When I read the numerous articles this week, I did a lot of thinking about my own classroom and especially the school in which I teach.  I think that I am developing into a very culturally responsive teacher, but I still have a long way to go.  I am here to tell you that I did not always think as I do now.  Being in this program has retrained my thinking when it comes to culture.  I don’t think it was intentional that I didn’t think about each individual student’s culture, I just believed that it never occurred to me that I needed to.  I thought that when I taught each student was equal and I would teach all children the same, but I now know that expressing culture is just as equally important as expressing knowledge in general.  It is a huge part of each person and needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. 

As I read through these two thoughts came to my mind.  The first thought came from the article Evaluating Children’s Books for Bias.  Even though there are more and more books available for classroom usage, there are still not nearly enough.  As I read through some of these “things to check for” like omissions, illustrations, copyright, and authenticity, I see myself doing these exact same things.  I am proud to say that our current librarian (who is fairly new to the school) thinks in this same way.  As she is ordering books for the library, she takes time to review literature and provide a variety of genres with a wide range of cultures represented all copyrighted within the last few years.  I think that this helps us all have literature readily available on a wide variety of topics and age appropriate levels because many of us do not have the money to provide these types of books for our own classroom libraries.  I still think that there needs to be more.  Again, my thinking has been retrained (so to speak) and I’m thinking more about culture.  I feel like this year beginning the Ed.S program was a blessing in disguise.  I am teaching a heavy ELL class this year for the first time in my career and I have a LOT of cultures represented (not just African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic, but Asian and Indian as well) in my own classroom.  I cannot say for certain, but I don’t think I would have been as conscience about incorporating and celebrating culture as I have been this year if it wasn’t for the Ed.S program.  It’s like Charlotte Tyson has said over and over again, “my thinking will never be the same again”.  I know these children are proud of where they come from and I should be willing to help them celebrate that in our classroom.  So, I make an extra effort to take the time to make certain that we are celebrating every culture every day (as much as possible) through literature and class discussion.

This brings me to my next point.  As I was reading the article Stages of Multicultural School Transformation I couldn’t help but think of my school and the current school year.  At the end of February prior to winter break, our school had a HUGE week long Black History Celebration which was concluded by a forty minute rally for the students and a “Soul Food Luncheon” for the teachers.  It was a wonderful program and really focused a lot on African American achievements which our diverse population needs, but I feel it was too much like the Heroes and Holidays section in this article.  I know that February is Black History month, but isn’t September Hispanic History month?  Stockbridge Elementary School has the highest Hispanic population in the county, yet we celebrated nothing in reference to that.  I think at our school there is still too much emphasis on celebrating culture in isolation (like monthly) instead of on a daily basis which is the way it should be celebrated.  This topic has been brought up with administration and staff a number of times, and there was a bulletin board created at the beginning of the year for students to display culture quilts and bios about their culture.  However, that soon fizzled out.  I think it will just take some time to make a huge change.  After all, it takes time to change the way people think about culture.  I guess all I can do is continue to push the issue myself (with my SES girls by my sideJ) and start small…like in my own classroom!