Blog 2 Perspective

    

We all have biases that come from our cultural upbringing.  I don't believe that all biases are developed from a place of malice, but rather, they come from not understanding something that you have never been exposed to.  Similar to the example given in the video, regarding letters of reference, it is often unintentional bias that comes out as our way of justifying an interaction with society.  I believe the first step to overcoming a bias is recognizing that everyone interacts in a given situation from their own perspective, and to understand the perspective you have to put aside your own assumptions.  You have to be willing to step outside of your cultural comfort zone and seek to understand the views and experiences of another person.  

    Part of being a culturally responsive educator is recognizing that students come to us with various cultural experiences that can be valuable for building connections to content and to one another in meaningful ways.  A culturally diverse and responsive classroom is more than just having a library with diverse cultures represented.  It's using those books and the experiences within them to show students a meaningful and valuable mirror of themselves reflected positively.  It's examining and altering our practices to see if there are more inclusive ways that we can represent different topics, whether there are other opinions we need to share about a topic (to not be ethnocentric), and making sure that we value ALL the stakeholder's perspectives. Being a culturally responsive educator means understanding that you interact differently with a subject just because of your culture; understanding and harnessing the fact that other people will too.  It's understanding those differences and using them to invite everyone to the learning process.  As the second video discussed, this comes from inviting your students and their families to share their cultures with you and extending your view to include their perspectives as well.  

    The last video made me reflect on my time teaching in Alaska. In order to become licensed to teach in Alaska, I had to complete coursework in Alaskan cultural studies. Included in that coursework was a difficult history of the Inuit population (and other Native Alaskan tribes) and the formal educational system.  The knowledge I gained in those classes was critical in forming my practice as an educator.  I developed the understanding that education has existed in many ways and that no one way is superior to another, that all people have their own funds of knowledge, and that students learn better when they are valued for all that they are as a person.  Incorporating these funds of knowledge and seeking out ways to deepen the roots of the educational system within a community strengthens the relationships that ultimately help children grow into confident and capable citizens.  

              The Kamehameha School is reaching out to the community and strengthening relationships with families and community members by including traditional Hawaiian cultural focuses and practices within their schools.  They recognize that the school needs to be accessible and meet students where they are most comfortable, and without the relationships- the learning won’t be worthwhile.  I appreciated the perspective that sometimes achievement scores aren’t predictive of a happy and well-rounded life, and I believe that sometimes it’s easy for us to lose sight of that.  We want to educate our students so that they can embark on a path that is right for them, and as the Kamehameha Schools demonstrated, this can be done by valuing student culture and adding to student funds of knowledge to create well-rounded students capable of learning and participating with the world in many ways.