EDU Prosetry

WOW! This has been the longest three weeks of my academic life. I knew that the journey I was beginning would be a long one; however, I did not know it would be this intense. Before starting the program I had different ideas about what I thought a good teacher was, but I did not know that there was so much more to it.

I am, we are, PANGEA is just beginning our mission to become the nest possible teachers we can each individually be. We have just begun our journey to gain all the tools necessary to go out into the world and “make a difference one little person at a time.”

There are so many things to consider when teaching students, and now that I have been made aware some of these things I will forever be accountable for all my actions. To tell you the truth I am a little scared. I am afraid because I know that every reading, every paper, every action, every class, everything I do for this day forward will be working to shape me into a person who will have an impact on the lives of others and the world. I will be apart of the army of people working to make this place Earth into something more beautiful then all the sunsets combined. Knowing this scares me. There is power in being able to change a life. My fear is of changing a life for the worst instead of the better.

These three weeks have confirmed in me that I am finally in the exact place I am supposed to be. It is here that I believe I will begin to do the things the divine has designed me to do. I am ready to begin!

A great fear of mine, as I begin my quest to become a teacher, is that I will get a student who does not speak any English. I fear this because I am afraid that the language barrier will cause me to do a disservice to her or him. This fear was somewhat manifested today during our visit to Idlewood elementary school.

During our visit there we were given time to spend in teachers’ classes in order to observe them in action. Towards the end of the day, the entire cohort and a group of second graders met for a group conversation. However, before our large group discussion we were paired of individually with a second grader to have a one on one discussion.

The little boy I was paired with could not speak any English. His name is Kalbe and he is seven years old. He is from Ethiopia and just immigrated to the United States. His first language is Amari, a beautiful language that was also spoken by his classmate Tinsaye. Tinsaye was a second grader in the class that Kalbe will be in next year. He spent the last few weeks of school with her in order to get an idea of what it will be like as a second grader.

During our conversation, or attempted conversation, I struggled with trying to find ways to communicate with him. I did not want to exclude him from the exercise; however, it was hard trying to communicate with him through Tinsaye because she could not easily translate my English into Amari.

I found myself wondering about what I would do when I get a student who does not speak English. I want to be able to give all my students the best I can offer.

The purpose of education, as Gatto mentions in his article and what many educators believe, should be to make meaning or provide the information to people so that meaning could be made. However, often this is not the case. The process of education in America, more specifically the process of public education in America, is not set up to have children question the norms but more so as a promotion of them. Students are given few opportunities to really explore the topic they are learning inside the classroom because the time spent on activities is dictated by the “test standards”.

Producing well-rounded individuals seems to be the least of the concerns of educators within the public school system. Producing ATM machines that things can be put in and taken out when asked for is what the schools are creating. One way to assure the success of this endeavor is to censor anything that will challenge the norms or provoke free thinking. If materials were allowed into schools that caused students to wonder, examine, challenge, and even go against what the dominant culture and their beliefs deem to be acceptable, then schools would indeed become dangerous places that produce revolutionaries.

There is a man I know, quite well because I use to date him, who is an excellent poster child of how schools fail students. He grew up in Atlanta and is a product of the public school system. He is arguable one of the smartest people I know, and often I find myself thinking or telling him that he would be the perfect teacher. He knows the system and how it fails students. The system failed him. He did not graduate from high school.

When he took the SAT a few years ago, with only a ninth grade education, he received a score good enough to gain him acceptance into VERY good institutions of higher learning. However, by that time he had already been incarcerated for living the life of a hustler. I wonder had he completed high school what kind of life he could have today.

As we sit to have conversations about books he read, ideas and theories he has, news, or just the everyday struggles caused by living as a black man in poverty, I find myself wondering how the school failed him. I gave him a call after class to uncover some of these truths. He viewed school as “pointless and a waste of time because it was too easy.” He stated that he just lost interest in the material because it was too easy; he did not find it challenging so he stopped doing the work. As a result he got behind in his assignments. One day he had a talk with his school consular who told him he was too far behind and would never catch up so he should just go and get his GED.

How could someone say that to a child? How could he not demand anything but the best from every student? Why is it that neither the consolers nor any of his teachers stopped to look for the real reasons behind his attitudes toward school? How can I work to assure that this does not happen to any of the students I will teach?

