Privilege

        Privilege is the opportunities and advantages you get just because of the person you are: the color of your skin, where you live, who your parents are or even your gender. Ive been privileged a lot in my life. My dad was an extremely hard worker which got him to the position he is in at the company causing us to be able to live very comfortably. My parents have aloud me to try and participate in anything I've wanted to. We weren't raised spoiled but definitely comfortably. Along with having well off parents, I lived in to a very nice area. Going through school it was never an option to not go to college. I went to a top high school and always had help if i needed it. As a white young adult I'm sure I have been privileged in many different ways. Im sure I have avoided profiling from people, its probably helped get me my jobs and generally given me a mostly good stereotype toward me. As a teacher, just like everything we've talked about, I think we need to take all stereotypes and biases we have and leave them at home. Doing this is very hard because we are raised with having stereotypes ingrained in our head but in a classroom you never know what types of kids your working with or what background they are coming from. When teaching english don't only give the boys extra help and when teaching science don't only give girls extra help. Like we talked about in class, there isn't any proven fact that boys do better at certain things and girls do better at the others. I think doing this and keeping your mind open will help keep your classroom running smoothly and help steer away from giving too much attention to some students and not enough to others.

   

Blog 2

1. Why is it important to openly discuss issues that are seen as having racial dimensions?

I think a lot of the reasons for hostility towards different races and ethnicity is some peoples fear of change and the 'unknown'. Some people are raised in very racist homes so its hard for them to open their mind around the idea of a different outlook on people. I think discussing issues like this can make people more used to the idea of a different way of life, although it may not change everyones mind. Talking about it is useful even if could open up one persons mind even just a little. 

2. What do educators need to do to foster productive examination of issues that are seen by some—or all —as being influenced by the race or ethnicity? 

I think looking at these issues in a completely none biased, none racial way. When talking to students about the issue or article you can reword the explanation of it and take out any language that can lead students minds in to a certain stereotype. Like where the person is from or their up bringing. Doing this I think students will be able to look at the issue(hopefully) by what the facts are instead of who is involved. 

3. What are some examples of effective strategies for initiating and facilitating conversations about race? 

I read awhile ago about a teacher choosing to treat students with blue eyes 'better' and told the other students that people with blue eyes were higher than the others. This exercise brought out emotions of all different kinds. I think this is a really interesting way to show students(especially younger kids) how discriminating can really hurt people. Another way I think would be good(for students at a higher level) would be to start having people talking about the stereotypes forced upon themselves as a race and than lead them in to a discussion on how they could change their way of looking at their own race to hopefully help them cut out stereotypes in general.