Blog Post #5: Making Schools More Diverse

The other day at practicum, I was pushing my students on the swings, and I saw an interesting encounter between a few of them. Three of them, holding hands with one another, were asking my other students if they wanted to play tag with them. The second thought that came in my mind was “This is a real-life example what most schools are trying to promote: diverse and authentic friendships.” This was because these three children consisted of a white girl, a black girl, and a white boy.

My practicum classroom is quite diverse, and why it is this way There are twenty students in the class, and around half of them would consider themselves white, which is low compared to the percentage of white students in the average public school classroom. The other races represented in my practicum classroom are Black and Hispanic. This leaves out other racial groups in the United States, but can easily be considered “diverse,” because there are many individuals in my classroom who are not white.

Most schools in the United States are trying to communicate, to those of interest, that their school is diverse and embraces a diverse environment. Diversity (in this case racial diversity) is beneficial for classrooms to have, because students are exposed to other students that have a different walk of life from them. Many schools are pushing their environments to be more diverse by hiring teachers of different races and accepting students of different institutions (especially higher education institutions). However, there are schools that are tremendously focused on promoting a diverse environment, they do not always think of additional issues that non-white individuals have to go through in the “diverse” environment.

One of the places that I have seen trying to become more diverse is my high school. I went to a predominantly white high school, and the students who were not white had to act white to succeed socially and academically there. When my high school created advertisements, they would almost always include a non-white students. One of my high school classmates, who was half Asian and half white, would tell me asked to be in the school’s advertisements, so the school would prove to the viewers that they were diverse. She felt taken advantage of, because when she was asked by the school to do something, she did not know if it was because they sincerely wanted her, or that she was not fully white.

Another one of my high school classmates, who was African American, felt that my school did not know how to treat students who were not white. She grew up in predominantly white schools and is currently at a historically black college. Right before high school graduation, she was asked by a different student’s parent if they handled the diversity of the school well. She said that the school claimed to be diverse, but it was not actually diverse. The curriculum looked strongly at the history of those with European descent, and that she did not learn about those who were not white. She felt very out of place, because most of the white students only knew how to interact with white students, and they were quite unfamiliar with students who were not white.  

The ideas of diversity are constantly discussed in my education classes, because it is a new idea for most educators, and research has proven that diversity benefits classrooms. Schools have a very difficult time accommodating students from different classes and races, because there is one system that every student has to go through. Teachers have to know where they students come from so they will know what the child is experiencing at school and when they are at home. Diversity is a large component to these experiences, because what makes a child diverse influences the challenges that the child will experience in school.

Blog Post #4: The United States' Public Schools' Implementation of "White" African American History in School

I was stunned last week in class, when someone said “We live in a whitewashed society.” After that
was said, I’ve been thinking to myself “How is the United States whitewashed?” “This makes sense,
because historically, the white race has been the most privileged, what are some of the ways that the
United States is still whitewashed?”

This took me back to my EDUC 310 course last semester, where the content was about promoting
diversity in American education. On the first day of class, my professor went over events in history
we studied in school, and told us that we did not learn in school what actually happened. For example,
we were going over Rosa Parks and the bus incident in 1955. My professor told us that Parks was not
the first African American woman to refuse giving up her spot on the bus. Actually, there were other
women who had done the same act as Rosa Parks, she got more attention for her refusal of getting up
from her seat on the bus. When I was in school, this was represented more in a dramatic story, instead
of the realistic depictions of the incidences.

Something that was whitewashed in my education was learning about the Civil Rights Movement of
1964. Generally, most of my teachers would cover Martin Luther King’s contributions, but glossed over
the other individuals who had worked on this movement. Every year, Martin Luther King would be
discussed somehow, and we would read books and watch movies on him. He has been glorified in the
United States public education systems, because of his boldness to lead protests and give influential
speeches. In reality, Martin Luther King was only a part of the Civil Rights Movement. There were other
black and white individuals who spoke up and protested about the weaknesses of segregation, and
without their works, public places would be less likely to be integrated.

Another reality that I have faced in the last few years is the prevalence of racism in the United States
today. When I was in school, I learned that blacks were allowed to use the same facilities as whites, and
that they are equal. However, blacks are not treated equally to whites still. The United States was built
on principles created by educated white men, which means that they take in their interests, and this
does not mean that it takes in the interests of people who are different from them. Historically and today,
most people prefer to be around people from their own racial group, even though all public facilities
have been integrated.

