As teachers, we look forward to having experiences in life that allow us to learn more about the world we live in and the people around us, with hopes of better understanding ourselves and most importantly, our students. In reality, I grew up in a rural, predominately white school district. Before approaching the task of “Assessing My Life Experiences”, I already knew I had a monocultural experience for the majority of my life.
All throughout my early and late childhood, I had very little, or no experience of interacting with other cultures. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I had began seeing, interacting and making connections with people from diverse cultures and groups. At that point in my life, I began to feel ignorant because of my lack of knowledge about other cultures. The idea of this did not intimidate me, but rather made me more interested in knowing about the unknown. While assessing my life experiences, I did notice that even though I had a very monocultural upbringing, in contrary, I now have multicultural life experiences within my current field of work, friendships and neighborhood where I live.
In reviewing my responses to the “Personal Contact Inventory” questionnaire, I found it encouraging that throughout my life I have had contact quite often with individuals who have disabilities. In contrary, I found that I could not survive in poverty. I was unable to apply any of the questions that were asked to my lifestyle. Because of my inability to respond to these questions, I have become more excited to read about my literature circle book, in hopes that I become well educated about the issue of poverty in education.
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteOur upbringings were very similar, smaller towns with very limited diversity in ethnicity. I think it's important to do what your mind and heart tell you what to do, and that's evident in your college experiences. I agree with you about being courageous and taking a risk to better understand and interact with people of different ethnicities, I also grew in the same direction that you did. Good luck in the future and I'm confident your views will continue to grow and expand in a positive and meaningful fasion!
Brendan
Brendan
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteI think that it is important to be reflective about who you are, where you have been and where you see yourself in the future. You expressed a desire to learn more about other cultures and I believe that change occurs when it is recognized. We may have had different upbringings, but I think you are on a great path of discovery. I also feel that your outlook on diversity will grow tremendously over your first few years of teaching.