Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Reflection #4
In my experience, I haven’t seen anything that stands out as much as David’s case in “His name is Michael” but I have seen teachers who rely on the schools systems and, both in others and sometimes myself, witness passive racism. First, we’d all like to think that there are mainly two categories of schools: good schools vs. bad schools. In bad schools, with poor or little equipment and conditioned students that are disruptive and trained to not care, I feel that it would be generally known that the school system would not be the best. For those teachers (good, bad, or otherwise) they’d be somewhat left to their own devices. Ideally, most people would like to choose the good schools, those that are embracing technology, learning styles, the diversity of students. In those schools, the expectation is higher for the school system; we expect it to work and be accurate. In this story, this wasn’t the case. (Logically, I know there are many different types of schools between good and bad, and as the quality rises, so does the expectations.) My second point is passive racism. This isn’t something that is overt or sometimes even a conscious effort; it’s something that happens unintentionally but still wrong. Our society, despite our learning or intentions, tends to make us think certain things about race. One example is I’ve had with close friends of mine is assume that they can speak or understand Spanish based on their race. I may not state this in any obvious way but it is still passive racism.
I think one of the best ideas from the story is “I have learned that being a good teacher is as much about rapport and relationships as it is about progressive curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment.” This express that in order to educate and touch student’s lives, we must learn and know them as people first. I encountered a transfer student, ELL during my observations. I was lucky to have a great teacher to observe, she worked on knowing this student as an individual and expected the same level of work effort from him as any other student, though her approach may have been different. During a journal prompt, she saw that he was not working, though she knew he had the ability to. She found a way to motivate him using his own ideas to complete the assignment. This was done my asking him question of his interest.
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I agree that passive racism is a severe problem in several schools, especially at the secondary level. Your example of people's assumption of those of Hispanic descent all speaking Spanish is something I have had to deal with in my own classroom (with both students assuming Hispanic students speak Spanish and with students assuming that I don't because I am white). As you pointed out, taking the time to build rapport with individual students goes a long way to combat passive racism and other forms of prejudice that emerge in the classroom.
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