Blog Post #3: Summer from the Movie "Wonder"

Last night, I watched a film called Wonder. It was about a ten year boy named Augie, who had Treacher Colllins Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes one to have facial deformities. The film goes through Augie's first year in a private school, having been homeschooled beforehand. One of his classmate's, who befriends him, was named Summer, an quiet young girl. What was ironic about Summer was that she was an African American. Most of Augie's classmates were white, and racially Summer would be identified as a minority.

When Summer spoke in the movie, she would say talk in a thoughtful and insightful manner. Summer was portrayed differently than stereotypical African American girls in Hollywood films, who tend to be portrayed as loud and aggressive. Summer was able to defend herself when her classmates were putting her down, similarly to how African American girls have portrayed in other films, but she was very calm about it. She did not care what her classmates thought of her, especially when she decided to eat lunch with Augie, who was sitting by himself and being made fun of by Summer's friends.

Summer was one of my favorite characters in the movie Wonder, because she was taking in the interests of Augie, and did not care what others thought of her. I would of not liked Summer any more or less because of her race, rather I was attracted to her because of her strong morality. Many people judge others due to their race, but we should look at race as an asset to someone's character and personality, instead of only identifying them by their race.

Blog Post #2: African Americans and Poverty

Today, I was working on a project about children in poverty, for one of my education courses, and I learned that 34% of Black Children in the United States are poor. According to The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), a Public Health Research Center at Columbia University, children who are poor are "Children living in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold." The Federal poverty threshold in the United States, for a family with four individuals, has a total yearly income that is less than $24,036.

Out of all the racial groups that were listed on the NCCP's website (White, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American), the Black Americans had the second highest percentage of poverty. I was surprised to find that the racial group with the highest percentage of children in poverty was Native American Children, and 35% of them were in poverty. I was surprised to learn this, because when I learn about poor children, in the United States and Internationally, most of the pictures that go with the readings and videos are of children who have African descendent. This is very problematic, because every racial group in the United States has children who the NCCP who are identified as poor. Children and Adults of African Descendent are generalized as "poor," because they have always been treated as lower than individuals of European Descendent.

 In American History, individuals of African Descendent (children and adults) has been seen as either a slave, victims of the Jim Crow laws, or lower class individuals. However, not every individual of African descendent in the United States fits into any of these three categories. There were African Americans who were not slaves while slavery was legal in the United States, lived in the Northern United States where Jim Crow laws were not strongly enforced, and today there are thousands of African Americans who are not poor. Even though these African Americans were not necessarily part of the majority of the group in the United States, they need to be acknowledged and not forgotten. Each individual who identifies with at least one of the characteristics listed as the minority of the group are all incredibly different, and we are not to see them all as the same. Like white individuals in the United States, each African American individual has had different experiences and different views on the history of African Americans in the United States. 

Link to the NCCP's Website: http://www.nccp.org/profiles/US_profile_7.html 

Blog Post #1: Africanas their Lifestyle with Community

Growing up in school, I did not understand why I was surrounded by tight-knitted groups of American Africanas in my classes. I would see American Africanas comfortably interacting with fellow American Africanas who they had never been in classes with, and I would not talk with with white classmates who I had never had classes with in school. Sometimes it was because these classmates grew up in the same neighborhood or their families were friends, but at other times they will be talking with Africanas and other African Americans that they have only met once.

Also, the Africanas in my school all knew each other, no matter what grade the Africana was a part of. This was not an approach that I would use on any white individual, because white Americans have a more individualistic lifestyle than African Americans. Since I am white, and the majority of the students that I went to school with were also white, I did not experience the connection that my American Africanas had with one another.

Patricia Hill Collins's Article, What's in a Name: Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond, she discusses how Womanism is representative of both African American Females and Males. She defines Womanism as "committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female" (Collins, 12). Both males and females who are African American are listed in this definition, because white individuals tend to not isolate African American male and African American female in their head.

 This has a different approach to men that identify as the same race than in the white community, because white woman created feminism to got away from the philosophies of stereotypical white men. White women have had to fight for being treated as equals to white men, but they have not received nearly as much oppression as African Americans. In class on Thursday, Dr. Muhonja was telling me that there is a strong sense of community between African American individuals was because of the oppression African Americans had experienced in the last few centuries in the United States. They have had to bond because of their desires to desegregate public areas, and for African Americans to have equal rights with White Americans.