What lengths am I willing to go to in order to do right by every child?

    What Lengths am I willing to go to in order to do right by every child? Fair question, teachers tend to stick to doing the bare minimum when teaching a classroom. They stick to the curriculum that they created and expect students to follow and learn from that. Many teachers lack empathy and understanding for their students, especially those that struggle academically. They blame the student for not capturing their lectures and performing well on their quizzes or exams. They also don’t try to connect with their students and lack communication, they don’t make the effort to talk to them to understand what exactly they struggle with. Students often feel unmotivated, and this leads to poor performance and in most cases and increase in the dropout rate especially within the races other than the white population. 

    I as a future educator, am willing to go to extreme lengths to do right by my students. I want to connect with my students and make them feel like they are understood, I want to create an engaging environment for them by adopting different strategies that will help them learn and improve, I want to make it clear to them that although I am their educator, I am also someone they can confide in if there is something going that might be interfering with their learning. I want to be able to care for my students but also push them to do their best and celebrate their accomplishments every time they do. I will advocate for my students and will acknowledge each and every one of them. My classroom will be opened to ideas and will be adaptable, we will gamify or storify our lectures to ensure everyone captures the content overall, my classroom will be welcoming to all student. As future educators we must be opened to nurture our students and help them become successful in any way regardless of where they come from. 

 

How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession?

 

How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession? Gender affects the teaching profession in more ways now a days because we are seeing more children and teens come out as transgender, gay or lesbian and teachers are often faced with the difficult task of not knowing how to handle the situation. Teachers are used to the regular norms of boys go to the boy’s bathroom and girls go to the girl’s bathroom or if there as an activity such as a play then boys play the male part and girls play the female play. However now that there have been more children that identify as transgender, some teachers that are more connected with their beliefs find it hard to open themselves to these changes and allowing students to express themselves and refer to them as the gender that they identify with. Although there may be teachers that still believe in the old norms there are teachers that are open to these changes and embrace their students no matter how they identify.

There are some states in which teachers are being forced to out their students if they admit to being transgender or even part of the LGBTQ community and even go as far as expelling them. I myself identify as a gay male and while in school it was hard for me to express myself with my teachers because most of them were still accustomed to the old norms and I was afraid of how I would be treated. As a future educator and gay male, I can definitely say that my classroom will be a safe and open environment for all my students who identify as trans or part of the LGBTQ community, we as teachers must ensure that we create a good environment for all students no matter the gender. 

Is Schooling Equitable?

 

I don’t think that school is equitable, and here is why; I grew up on the west side of San Antonio, which is composed of mostly Latinos and African Americans. The elementary school I attended lacked a lot of resources and it had the image of a prison. Windows had bars and the lights were dimmed and almost yellow, you can easily tell the school needed reshaping. However, it took a while for funding to be received so the school could be rebuilt. Middle school wasn’t any different, no windows at all, classes lacked material, most of the books and computers were old which made it hard to handle them and learn. The second I stepped in an all-white school while taking a trip to visit a family friend, I noticed that the school was bright with open windows and it smelt fresh, you can actually tell it was a school, many students carried textbooks that looked brand new. This was the first time I became fully aware about white privilege.

 Another issue I noticed is that expectations on academic performance are lower for other races and higher for the white race. I think that for a school to be equitable there needs to be more funding given to school districts that are racially diverse and create a better curriculum and have an equal set of set of expectations for everyone. I think that there should be more diversity within our education system in terms of teachers and classes that teach about other cultures. As a future educator I look forward to the day when all schools we equal for everyone.   

Do I have the full picture?

 

Do any of us have the full picture? I think that is the bigger question here? The answer? No, we don’t, in school we have been taught about segregation in schools and were told the story of the Little Rock Nine, we were painted a small picture of what the African American race had to endure while in the pursuit of a better education. I had never heard the story of Ruby Bridges and everything she went through while going to an all-white school. It saddens me that this story was never mentioned in any of my classes, especially because she went through so much being alone in a class for a full year and being taunted by grown white women. It makes me wonder what other races and ethnicities have stories untold? I realize now that just as we did not have the bigger picture when it came to segregation, we also don’t have the bigger picture when it comes to each other. 

I will admit, I don’t have the full picture, I don’t know the stories that my peers carry with them and what brought them to this point in their careers. We each have unique stories of hard work, struggle, and determination which many may not know of. We each come from families of different cultures that share unique traditions but also challenges. As future educators we must be opened to learn more about our students and build a better and bigger picture in which every culture and race can share their uniqueness and help each other.