For this week's blog post I choose to focus on Chapter 6 which is all about Culture and Diversity. As a music teacher, I have the opportunity to expose my students to different cultures through music. Music helps define a culture, every culture has unique music that is only theirs.
The first thing that stood out to me in the reading was how culture is like an iceberg. Just like an iceberg most of the cultural differences are not seen, they are below the surface. Things like gender roles and personal space rules. The chapter also cautions against stereotyping because it "reinforce conformity and stifle assertiveness."(Woolfolk, pg. 214) The book also starts to talk about how to make a classroom more compatible with all cultures.
Another thing that I found interesting that I don't think I have given enough thought is that the book talks about social class, highly mobile students, and extreme poverty. Not everyone in a school district is going to have the same experience in and out of school. This could be because of where they are from, or because of the social class that they are in, or even because their family moves around frequently. This affects how the students will learn by how the teachers and students think and act around them, and how the student think about themselves and their abilities. I didn't think about poverty being a part of culture because usually when we talk about cultures differences we talk about people from different countries. But someone from a lower social class will have a different and even more challenging time a school sometimes. They may not have the internet at home or be able to afford tutors or lessons to become better at something they are interested in.
As teachers, we need to remember to be respectful of all difference in our students, they may be from different countries or part of a moving military family, but both sets of students are going to come across cultural differences and hardships.
I agree, I think it's easy to overlook poverty as a reason for not being engaged in learning. I also enjoyed the idea of the iceberg. I have seen it used as an "angry" iceberg as in emotions or behaviors can sometimes mean other things are happening below the surface, but I liked that notion tied into stereotypes as well. There is much more to a person than just a few things, multiple layers that we may never discover.
ReplyDeleteI found your post interesting, especially your thoughts about poverty and culture because only recently did I begin to contemplate how the culture of poverty can impact learning. Students who grow up in poverty also sometimes don't have an adult at home after school who can encourage them to do their homework or help them if they have questions. The parent or guardian of a student living in poverty might be working an evening shift or sometimes the adults in a household simply do not value education and therefore do not make it a priority. Not having the support of adults in educational pursuits can be a huge hurdle for students. This learned behavior is sometimes passed on from generation to generation which perpetuates the culture of poverty.
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