My Teacher Journey

    L ike many Americans, growing up I used to think that segregation was ended by the case Brown v Board of Education. When I started playing basketball in highschool and had the chance to see other schools, I quickly realized that that was not the case. Segregation is still around us and shaping our lives at all times even if we don’t see it.  Watching “The Disturbing History of the Suburbs” opened my eyes to just how common segregation is in society today. As the video described the concept of redlining and how these policies created a wealth gap, I began to recognize just how large of a role location has on schooling and opportunities for success. He explained how in the 1930’s, FDR created loan programs to help people finance their homes by making colored coded maps indicating neighborhoods that are “good” and “bad.”  Can you guess which neighborhoods the government labeled as good and bad?       If you guessed that African Americans and...

          Think back to your K-12 schooling experience. What comes to mind? For some, it’ll be their four years of honor roll, the varsity games they played every Tuesday and Friday night, the social events they had the opportunity to attend, and the support they received in the classroom and at home. For others, it may be the job they had to work every day after school, the family problems they had to go home to, their constant lack of resources and support, and the everyday struggle they had to face in the classroom. Every student has a different experience growing up, and a major part of this comes from money. Money is the one thing that humans can agree on and those that don’t have it end up experiencing life much differently than those who do. As teachers, we need to be aware of what money really has to do with it.         According to the article, “The Poverty Myth,” while stereotypes regarding race have been talked about...

    When you think of a teacher, what do you imagine? If you were to ask any student that has found their way through the public education system, the first descriptive words most people would come up with would be "white"and "woman." It is not at all surprising that people would respond this way when you learn that 74.3% of teachers are women and only 25.7% of teachers are men. It is even less surprising when you keep reading and find that "most common ethnicity of teachers is White (68.8%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (12.9%), Black or African American (10.1%) and Other (3.9%)" (Teacher Demographics and Statistics, 2023). The question of how gender affects the teaching profession is one that has been asked for decades because of gender disparities, expectations, and stereotypes that have influenced all aspects of our society, including education.     Because of how gender is embedded in our society today, teachers face wage disparities, stere...

 I have always been the type of person to consider everyone's feelings in a situation and hear every side of the story before coming to conclusions. As much as I’d like to say that yes, I have the full story, I feel as if I never will. A picture can say a million things depending on how you look at it. Growing up, I never paid much attention in history class because I found it boring and repetitive. If you would have asked me to have an in depth discussion about anything from the past, the conversation would not have gone far. The way we’re taught in our public school education shows history as a single narrative story instead of taking into account that there can be other perspectives that haven’t been considered. When students are taught this way, seeing the full picture, or any picture for that matter, can feel impossible because “how could these events that occurred 100 years ago have anything to do with me?”  The article What is settler-colonialism? by Amanda Morris disc...