Graham Hevel
Hello everyone I am back again! This week I am going to address different differences I may encounter among those I may work with. For both those who I work with and the students, who I will someday, be teaching. Teaching is the same as most jobs, in regards to having lots of different cultural differences in the workplace. I expect that in education that I will have a lot of co-workers that come from many different backgrounds. I need to be able to put myself into my co-workers “shoes” and notice their differences and be accepting of them, just like how they have to understand mine.
However, I am going to experience many different cultural backgrounds with my students in all of my classes. I believe that it is very important for me to treat all students equally and not let stereotypes get into my head, because at that point my students might then follow me and engage in the same stereotypes that aren’t necessarily true. Just like Jane Elliott’s experiment with her class distinguishing students based off of eye color. Where Elliott said that one eye color was more “superior” to the other and the kids went right along with it. This is a very important experiment to me because it shows me how much of an influence that I can have on the children. Here is the link to the original experiment video on YouTube: Jane Elliott Blue and Brown Eyes
I plan on accepting and personally identify all of the different cultural backgrounds that my students may have. I also plan on making sure I know that I am aware of certain cultures and make sure that I do not offend anyone in my classroom. One difference I think will still be relevant when I am teaching is race. The biggest way I can prepare for this is accepting that different races have different cultures and understand each person has a very different life. Then students get racially profiled each day to add to their stress levels already. I think the biggest part of easing that stressor is by treating them like everyone else, but also realizing that each student has a different life, which can be impacted by race. While being a teacher I will have to make sure that I am very aware of the different cultures students are raised in.