Chapter 3: Thoughts

Chapter 3 has brought about a lot of questions for me! The statistics that are stated within the first few pages are very interesting! For me, I came from a small school where our graduating class was 84 students and I believe that probably 95% or more of the students were Caucasian/white. I was raised to believe that everyone is equal, no matter their race, ethnicity, etc. I think that I like to look at everyone as an equal now, not only in day to day life, but when I am teaching! I want to make sure to look at students as equals, no matter what their race, ethnicity, etc. I believe we as educators should all look at students as equal and give each and everyone of them an equal opportunity to succeed. I don't think that we should give special treatment to one particular race or culture. I do believe though that in our society there are many people that believe that one race, ethnicity, or culture should be higher on the "to tum" pole. After reading the paragraph on being born a different race and then needing to be changed to another, how much do you think you should get for compensation? Is that really a valid question? I mean again why should one race be considered better than others? To me that just doesn't make sense. I don't know what are your thoughts on it? Do you think that one race or culture is better than another? Do you think that they should receive special treatment in the classroom, outside the classroom and out in the real world?
What do you think about the Deficit theory? My thought is that this could be an issue for students to succeed in the classroom. There are some instances where students are lacking the necessities to succeed, due to lack of materials, such as books. I think we as educators that is part of our jobs is to help the student strive and succeed by giving them as much help as we can in the classroom. Expectation theory? I think that there are some teachers out there now that are just going through the motions and they have certain students who they believe don't have a chance to succeed and I think that we need to think of the students as blank slates or clay that we can help mold, if we are expecting them to fail, then we are failing as professional educators. Finally, the Cultural difference theory, I do have to agree with what they say, that we as professionals, should be willing to learn about the differing cultures of our students to better help them succeed in the classroom.
If we as teachers do not work to learn about all of our students, no matter what race, ethnicity, or culture or whatever, we will continually to fail as teachers because our society is continually growing and continuing to change. We need to focus on the DIVERSE teaching skills which include, diverse instructional materials, inclusive, variety, exploration, reaction, safety, and evaluation. I think if we learn about the students and incorporate all of these teaching skills we can get back on top and make sure that all of our students succeed, no matter what religion, race, etc.