Foster understanding of and respect for individuals’ abilities, disabilities and diversity of variations of ethnicity, culture, language, gender, age, class, and sexual orientation.
Coming from a diverse background myself, I understand the importance of accepting people for who they are. I've always been offended by racial, gender, or sexual orientation slurs and found them inappropriate. I will never allow things like that to go on in my classroom. One of the best ways for students to be accepting towards people different than them is to be educated.
In an English classroom, we have the advantage to open up our students to different worlds. Our book selection for class should not all be focused around "white" people, but instead should embrace all different cultures. Maybe read "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini or "My Name is Not Easy" by Debbie Dahl Edwardson. By being well read students can understand, sympathize, and maybe even relate to people not like them. I believe it is important to incorporate YA into the classroom because it is something that teenagers can really connect to since it is related to their lives. By combining YA and multicultural texts into the class, you are at a real advantage because not only can students connect with the protagonists, but they can also explore another culture.
Although I've said this many times before, I believe this issue relates back to classroom environment. If you have a diverse classroom, there may be problems between different groups of people. In Linda Christensen's book, "Teaching for Joy and Justice" she talks about her diverse, poor classroom and how she finally got them to connect: through writing. Students may find similarities between people they never would have thought of through reading their work. Memoirs or "Where I'm From" poems are great ways for students to get to know their classmates. Once you have students realizing that they are more alike than they realize, that is where a positive environment is made and that is when amazing things can happen.
When teaching the 7th graders poetry I decided I wanted to keep the theme of identity/family. I knew I had the opportunity here to choose many different kinds of poems, and I really jumped on this opportunity. I did the following poems: "I Ask My Mother To Sing", "Dreams", "The Courage That my Mother Had", "I'm Nobody", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", and "Ode to a Family Photograph". As one may see, I chose poems from a variety of different nationalities such as Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. My school setting is extremely diverse and I wanted to make sure to touch on as many nationalities that are present in my class as possible.
In an English classroom, we have the advantage to open up our students to different worlds. Our book selection for class should not all be focused around "white" people, but instead should embrace all different cultures. Maybe read "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini or "My Name is Not Easy" by Debbie Dahl Edwardson. By being well read students can understand, sympathize, and maybe even relate to people not like them. I believe it is important to incorporate YA into the classroom because it is something that teenagers can really connect to since it is related to their lives. By combining YA and multicultural texts into the class, you are at a real advantage because not only can students connect with the protagonists, but they can also explore another culture.
Although I've said this many times before, I believe this issue relates back to classroom environment. If you have a diverse classroom, there may be problems between different groups of people. In Linda Christensen's book, "Teaching for Joy and Justice" she talks about her diverse, poor classroom and how she finally got them to connect: through writing. Students may find similarities between people they never would have thought of through reading their work. Memoirs or "Where I'm From" poems are great ways for students to get to know their classmates. Once you have students realizing that they are more alike than they realize, that is where a positive environment is made and that is when amazing things can happen.
When teaching the 7th graders poetry I decided I wanted to keep the theme of identity/family. I knew I had the opportunity here to choose many different kinds of poems, and I really jumped on this opportunity. I did the following poems: "I Ask My Mother To Sing", "Dreams", "The Courage That my Mother Had", "I'm Nobody", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", and "Ode to a Family Photograph". As one may see, I chose poems from a variety of different nationalities such as Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. My school setting is extremely diverse and I wanted to make sure to touch on as many nationalities that are present in my class as possible.
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