Learning Outcome #12: Foster respect for individual's abilities and disabilities and an understanding of and appreciation of variations of ethnicity, culture, language, gender, age, class and sexual orientation.
It is so important as a teacher to get to know each and every one of your students. Both of my placements were not racially diverse, but there is always a difference among students based on culture, economics, class, sexual orientation and gender. Every student has their own individual needs and wants, weaknesses and strengths, and it is my job as a teacher to tease those out in their learning process.
It is prominent to get to know students through some kind of writing. I didn’t have the chance to do something like a “Where I’m From Poem” to get to know the students, but I used quotes, free writing, and then discussion to understand where the students come from and what they connect to. For example, the students at Homer Junior High are reading a novel about a young Vietnamese girl who eventually becomes a refugee living in America. We haven't gotten that far in the novel, however, the conversation as we have read sometimes will lead to a multicultural discussion. This discussion conveys the prominence in the student's understanding of the differences between cultures such as Vietnamese and American culture. There is a young girl in my ninth period class who has a Vietnamese mother, and although she doesn't celebrate the traditions of the Vietnamese, she still was able to talk about it with the rest of the class. The students were enamored by the diversity and multicultural ways of their friend in class, so this lead to more questions about Vietnam and how different or similar it is to America.
It is essential to connect with all students, and if there are some students that seem impossible to connect to it is important to try even harder with them. There was a girl in eighth grade in Homer who I was told hated female teachers and refused to listen to them. She came from a negative and economically low background. It took me some time, but she one of the students who came after school to do work in my classroom and get to know me. She says hi to me every day, enjoys being a part of my class, and I even got her to participate and feel comfortable doing it in front of her classmates. There was one boy who was taken away from his parents when he was six years old because they were burning him, he was a tough student when he was younger, but has come a long way. He was one of the only students at the beginning of my placement who would say hi to me every time he saw me, and even after I gave him lunch detention for being a disruption in my class we have some kind of connection that I don’t have with my other students. Children are different, and once I take the time to get to know every single one of them they realize that I do care no matter who they are or where they come from.
It is prominent to get to know students through some kind of writing. I didn’t have the chance to do something like a “Where I’m From Poem” to get to know the students, but I used quotes, free writing, and then discussion to understand where the students come from and what they connect to. For example, the students at Homer Junior High are reading a novel about a young Vietnamese girl who eventually becomes a refugee living in America. We haven't gotten that far in the novel, however, the conversation as we have read sometimes will lead to a multicultural discussion. This discussion conveys the prominence in the student's understanding of the differences between cultures such as Vietnamese and American culture. There is a young girl in my ninth period class who has a Vietnamese mother, and although she doesn't celebrate the traditions of the Vietnamese, she still was able to talk about it with the rest of the class. The students were enamored by the diversity and multicultural ways of their friend in class, so this lead to more questions about Vietnam and how different or similar it is to America.
It is essential to connect with all students, and if there are some students that seem impossible to connect to it is important to try even harder with them. There was a girl in eighth grade in Homer who I was told hated female teachers and refused to listen to them. She came from a negative and economically low background. It took me some time, but she one of the students who came after school to do work in my classroom and get to know me. She says hi to me every day, enjoys being a part of my class, and I even got her to participate and feel comfortable doing it in front of her classmates. There was one boy who was taken away from his parents when he was six years old because they were burning him, he was a tough student when he was younger, but has come a long way. He was one of the only students at the beginning of my placement who would say hi to me every time he saw me, and even after I gave him lunch detention for being a disruption in my class we have some kind of connection that I don’t have with my other students. Children are different, and once I take the time to get to know every single one of them they realize that I do care no matter who they are or where they come from.