addressed in the following paragraphs.