Do I have the full picture?
There is a major teacher education gap in our country due to the fact that the majority of teachers are white women. This can create a multitude of issues due to the fact that a lot of times people of color have different sorts of experiences than white Americans which can make it harder for white teachers to empathize with their non-white students. Additionally, they tend to have a lot of subconscious bias that gets reflected in their teaching. This leads to all sorts of negative impacts on students of color. For instance, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2014 the graduation rate of white high school students was 14 percent higher than of black students. The same disproportionality goes for test scores, gifted programs, suspensions, discipline, etc. This is why it is so important to educate ourselves. According to Kirsten Weir from the American Association of Psychology "differences in treatment aren't malicious or intentional. Some disparities arise from cultural misunderstandings or unintentional "implicit biases'' that unknowingly affect our thoughts and behaviors." Therefore, in order to not become complaisant in our ignorance we have to choose to fight back against these biases so that our students hopefully don't have to face these alarming discrepancies. This can also be seen in dysconscious racism, which is essentially when we justify or perpetuate inequality by accepting things the way that they are, or the way certain systems function. Unfortunately a lot of things regarding schools are rooted in oppression or inequality. For instance, the land our schools were built on were originally Native American lands that were stolen as a result of white supremacy and colonialism. We have also had segregated schools for a long time; black people had to fight for the right to even attend the same schools as white students, and then once they got there the white teachers didn't want to teach them. There are currently still racial issues happening in schools like over-policing, microaggressions, erasure of black history, etc. So, do I have the full picture? No, I will never have the full picture because there is an infinite amount of stories to be heard. It takes making the decision to be proactive everyday to make a change within yourself and the world around you.
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Hey Alissa, I was intrigued by your post this week! I agree with one of your points that we should seek to learn /educate ourselves rather than unintentionally favor certain students and parts of history/stories we’ve only been informed of. Moreover, I think it is also due to the history of schools and how they believed in “teaching” students. It greatly differed between dominant groups and marginalized groups of people, clearly demonstrating bias and the privileges that one had that the other didn’t. Because this continued to be such a way, favoring the dominant group throughout historical events, it explains why schools remain to teach the same information and material as before. Never really considering much to include the oppression and struggle of marginalized groups. Even after justice prevailed for the minorities in schools, that has not settled the matter of similar racial insults among schools' staff and students. Without handling these trivial issues within schools' boundaries and educational system, we remain to comprehend more than what we thought was the “full picture”. which, in truth, we both agree that there isn’t an exact final/endpoint that can ensure we’ve captured it all.
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