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.
Kelly Jo,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your perspective on this topic. My parents have always worked hard and they have set high expectations for all of their children, myself included. I recognize that I have been blessed with many privileges and I try my best to be appreciative of those things instead of taking them for granted. Just as you said, I definitely feel that leaving our stereotypes and biased opinions at home would allow us to enter our classrooms with a clear mind and without predetermined dispositions. But, this is much easier said than done. I enjoyed your examples of how we should provide both males and females equal attention in all subjects. Naturally, different subjects will be easier for each student, but we should erase any stereotypical ideas about which gender we expect to preform better in each area. You surfaced some effective strategies and positive ideas that will be beneficial to implement within our classrooms. Good job!
It is so interesting to me to see how similar we are in terms of growing up, even going to the same elementary school. For me as well, it was never if I go to college, but where I go to college. If I have ever needed anything, we have been able to figure out how to work towards it, even if it took a little while to get it. I agree it is so important for us, as future teachers, to leave all of our stereotypes and ideas at home when we go into the classroom. Our students will not all be like us and we need to learn how to best teach them and allow them to grow to the best that they can be no matter what privilege they have experienced growing up.
ReplyDelete