Teaching and Cultural Competence (Mar. 16)

Find two issues to comment on and write a paragraph on each.

1. The first thing I wanted to comment on was how she mentioned about finding teachers who are capable of teaching successfully in diverse classrooms. She said just because they have been teaching a long time does not make them capable. I totally agree with that comment. I feel that some teachers forget what is important about being a teacher and how to connect with their students. A school in Muskegon just had an article about them in the newspaper about being the worst school in the state of Michigan. That probably makes the students feel that they are not smart, but in fact it is the teachers fault for not educating them better. One bad teacher can make a huge impact for students. You see some teachers and you wonder why they even teach. In a another school district they tried to hire a english teacher to teach a social studies class which she was not quailified for. There are problems in both culturally diverse schools and in not as culturally diverse schools. There needs to be more guidlines for new teachers and older teachers to stop the not as educated teachers about an environment to be able to teach there.

2. I like this quote she made in the reading, "The real benefit in understanding culture is to understand its impact on our lives." I thought that it is extremely important because in order to help someone you have to understand what they have gone through and not dismiss the issue. You have to see how that affected them. When I got mad at someone for doing something I had to realize that the reason I was mad was because it is not something that is acceptable in my culture, but to realize it is in hers. I had to come to a common ground where it would work out for the both of us. Culture impacts us, but we may not even realize it is. I think that sometimes people forget get about their culture, but it is not just white people. I think that we can get so caught up in things that we forget about what are important issues to us.