Everyone has his or her own personal history and everyone’s history is different. People live in different communities and are part of different groups which lead to different experiences. This is true in my tutoring classroom. Although I am from a white, middle class town, my students and I have many things in common. For one thing, I went to public school in the same district as these children for two years. Because of this, I understand how it is difficult to go to school in an inner city school where you don’t get everything other students get. This was made more obvious to me when I moved to the town I live in now. My new school had better books, desks, supplies, and computers in every classroom, while my old school was struggling to find paper to do simple classroom assignments. This would definitely give me an advantage to teaching this classroom because I know how difficult it is for the city kids to learn under these conditions. I know where the kids are coming from and I would definitely be able to connect and sympathize with the kids. Because I did go to these schools when I was younger, going into this tutoring experience I cannot think of any misconceptions I had of various groups. I went to school and was friends with many people who are of similar backgrounds. I think this gave me a huge advantage because I had already been in similar classes and knew what to expect.
I can relate this prompt to Allan Johnson’s works. In his article, “Our House is on Fire,” Johnson discusses white privilege. The article explains that white privilege is everywhere, especially in our schools. Students in “white” towns have better books, supplies and teachers. Students in inner city schools get very little basic supplies. This creates a major inequality in our school systems with the white getting more powerful, and the poor getting less powerful.
This relates to this prompt because in the school I tutor, there are very little basic supplies. All the posters are hand written on large poster paper. In schools I went to when I was younger, posters were bought with everything neatly typed up. This makes white privilege very prominent to me. It shows that poor schools are not getting the supplies they need, while white schools are getting much more. This will be a major challenge to me if I am a teacher in a school like my tutoring assignment. I will need to try to figure out how to manage with the inequalities and try to break the reign of white privilege.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Prompt 4 -- Johnson
Posted by Sara Angelino at 6:06 PM
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2 comments:
Sara I completely agree with you when you say every person has their own personal history. I believe not one person in this world has the same personal History. Even if people are from the same country or are part of the same culture no person is the same and no experience is exactly the same.
Unlike you I have never go to a city school. I have live in Glocester Rhode Island since I was in second grade. When I was a child I never experience not getting something I needed, or not having quality books, computers, and well maintained classrooms. I can recall three at most, African American students that attend my high school and one Chinese student. All the rest were white.
I believe you have a great advantage when you become a teacher due to your experience in an inner city school. I was segregated my whole life until I became a student a Rhode Island College. I feel that being segregated me whole life with just white students has hurt me. I don’t have the advantage of having friends that are different races. I never had the chance to experience different cultures, and I never got to learn from other lifestyles and cultures.
I also agree with your connection to Johnson. I do believe “white privilege” occurs in schools. It certainly went on in my school. Student in my school were given everything they needed to success. It has been proven with your experience going to an inner city school and a privileged school. You said that when you went to an inner city school your school struggled to even have paper and when you lived in a middle class town you had everything you need. We as future teachers need to find any way possible to assure our students are giving the best education and the tools they need to succeed in life.
Sara I see the type of privilege you are trying to show. Many of the public schools in Providence are like this and it is not fair because other schools get better materials. I see this in the school that I am tutoring in because my teacher always reminds the students not to brake anything because the school will not buy anymore. I see the connection With Johnson since he does talk a lot about the privileges in our communities that people seem to ignore. Privileges that many of us do not have and will have to live with for the rest of our life's unless we tart working to fix them now.
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