I am having a little bit
of an issue. This is a touchy topic
because it brings up the madder of race.
O dear. Everyone’s blood pressure
just went up a little bit…
My over all control of my
classes is decent. I certainly have
things to improve on, but I was also not the teacher setting the standards at
the beginning of the year so it is a little difficult to gauge exactly how much
of this “control” is from the previous teacher’s work, or my own when I stepped
in. Regardless, talking to Chris the
other day I realized something very interesting. My “problem” students, the ones that are slow
to respond, push the limits, don’t put effort in, or try to reek chaos at any
opportunity, with the exception of one student, are all Latino males. Back up, what?! What am I missing, what am I doing
wrong? How can this be? I’m a racist because Latino males in my class
don’t LIKE me!
I joke to lighten the
mood, but this is serious. What is going
on? What am I lacking? How do I approach this? I ask this sincerely, because I am quite
frankly very upset to see this correlation with my struggling students. Is it really my small frame, white, blonde self
running around with my little head-set giving directions to go here and there
throughout class? What is causing this
issue? Is it my own persona I am sending
out to the crowd? Is it a lack of
connection? Is it because most of these
students are already up for expulsion or close to it? Is it because I am a white female?
Here I am a year later, referring back to old posts I wrote when I was a student teacher. I am currently working in a middle school science class and had to chuckle when I got to this article. My current school has a larger number of Latino males than when I wrote this post. At my current school I am having none of these issues that I had run into a year ago. Building my own classroom culture of acceptance over adopting someone else's like my previous year as a student teacher I think is what made the difference.
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