When I was in the second grade I remember being placed in the group known as the Blue Birds. The Blue Birds group was the reading group comprised of the students who were a little behind in their reading. We read thinner books with words that all the students in the Red Bird group knew. I remember being embarrassed during reading time because all of my friends were part of the Red Bird group and I was not. It was at that point I begin to think that I was not as smart as my friends.

Throughout my grade 2-12 years, and still today, I judged my success in comparison to that Red Bird group. I was determined to not remain in the group with all the blue birds. My best friend, Nikki, was a member of the Red Bird group. She does not know this, in fact only recently did I become aware of it, but I have always tried to stay one step ahead of her because I did not want to fall back behind.

Tracking, for the most part is detrimental to students. Had I not developed the desire within myself to excel, I question if I would have become the first person in my family to obtain a college degree. I understand that there needs to be a time set aside to assist students who may be struggling to catch up, but I wonder how this can occur without sacrificing the self esteem of students along the way.

What is it that I am trying to do over the course of this three week course in culturally responsive pedagogy and throughout my entire journey of becoming a teacher?

In order to understand how we will deal with social justice issues in or classroom we must first understand how we feel about these issues first. It is important to understand the root of our own biases and how they affect the way we view the world. Here I have attached a link from tolerance.org website to a series of test developed to help individuals uncover some of their own hidden biases. I challenge all to take a couple of the tests as a tool to help aid in the understanding of self.

http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/index.html

Often we fail to see how we are alike when we encounter those who are different. Instead of trying to figure out what similarities exist between those who are not like us we naturally jump to what makes them different. In discovering this difference we tend to look at it as abnormal or wrong. “They do this backwards,” “They seem to be primitive,” “They do not so these things the way we do them,” etc.

As educators, we will have to fight the urge to label students who are not like us as uneducated, bad students. We have to realize that each student brings into the classroom riches to be shared with those around us. It is like having your own talking passport to another culture. We must make an effort to show them, the “other,” that they are valuable and that we want them to share that worth with the class and the world around them. However, it is also important for us to know that as we encourage the students to value their culture, we must make it understandable that the dominant culture’s customs, language, and way of life is just as important to know.

It’s Amazing how Gods are contained in glass walls
What marvels me is how short he was
Petite, shorter than the average man
The short robes behind glass windows
On poles reaching up to the heavens
He was a giant
With feet no bigger than mine
A fork placed there to remind
Us that even the immortal
Could not live off of love alone
What lies in the heart of a woman
After she has loved a God
Whose words had the power to
Make folks
“stop, listen, and imagine…”

Today we walked. We walked down a street. We walked down a street once flowing with life. We walked down a street once flowing with the lifeblood of black folks. We walked down a street once flowing with the lifeblood of black folks who dreamed big. We walked down a street of black dreams. We walked down a street of dreams. We walked down a street. Today we walked.

What does it mean to be poor in America? Or more importantly what does it mean to be poor in the United States?

When one thinks of poverty there are images that immediately pop into one’s head. These are the people who are uneducated, crime consumed, lazy, dirty, deviants of society. The poor are all the things one aspires not to become. No one wakes up in the morning and says… “Today I want to become a poor man.” However, we live in a society where it’s principles of meritocracy say that this is the case. People are poor because they choose to be poor.

Today in class a question was posed asking who considered themselves poor. Several hands lifted, myself included, to show that at the present moment he or she considered themselves to be poor. But are we really?

Just like the different classes within one particular ethnic group based on skin complexion (light skinned Black people are treated better than dark skinned Black people) there are different classes among the poor. There are those who have it rougher than others based on the severity of their poverty.

According to the statistics on wealth in the United States, nearly 1% of the nation’s people control almost 50% of the nation’s wealth. This means that 99% of the people in the United States are left to survive on half of the nation’s wealth. In analyzing these facts it may be safe to assume that most people in United States are poor; more importantly is the statement that more people in the United States are poor and they don’t realize it. And according to the idea of meritocracy in the US these people are choosing to be there.

I remember when I was younger I often wondered why is it that all the slaves did not band together and take over the all White people and make them slaves. I thought as a child that this would better society because instead of the Black people being mistreated it would be the White people. However in doing so the same systemic problems that resulted from the enslavement of Africans would result only with a fair skinned victim. They would be the one’s needing a Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and civil rights movement.

Just as a child I find myself wondering why the 99% of people are not banding together to take over the wealth of the United States. In pondering this I struggle with the question of what type of difference would that make and would those differences all be positive?