Thoughts on Delpit's Article

I found Lisa Delpit's article, Education in a Multicultural Society: Our Future's Greatest Challenge, to be very interesting and one in which can be linked back to my project proposal topic quite nicely. Much of the information within the article deals with issues I intend to look at and write about.

For example, Delpit discusses the clash between students and the teachers and/or school. She makes the observation that African American teachers are more likely to be straight forward and direct when giving directions while white teachers use more indirect commands and their power and authority as the teacher is diminished and lost in the bustle of the classroom.

She also makes the point that for teachers to be effective with the classroom, they must be able to recognize the "importance of student perception." Delpit gave some great examples of situations where the students' needs needed to be accommodated.

The most striking section of the article was on stereotyping which can definitely used as a parallel for my paper. Delpit uses the example of Asian American students and Native American children as example for the stereotypes found in schools today.
Its my goal to look at most of the things which I have listed above and find out how we can change this. Is it us personally and individually who can change it or is it a group of educators collectively?

Crossing Over to Canaan: Chapters 4 & 5

After reading and considering these two chapters, I found one of Billing's comments to be quite interesting. In chapter four it said, "Most teachers have little or no geniune experience with cultures than their own. Although many teacher education programs offer courses, etc that address multicultural education, these offerings tend to be superficial to the real lives of students..." I would have to agree with this. Although we have come a long way in the area of teacher education programs and multicultural education, we still have yet to achieve the perfect balance of learning and teaching diversity. Despite being in a multicultural education course, I still know very little about other cultures other than my own and I believe my outlook will change by the end of this course. What Billings said is true. I have no experience with other cultures than my own and if I am to teach in a diverse classroom, this must change. I do need to exposed to other cultures, the question is - where do I begin?
In order for me to be able to teach about diversity and whatnot to my students, I first must be able to embrace my culture as well the culture and backgrounds of all my students. Then I can promote and influence my students on what it is to be "culturally aware."

I also found Billings discussion in chapter five of "concept of school" for social justice to be ironic to the fact that this could easily be tied into the Jesuit Ideal of an Educator. Its John Caroll's ED department''s goal for us to promote social justice and better humanity - and for us to be able to do this, we need to be accepting and caring of other people regardless of race, color, religion, etc - and this circles around and ties into the whole idea of diversity and multicultural education.