The Importance Of Stereotypes In The Classroom

Authors Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton in Chapter Five of Courageous Conversations About Race broach the topic of race, by asking the reader to evaluate his or her own consciousness of race. According to the authors, in order to address the achievement gaps between African American students and White students, educators should shift their energy towards focusing on the factors that they have direct control of inside the classroom rather than on the factors that influence this achievement disparity between races outside the classroom.

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

America’s schools are challenged to meet the academic and interpersonal needs of all students regardless of culture, race, or ethnic background. Hawley and Nieto (2010) claim that race and ethnicity significantly impacts students’ learning in their article, “Another Inconvenient Truth: Race and Ethnicity” (p. 66). They contended that educators should be “race and ethnicity -responsive” to effectively understand the challenges students from diverse races and cultures face (Hawley & Nieto, 2010, p. 66). Moreover, the article noted that schools should have practices in place that promote an inclusive, supportive, and enriching learning environment for all students including students from different races and ethnicities.

It can't be an easy task of taking one kid who is a struggling African-American student and another who is a full understanding Caucasian student, and creating a perfect classroom balance that suits the needs and wants of both students. To be fully honest it sounds as if you are asking teachers to segregate their teaching styles and feelings toward individual students. It may sound as if I am trying to twist the purpose of your article but I must assure you I am not. I and just trying to understand how a teacher can develop certain expectations and standards for students when the educational system has already created the foundation of said standards and

A large problem in schools is the fact that they are unaware of the racial segregation that is happening before their very eyes. This is becoming a large social issue in classrooms today. Teachers and faculty are blind to the

Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon (2014) noted that “educators need to take a two-tiered approach to the issue of inequitable treatment of diverse groups” (p. 369). This includes educators understanding their personal cultural identity and welcoming different cultures as well. They may need to thoroughly analyze the ways they hypothesize learning and performance so they can renew their sense of thinking within the diverse settings to ensure all students are not disadvantaged by certain assumptions and thoughts. The authors went on to pinpoint that “supervisors and teachers need to become directly involved in efforts to change public policy that works against lower-socioeconomic and racial/ethnic minority children” (p.

Teachers must have a full understanding of their student’s cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds in order to become socially conscious of the power relations among their students. In order for teachers to learn to lose their own biases, I will host after school teacher trainings where I will facilitate discussions about race and class. This is important because according to author Gilda Ochoa, if teachers hold on to cultural assumptions they run the risk of sending racialized messages to their students, who then internalize them (Ochoa 165). In her book, Academic Profiling, she provides examples of how students pick up on such messages. For instance April Lee, reveals how she is aware of her teachers’ expectations of Asian Americans when she states, “When a teacher looks at you and your face, [they think,] “oh, you’re Asian.” She must be really smart, or she must be really good at math” (Ochoa 165). These stereotyped messages or “ideological assaults” often translate into the differential ways teachers treat their students and is known to create resentment in the students treated inferiorly (Ochoa 172). Clearly, in order for

Though we may say words don’t hurt us, they do in one form or another. By the middle of fourth grade instead of being known as the nice girl as I was in my old school, I became the outcast. It all began when one of the girls in my group had a comment about why I was in school when I could be doing her yard work. It was the furthermost embarrassing moment in my entire life, and while all the students laughed uncontrollably all I could do is hide my face in shame. This moment had sparked the never ending bullying that was my fourth and fifth-grade year. While walking the hallway’s boys would call me “illegal” and, of course, a “wetback”. Though I find it humorous now, this was undoubtedly the ultimate dilemma I faced living in Georgia. Two

Before taking this class I had always thought that I wasn’t racist, and that I didn’t have any biases. Shortly into this course I realized that I had a lot more to work on than I thought. I had learned that I didn’t need to be personally racist to support racist institutions that favored my race only. I have learned that we are all the same species, and that this thing we call race is something that we have created. Upon reflecting from the beginning of this semester, I believed and still do believe that culturally competent educators acknowledge their students differences, and learn to value and respect these differences in the classroom. Educators must model positive behavior by respecting and valuing where their students come from. When educators value differences in the classroom, it creates a culture in which everyone can be himself or herself. In order to create this culture in my future classroom I need to acknowledge all of my student’s differences, and I must learn to value and respect these differences.

One of the many things people discriminate against is age. Someone may claim that if a person is too young, they cannot help in the church. People may also say that older people can’t do anything because they are too impotent. Even in schools, High Schoolers may not want to help out anyone younger than them because it is deemed “not cool.” We should help elementary students, our elders, and high schoolers or young adults.

People of color in the classroom are challenged by tough circumstances that many of their mainstream counterparts may not be exposed to on a daily basis. Whether it is ethnicity, family sizefamily size, first language, poverty or any other number of characteristics that people of color face, they do in fact, have a strong impact on a student’s development.

During the summer before my junior year I truly felt that I transitioned from a child to the person that I am today. An event happened which became such a huge turning point in my life that I barely even recognized myself after it transpired. It occurred during volleyball camp, when one of my closest friends and I were sitting in the locker room waiting for the day to start. Our conversation started off with simple small talk. Then, completely out of the blue she told me something that felt like a punch in the stomach. She stared straight into my eyes and said “Erin, I know you’re gay.” I couldn’t do anything but stare. So many thoughts were tumbling through my head that my vision became blurry and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what to

Race in America is and has always been an enormous deal and a focal point in America and of many educational studies. Many studies have researched the educational achievement gap between minorities and non-minorities. I rather refer to it as the educational debt we as educators owe those students, this study looks at the idea of having more teachers of color in hopes to pay our debt of education back to these minority students. I surveyed over 100 minority students to gauge their attitudes concerning learning, motivation, confidence and much more to see how it differs from their minority teacher class and their non-minority teacher class. I also looked at grades of 20 students and was able to view a survey done about my class compared to

On the other hand, the education community faces growing challenges related to diversity, such as the academic achievement gaps between students of diverse backgrounds; racial segregation and resegregation in our schools; gender inequalities and sex discrimination; bullying and harassment of students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender; educating students with disabilities; staggering disparities in educational resources based on class or income; access to education for immigrants; respecting students of all religious backgrounds; and so forth. Institutional hurdles such as high-stakes testing and the lack of resources for "nonessential" subjects make addressing the issue of diversity even more challenging