Week 4- Diversity and Seeing the Student

Because I just finished reading the Spring chapter on student diversity and because I am in Los Angeles right now where there are many more obvious diversity struggles going on ,I will ponder some of my thoughts on my readings and experiences with diversity and how we relate to students. Differences in color, class, and race are flash points in educational equity discussions throughout the twentieth century and continue on today. Spring walked us through the many fights for desegregation that have taken place in courtrooms for the last 100 years or more. I was actually surprised to read that these legal battles started as early as they did,as in the 1921 case of Mary Bo-Tze Lee challenging the segregation of Chinese students. The suits brought against school districts in the 1940's were paving the way for the resultant changes and turmoil of desegregation and busing in the 50's and 60's.

In my experience in school, I was insulated from these issues. I lived in a white upper middle class town near Los Angeles. There was a neighborhood of "Mexicans", as we called them then, near the high school, a couple of black students, and the amazing Aguirre brothers from central America who were soccer stars...but we didn't really know what soccer was back then. Even though the term "white flight" was in the vernacular of the town, I don't remember anyone in my school being treated any differently or being excluded or having tension for that matter. I'm sure it existed in the minds and vocabulary of the parents and adults in the district, but I somehow didn't see it in my experience and therefore didn't develop a strong sense of the need for or existence of racial tension or inequity in my school. Looking back, I don't have any memories of the hispanic students, which may mean they lacked acceptance and found their own place to hang out at school as they do today at the high school in which I often teach.

I remember very clearly when my eyes were opened to the issues of discrimination and segregation. I spent two weeks or more every summer at a camp that was racially mixed. Many of the other campers were from neighboring Pasadena, CA which was embroiled in busing and desegregation issues. I remember listening with rapt attention to the black girls talking about angry hateful issues at school between the black and white students. My thought as a young girl was how strange it was that the kids who were actually interacting together were the ones that were the most biggoted against each other. Very confusing at the time, but as an adult I realize the bubble I was in sheltered me from both sides of the issue. I didn't struggle with any feelings regarding race and acceptance, because I wasn't in the midst of the interactions and didn't have any opportunity for attitudes and struggles to develop.

The next piece that influences me is that the city I grew up in and lived until age thirty became the focus of a major immigration from Taiwan in the 1990's. The racial balance (or imbalance some might say) was flipped, it seemed overnight, to a predominantly Asian community. This was unsettling for many of it's residents. Along with it came an interesting change in our schools. The expectations and competition accademically rose from high to phenomenal. These newly immigrated families wanted their children to not only succeed, but to excel and earn the top spots in the colleges. Reading before school entry became a mandatory skill, parents lobbied for math concepts to be introduced at a much younger level. I developed the attitude that Asian American students were setting the bar for the new American school standards.

I also found it interesting to go back to school events and instead of looking down at a basketball game at a sea of blonde haired students, I saw a sea of students with a blonde, here and there, sticking out like a sore thumb. At first I felt a bit like the world I knew had disappeared and then I began to look at how wonderful our country was. The blonde haired, blue eyed students were not typical American students, these were typical American students as well. Interacting with them, they had their own cultural styles, eating different things for lunch and celebrating different holidays, but they were American teenagers just the same, a diverse mix as America has always been. The nature of our country started with and continues to be a place of refuge and opportunity for all who want to call it home. I found it touching and inspiring (though it is still somewhat unsettling that I can no longer read ninety percent of the signage in my home town).

So to bring this back to the reading, what this speaks to me as a teacher is that change is always happening racially and socially in our country. Spring was filled with statistics about the demographic changes in the past and more importantly the changes upcoming in our future as teachers. If the predictions in Spring come to fruition we will be teaching a predominantly non white, highly hispanic or latino community of students in the future. What does this mean to us? For one thing it means we need to check our expectations at the door. Don't see groups of students, but see individuals. Observe how each student behaves, responds, learns as an individual not as a member of a race or class or for that matter a member of a particular family. My own husband was constantly faced with negative expectations as "one of the Gibson boys". His solution...fight the system and drop out after ninth grade.

The reading helped me remember that so many of our social classifications are invalid predictors of educational achievement in the classroom and we should avoid assigning qualities to students by race. "Asian" is as meaningless a classification as Latin American or even American for that matter. There are so many diverse cultures, attitudes and abilities within any of these labels. We need to be not only color blind, but also culture blind so to speak when it relates to our achievement expectations for our students. This does not mean blind to the influences the culture of a student may have on their person, but it should not give us a place to set a bar for achievement. Take a fresh look each time a student enters our room.