Social Issues in Education, in my Classroom

This week's readings brings us to a topic that only recently has been garnering appropriate attention: the significance of multilingual education. According to "New rules hurt bilingual students," published in The Providence Journal , seven percent of all students were English Language Learners in Rhode Island during the 2014-2015 school year. This number is only growing, as I see first-hand, at my workplace. After the destruction in Puerto Rico earlier this year, our school was one in Providence that took in many new students who were not fluent in English. I think for everyone who works in an urban district, we see on a daily basis the vast needs of our students who come from many culturally and linguistically different backgrounds. And we, as teachers, are tasked with the job of supporting all of them to the best of our abilities. Of course, this aim becomes difficult when policy makers and government officials are not at all aware of the realities we face in our cla...

When thinking about addressing LGBTQ+ history and contributions to society in my classroom, I am almost paralyzed by hesitation. The moments of jokes about gay men, periodic slurs of "f*****," unquestioned heteronormative standards all flash through my mind. I feel comfortable talking about race and color and ethnicity, but sexuality? I am afraid that with this one, I am going to step on some toes. This is a crappy feeling to have... because if I am someone who is hesitating to bringing this history into my classroom and to my students, I am sure that they will not learn about it elsewhere. But then I think about the students who are in front of me everyday. And I think about how their generation, on a whole, sees gender and sexuality in a way so differently than mine, and especially from their parents. Generation Z, those born between the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, are more likely to see gender and sexuality on a spectrum, not in a binary.   This article points...

I have been having conversations about race and participating in racially/ethnically based affinity groups since I was in college. I am very grateful for my undergraduate institution's devotion to teaching and exploring social justice and critical race theory, as these concepts inform my work today.  I try to be very cognizant and reflective on the way that I show up in front of my students, based on my identities. I share with them that I am half-Mexican, and half-White (Scottish-Canadian), and that I sometimes can pass as just White, and this is a tremendous privilege. I hope that when sharing parts of my identities with my students, they can come to see that identity is messy and nuanced, and not always easily definable.  I think because I have been exposed to thinking about whiteness and identity for several years now, I recognize the necessity that all people reflect on the individual identities that they hold and how they intersect. It is imperative that we are t...

Before the march, a woman asked me to take a picture of her grandson in front of a BLM sign, since her phone had died. I still have this photo displayed in my classroom. I was deep in the midst of my first real attempt at teaching at Teach For America's summer institute in Philadelphia when Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot and killed by U.S. police officers within a day of each other. When the media began reporting on these incidents of state-sanctioned violence, our summer school community came together as a group to collectively process and to share thoughts about discussing the events with our students. At the time, I did not feel emotionally-prepared, or that my relationships with my students, having only known them for two weeks, were strong enough, to facilitate that conversation. But while in Philadelphia, members of the 2016 Teach for America cohort and local Philadelphia leaders joined forces to organize a #BlackLivesMatter march which I participated ...