Reaction to Zinn's Article & Teacher's Guide

After looking at Zinn's article and the National Museum of the American Indian Teacher's Resource Guide, I found several differences among them. Zinn's article gave the harsh reality of what the Indians really suffered when the Europeans overpowered them. The National Museum's Teacher's guide in my mind, while giving valid information, seemed to "sugar coat" the whole ordeal and didn't get down to the real nitty gritty matter of it. The resource guide was made for children and the information at hand was written in a somewhat tasteful and age appropriate way. It reminded me very much of the material I may have once read in grade school while Zinn's article created a vivid image in my mind of the hardships the Indians' faced - this clearly showing the article was intended for a maturer audience.

"Native Americans: Deculturalization, Schooling, and Globalization"

Learning finger songs at Carlisle Indian School, ca. 1900.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/erdrich/boarding/gallery.htm

(This is a mock up letter of me portraying a character from the text read)

Dear Sir or Madam:

Take a look at this picture. At first glance it may just look like a typical classroom from days gone by. But really it is a picture of Native American boys and girls dressed in what appears to be American clothes, standing in rows with desks and are being what was then thought of as being "civilized." This is what Thomas McKenny and dozens of others thought of as proper for these children. To place them in schools; some being seperated from their parents only to be taken to bording schools such as The Spencer Academy for boys and New Hope Academy for girls, where they had to learn math, reading, and writing, and for the majority of them - the English language. The educational policy of that time was "replacing the use of native languages with English, destroying Indian customs, and teaching alligiance to the U.S. government" (pg 31).

While the U.S. government (in their eyes) at that time had good intentions of trying to help and "civilize" the Native Americans, I do feel that they may have overstepped their boundries just a bit. While its good that they wanted to educate the people, I don't believe that the government should have tried to a ban all the Indian's customs and languages. As a school teacher for some of these poor defenseless children, I had to instruct them and put all my tireless efforts into teaching them the ways of the new American world, one that was quite different from theirs. The language barrier is what made the school day endless and being a woman, who would have listened to me and my concerns for the children? If there had only been a way to educate them while keeping their Indian customs/culture instilled in them, I think they would have been better off - very much like a multi-cultural education approach where children are learned to appreciate their background and yet be accepting of the things in which they are learning.

Thought on Sonia Nieto's Article

After reading Nieto's article, "Solidairty, courage, and heart: what teacher educators can learn from a new generation of teachers," I started to have some thoughts of what my goal is for this ED350 course. Growing up in middle to upper class schools my whole life that had very little diversity, almost none in fact made me realize that I want to learn more about multicultural education and how to be an effective teacher in a diverse school or classroom. I found this article to be very interesting and the teacher's experiences and personal stories made it all the better - it really made me think about what types of experiences we may face once we hit the teaching job market.

The four questions that the author gives on pg458 are ones which all educators should take the time to consider - teachers should have some knowledge of how to run a classroom with diverse students. An educator should also know how to handle things in an appropriate manner when a situation arises to his or her attention or when discussion of diversity or multiculutral education comes up. I did agree with Nieto's comment on the "achievement gap" and "resource gap" - these two are very much alike in the sense that these can belittle and actually harm the chances of diverse students getting a decent education.

There were also some pretty shocking facts that I found interesting in this article - that here in the U.S. "20% of new teachers leave during the first three years of teaching" (pg459) and that there are an increasing number of dropouts and lack of school participation when diverse students are having to take high stakes testing (pg460).