Diversity

Throughout the article, “Diversity, Learning Styles, and Culture” Pat Burke Guild offered a lot of important insight on current challenges teachers and schools face when they do not keep diversity, learning styles and culture in mind. For example throughout the educational system, sometimes we are a little guilty of simplifying learning styles. If one student does not learn the content you’ve presented the way the rest of the class has, and begins to display behavioral problems, then that student is automatically labeled at a “problem child” simply due to the fact that their teacher is unable to differentiate instruction to fit the learning style or comprehension of that specific child.


Guild also offered some essential tips to teachers, one of them being to keep in mind student’s cultural backgrounds. Because everyone in an individual human being, everyone experiences life different, and has completely different outlooks on the environment around them. As a teacher, it is important to take these cultural backgrounds into account, especially for me when I am presenting social studies. I think that keeping culture in mind is important as a teacher because a simple disagreement could be solved with an understanding of where another person is coming from, specifically a student. Culture can also explain attitudes or behaviors that a teacher may not understand due to their own cultural bias.

This article served as a good reminder that every student a teacher encounters in their teaching career will most likely be different than any other student they have had, so it is important to treat and teach students as though they are individuals, and as though they are deserving of your highest quality teaching, providing them with an educational experience that they will never forget and use throughout their life. 

http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/Learning%20Styles/diversity.html

Teaching Hope: Anticipation Reflection

"Teaching Hope" written by Erin Grunwell provides stories and experiences from new and experienced teachers. Each entry contains a new perspective of victories or tough times had by these teachers. I really enjoyed reading about the many different types of relationships that teachers had with there students, from giving testimonies in court against them, to realizing they were the only voice a student had. 

One entry that specifically caught my attention was the fourth entry in the journal style novel. The story was about a student named Shanece, a student who received disciplinary action after being talked to about dress code. Apparently Shanece had a track record with behavioral issues at this school, and after she got in trouble, she got so upset at her suspension that she assaulted a teacher. The school convinced this new teacher to press charges against Shanece so she could benefit from some sort of consoling. However, when the teacher stood at her trial, she realized that this wasn’t the case, and she has simply helped the state bring a young girl who needed help and support to jail.

This entry touched me because it demonstrates how some schools deal with students, who are considered to have behavioral issues. Everyone believed the teacher of this scenario was the victim, however the victim was Shanece herself, a student who clearly needed to be saved by the educational system, not hurt even more by it. When I am a teacher, I want to further extend the olive branch between students who are considered rough around the edges, and the administration who is probably tired of having the same students in their office. By creating a meaningful connection with students, and giving them resources to succeed, hopefully I will never find myself in a similar situation as Shanece and her teacher.