What Does This Mean For Me As An Educator?

Ours is a growing and wonderful community. With growth, however, come greater challenges and even greater opportunities. Our community consists of many people from many different cultures and with growth it will become even more diverse. We have all seen tragedies unfold in schools across the country and as made evident by the necessity of our bullying policy, the issues of ignorance and intolerance are also alive and well here at home. This is why we must address issues surrounding cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is simply the blending of different cultures – people with different backgrounds, routines, looks, beliefs, styles of dress all coming together to form a community. The challenge is do we continue to stick our head

Step 6: The larger issue stems at the school administration. They need to make new policies about implementing lessons into the classroom about diversity in families. They should also make a parent meeting once a year about the different families at the school and how everyone can be more understanding and compassionate for diversity in the schools.

- Reflect on, with the children, their own responses to diversity and how they would include and respect a new child that comes to the school. For example greeting them and how they would make them feel like they belong.

How do they create an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful environment where all children, youth, and families can take pride in their cultural identities, beliefs, and practices?

1) Display and use cultural diverse equipment and resources within the service like choice of music to play and storybooks to read. 2) Avoid making assumptions or unintentionally creating labels as this will demonstrate to the children that discriminatory and bias comments are acceptable. It is likely to reflect badly on the children, to others and to the wider community . It will not only set a poor example to the children, but more crucially, it will engrave incorrect ways of speaking and behaving in society. 3) Make a conscious effort to use language that is not bias, will not divide students unnecessarily and is inclusive. For example, "Okay everyone..." is less likely to reinforce gender divisions than "Okay, boys and girls..." 4) ) Do not ignore discriminatory behaviour by making it clear that you will not tolerate any offensive, racial, ethnic, religions, sexual jokes, slurs or behaviours. Do not just avoid the problem as your silence may give the impression of tacit approval. However, if you are unable to respond immediately at the time that the incident occurred, instead respond as soon after as possible before the problem becomes

So what I decided to do to start off this project is I went in to interview my mom and ask her a few simple one of these questions was how you deal with the different diversity that comes into her daycare. She replied saying “ black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim , Christian , Atheist we don’t discriminate we treat everyone the same it does not affect the teaching whatsoever, the only time it effects our program is for example when a Muslim parent ask that we not serve chicken to their child and we respect their wish.”

Baltimore County is a very diverse county, there are many whites,blacks, hispanics, asians etc… These different races get along very well throughout their area, they have very little problems. They have very prestigious high schools, with a lot of good kids. However, there is a problem that concerns The Board of the Baltimore County Schools. That is the lack of diversity throughout the teachers in the schools, people have been irritated about this. People of the county believe it's a real big problem, but others believe that it's not. There is a lot of discussion and controversy on what actions to take to make the schools more diverse.

A major issue that is a result of racial tensions in my district is the fact that there are two high schools in the district that have a majority of Caucasian students and a majority of African American students. This has led to the students in those schools not often being exposed to many students of a different race. Therefore these students respond poorly to diversity, and it has led to the minority students in both of those school feeling belittled and overlooked. Similarly, these students feel adverse to diversity, and this has resulted in most of them feeling dislike for students that are different than them.

Significance. Recent events in the U.S. society have made clear that issues of race remain a pertinent predicament that needs to be resolved. In fact, data collected from the 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) on public and private school principals (NCES, 2016) revealed that 38% of the principals who took the survey reported racial tension between students taking place occasionally and another 2% reported that racial tension occurred frequently in their schools. In short, school leaders who continue to abide to colorblind ideology limit the potential for schools to become vehicles for the change our society needs.

Through the reading of Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota I have not only learned about the experiences of others, but have also gained a deeper understanding of my own racial and cultural identity and how that relates to other identities around me. In learning this information, I feel that I will not only be able to understand and relate better to my future students, but also understand their backgrounds and how they are affecting them presently. Therefore, I will be able to teach to individuals in the way they need me to, but also create a more welcoming and inclusive environment (racially, culturally, and otherwise) in my future classroom. The information I have read has helped me to understand my own racial and cultural identity, how it relates to the identities of my future students, and what I can do to make educational institutions more racially and culturally inclusive.

I would like to take a step back and find out what my beliefs are when it comes to diversity and how they can influence the children I work with. I personally don’t see color, gender, or sexual preference. I don’t care who you are, what you do, or with whom you do it. As long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else. However, I enjoy learning about other cultures and ways of life.

I learned a lot from doing this interview. One thing thing in particular that I appreciated was that he said he did not always anticipate becoming a principal or wanting to be a one and decided to become a principal after several years as a teacher. I have been very indecisive about my career path so learning that you can decide later and still succeed helped calm my nerves. When I asked, Mr. Evans stated that he does not regret becoming a principal, which is a big fear of mine; that I will spend years working towards a position and then regret it or wish I had taken another path. Another point I learned is that, according to him, the current climate in the country is generally not so favorable toward teaching in a public school. He said that because of this, as a leader, it is especially important to give positive feedback whenever possible and to let the teachers know they are doing a good job. One of the most interesting points Mr. Evans made during the interview was when he said he needs to be as much of a cheerleader as anything else. I also learned that, a lot of the times, moments when your ethics will be questioned are the result of miscommunication or misperception. Leaders must always be reflective in those situations and look at whether there was something that could have been done better or differently. Even if a person does not have any facts right, it is best to at least apologize for how they are feeling about a situation and then go from there.

Teaching is not just a job that I perform because I expect a reward at the end of each month; it is my passion and I feel extremely satisfied with every successful lesson. I like to help the society, and teaching gives me a great opportunity to do so. I am passionate about educating my students, so I work with them and motivate them to lead them to find inspiration in learning. I use different strategies to engage them and share with them the knowledge.

My greatest contribution as an instructor has been the time I have spent off the podium. There are several subjects that I may not be familiar with or maybe seen as the tougher subjects or perhaps even boring. The time that is spent preparing outside of the classroom is extremely important. As an instructor first and foremost you have to spend countless hours researching a subject, analyze it, and anticipate questions. It is not a comfortable to be in front of students and not fully knowing the subject. Not only does the material have to make sense to you, you then have to take that material and think about how to explain it so that every different Soldier from every different background can make sense of it. Practicing teaching methods using different comparisons, developing training aids all takes a lot of time outside of the duty hours to deliver the best level of instruction possible. Then there is the time spent improving on the lesson plan. The lesson plans we receive are often times missing information, they order they are in doesn’t make sense and sometimes they are completely blank a give use nothing to go off of. That means dedicating the hours outside of the class room to improve or even completely build that lesson plan. Time must be spent to ensure that every piece of information the students need is included. This is not always possible we could easily spend an entire week breaking down the components of an automatic transmission and go into

This semester, I was a teacher assistant for Dr. Finley’s psychology 101 course. The experience to TA has been a really valuable, and rewarding experience. I’ve definitely gotten the chance to develop skills in the professional context. The variety of tasks and the workload pace was very enjoyable for me. The opportunity of being a TA at times proved to be challenging but I find ways to successfully manage some of these adversities. Overall, there’s a plethora of things that I can take away, and I plan to utilize some of these tactics into my future goals and career aspirations.