Does anyone else find it rather ironic that the day we all dress the same happens to be the day we talk about diversity? Maybe there's not really any humor in that, but to me, it does bring a little giggle to the surface.
I realize that this was, no doubt, unintentional, but I can't help but crack a smile. "Hey guys, make sure you all dress alike, so we look like a homogenous group... And then we'll talk about how great it is to celebrate how different we really are." Surely, I'm over simplifying the concept of diversity, but do y'all see what I'm getting at here?
I suppose I have a rather crass approach to the subject. I'm the minority where I teach; white kids are not commonplace. In my first semester of student teaching (in a district very similar to the one I teach in now), my students spent the first semester calling me Ms. White. At first, I was incredibly confused by this... Did I look like some other teacher named Ms. White? Did they just play a lot of Clue at home? What was the deal? When I posed this question to my cooperating teacher (a big, burly hispanic man with a neck tattoo), he laughed at me and explained, "No dear, it's because you ARE white." I guess you could say that was my 'Come to Jesus' moment... It was my first realization that, for the first time in my life (or at least for the first time where it was painfully obvious to me), I was a minority.
Today's discussion, while insightful, was challenging to digest. There was a lot of talk... A lot of ideas being tossed out and kicked around... But I'm not sure that I left with more than I came to the table with. There were some ideas that other advisors presented that I really liked. There were some questions that were thrown out that sparked discussions that were very interesting.
But overall, I couldn't help but feel like I was being preached to. It seems like people function on the assumption that we're NOT doing anything to support diversity in our classrooms, and that we need to be convinced that diversity is a good thing. I don't need to be sold on this idea... I need someone to show me how to make it happen. How do I keep my classes diverse, when, as Alan pointed out, kids ELECT to take my class? How do we keep our coverage diverse when our campus population ISN'T? These are some of the questions I think all of us walked away with. But correct me if I'm wrong...
Jessica Young
Orange Glen High School
Escondido, Calif.
Posts
Hey Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your observation on diversity and our shirts! I also enjoyed reading your honest assessment analyzing the general tone of the discussions. Personally, I enjoyed some of the things others are doing to include diversity in the classroom. I often get frustrated, because while I am well-aware about diversity, I find it challenging to teach the nuances surrounding this issue.
Eric Gutierrez
Whitney High
Cerritos, CA
I was going to make a post about our shirts! Boo Jessica for beating me to it!
ReplyDeleteThere is something nice about solidarity and I felt that today in our shirts, even if we rocked the irony on "diversity day."
Jeff Fencl
Del Norte High School
Albuquerque, N.M.
I also thought that a) it was funny we weren't dressed particularly diversely and b) it is taking a lot of creative sifting to find the nuggets that apply to my classroom. I found the ideas from my fellow Fellows to be the most helpful part of our presentation. I really wanted to say "hey, I agree diversity is important--now how do I improve it?" But I guess maybe the presenters are more used to working with people who need more convincing.
ReplyDeleteJuli Stricklan
Rigby High School
Rigby, Idaho
I laughed out loud about the shirts...how appropriate? I'm still curious though about raising the issue of diversity to a high school audience when many teenagers do whatever they can to assimilate and limit diversity. Many dress alike on purpose, whether it's Hollister or Pac Sun, and want to look and be like their peers. How do you empower the typical teenager enough for them to want to not only admit their own differences, but write about them as well?
ReplyDeleteAshley Barnes
Bel Air High School
Bel Air, Md.
Today was one of those days when I looked at the syllabus and said, "Oh, diversity, ho hum," but after hearing our speakers, Rick Rodriguez and Sharon Bramlett-Solomon, I was saying, "Oh, diversity, yes, yes!"
ReplyDeleteI have never worried much about racial diversity. Anyone who has spent time in Hawai'i would know that the incredible mix of different races is both celebrated and compartmentalized, usually, in equal doses.
But, when I listen to our institute speakers, I always have one question at the back of my mind, "What's in it for me?"
In the case of the diversity presentations today, I asked myself, "In what areas is there room for greater diversity?"
I was inspired to try harder to incorporate staffers from different academies at our school. Journalism is part of the Arts and Communications Academy on campus. As such, most of our staffers specialize in A & C, as we call it.
Other students, from the Business, Information Technology and Science and Natural Resources Academies, fill their schedules with courses in their own areas of specialty, and we rarely, if ever, see them in the media classes.
I always felt that I was up against an immovable scheduling conflict when it came to recruiting students from other academies for my newspaper staff, but today, I came away with a where-there's-a-will-there's-a-way attitude, and one way that I will work on diversity in the future is to step up efforts to recruit students from other academies.
Along with that, we need to expand coverage from the easy topics and events that take place in our own academy to offer just as much coverage to the events and efforts of the other academies. This has always been a difficult process, since A & C is, by its very nature, so visually and performance oriented, but there must be other stories to be told in those other academies, and this year, I vow to sniff them out and cover them with parity.
Kye Haina
Kamehameha Schools Maui
Pukalani, Hawai'i
I tend to agree with a bit of the "feeling preached at" sentiment. And like you, I am the minority at my school - with about 90% Native American students. Maybe we didn't get a lot of answers today to how our own situations can be improved - But, we did get the discussion going and I for one am certainly thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteJeff Jones
Miyamura High School
Gallup, NM
We'll have to find time before Friday to discuss how we can be more diverse in our classrooms. My staff, racially, does reflect the racial makeup of our school. I want to spend more time focusing on how to diversify in terms of cliques, gender, sexual preference, interests and goals, and political beliefs. I do need to hear more on how other teachers are not only building a diverse staff, but also sparking a desire to hear about differing values, ideas and opinions in their staff members.
ReplyDeleteLynne Schneider
Murrah High School
Jackson, Miss.
I definitely am a minority at my high school in Harlem. And I, too, don't feel that our school is diverse, despite different ethnic groups within our 95% black student population. (Please see my post on this same issue.)
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't feel preached at. I believe it was Alma who talked about diversity fatigue, and I know how these things go--you stop talking about them, they move off center stage, and then we are more than willing as a culture to give these issues a semi-permanent place on the back burner. Think of women's rights in the 70s. Big issue. Then people got sick about hearing about women's rights, the issue disappeared from the radar, and the glass ceiling stayed in place.
Similarly, gay rights is taking a back seat to the Obama administration's "big" issues: two wars and failing economy. So now what? Are gay rights supposed to go underground?
I suppose what I'm saying is that we need to be reminded that issues such as diversity don't get remedied overnight.
Joanne Drapiewski
Frederick Douglass Academy II
New York, N.Y.