Education plays a key role in determining how one navigates adulthood. It is more likely for young students who perform well in the classroom to further their education as they grow older and to potentially live more fulfilling lives because of it. As a teacher it will be my responsibility to give all students what they need to be successful in school. Equity does not mean all students are treated exactly the same; it means every student has the same opportunity to achieve at the highest level he or she can reach. I do not believe equity in the classroom can be achieved by following a set of definitive rules. Instead, it takes a multifactorial approach including aspects of learning, teaching, and classroom interactions. As a teacher, my goal …show more content…
It takes effort from teachers, school administration, and students to eradicate these views from the classroom. As the teacher, recognizing my own judgments toward my students would be the initial step toward achieving an equitable classroom. One of my co-teachers at the REAL School shared with me a technique she used to recognize her own preconceptions about students. After the first week of school, she went through every name on her class roster and asked herself how she felt about each student. She then took notes on her initial judgments and addressed even the most trivial thoughts, such as “I like this girl’s mother,” or “He has great manners.” This exercise served as a self-check on the teacher’s possible internal biases, whether acknowledged or hidden. Having preconceived biases based on a student’s gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or even seemingly unimportant characteristics can lower expectations and create inequities in the way students are educated. Recognizing one’s own biases allows the teacher to combat these judgments up front. This is one technique I will use to lay the foundation of an equitable
America is often thought of as the land of equality and opportunity. We have fought for many things like all people being treated as equals and women’s rights and seen change, but one thing that has not seen a lot of change is the equality for the students in the American education system. Many people think that the American education system gives all students an equal chance to succeed, but minority students such as Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, etc. have a harder time persevering in school than other students. Since our education system is based on strict disciplinary methods, curriculums for students that speak English, and funding for resources, the question that arrives in many people’s minds are, if all students are given an equal
I believe our school should take a step towards improving its culture by getting rid of stereotypes and promoting equality. To make our school a better and safer place, we should try and stop people from thinking about and believing stereotypes. So students will not be hindered in any aspect of their school experience, and so they may do their best and get a fair chance for their future. Works Cited Shankar Vedantam, “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance”
The inequality in Australian education can be attributed to a history of low expectations and discrimination placed on Indigenous people by the government and society. Aboriginal children were denied the right to education until the 1970s due to the discrimitory views of the government and society. The Indigenous population were the sub-standard race of humanity with little to no chance of succeeding in life and these attitudes affected the educational choices offered to them (Ray & Poonwassie, 1992). As the superior race, the Anglo-Celtic Australians, considered themselves both intellectually and socio-culturally more advanced than their inferior Aboriginal neighbours (Foley, 2013). As a consequence of these racially and culturally motivated preconceptions, children of Aboriginal descent were considered unskilled outside of their own and were deemed incapable of excelling in ‘civilised’ white society (Foley, 2013). As a result, the Australian Government, in an effort to civilise and nurture politeness within the Aboriginal people, constructed “structured” (p 139) education training institutions in 1814. However, these problems only provided sufficient schooling for menial work: Aboriginal male children were prepared for agricultural employment, while girls were trained for domesticated services (Foley, 2013). Thus, as a direct consequence of low expectation for life success, Aboriginal children were offered minimal schooling ‘consistent with the perception about the limitations inherent in their race and their expected station in life at the lowest rung of white society’ (Beresford & Partington, 2003, p43). According to Foley (2013) this combination of low expectations and poor academic grounding meant that Indigenous children we...
Ideally, the education system in the United States aims to serve as the great equalizer in the constant struggle to counter decades and centuries of historical oppression against those of non-European descent. The ideology of education as a great equalizer purports a pedagogy as a starting point for those oppressed and separated by such forces as race and class to have access to a quality education, and hence an equal chance at all the US has to offer. It attempts to bring children from disparate realms in a place that serves them all equitably. This ideal constantly challenges the broader values of equality, liberty and democracy considered to be at the core of American ideology. In interpreting this conception, two questions are indirectly answered by examining our educational practices: Does equality in education simply foresee that all students are treated the same, despite their different needs? Or, does it intend to challenge and rectify past inequalities for a truly equitable educational system?
Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) believe that there is a strong association between opportunities in life and educational opportunity. However, Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) argue that people often misconstrued the notion of equal access to education to mean that all students should receive the exact same pacing, resources and instruction in the classroom. Therefore creating a one size fits all education system. More importantly, differentiated instruction recognises that students are not the same and that access to equal education means that given a certain goal, each student should be provided with the resources, instruction and support to facilitate them in meeting that objective (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010, p. 12).
Many people believe that “having an economy that places a greater value on skills and education is a good thing” and that is the thing that is needed to improve people’s lives and futures (Baicker, Lazear). If what our economy is trying to do a good thing they why are so many students still suffering? The main issues are the low-income education that many students have. Many schools are getting money from the government but that is not enough to pay for everything students need. Educational standards have continued to increase throughout the years but that does not help the students who are unable to pay for the better education. These students who cannot pay for the better education are stuck barely getting by with a low education. A low-education can affect many areas of regular schooling. The students who are at low-income schools do not know what type of disadvantage they have compared to other students across the country. These students believe that they are getting the best education, but there are many students who are getting a better education at a school that has the funds to pay for everything their students need. Low-income students are suffering due to the environment they are in at school and they continue to suffer throughout their life due to it. These students will continue to suffer unless something is done about the low-income schools and improve them for the future. Improvement has to come from all areas, not just one aspect of schooling but from all aspects. Although education has improved along with technology many low-income students still suffer from the vast inequalities. These inequalities will take many years to find a way to fix and even more years to actually fix, until this happens the students will...
to make school somewhat equal to all races and genders is to teach them all on the same level.
Race and education are two very important topics that seem to have a very great effect on each other. We live in the land of opportunity, and this land provides “The American Dream”. However, the American Dream must come with equal quality education for all people regardless of their race. Education is one of the major obstacles today that stands in the way of giving everyone the same opportunity that they deserve.
Teachers and all stakeholders in the students’ academic career must believe that all students can learn equally. The climate of our classroom and the teaching strategies we employ must provide an equitable opportunity for all students. In doing so, we must “value and respect the experiences that students bring from their background, articulate students’ background knowledge with disciplinary knowledge, and offer sufficient school resources to support student learning.
Develop an argument on or some ideas of understanding about curriculum as multicultural text by relating the works of Darling-Hammond, French, & Garcia-Lopez, Delpit, Duarte & Smith, Greene, Nieto and Sletter to your experience of curriculum, teaching, and learning as affirming diversity. You could think specifically about the following questions: Is there a need for diversity in curriculum studies and designs? Why? What measures do you think will be effective in incorporating such a need into curriculum studies and designs? What is the relevance of diversity to your career goal, to education in your family, community, and school, to education in Georgia, and to education in general? In which way can you develop a curriculum which helps cultivate empathy, compassion, passion, and hope for citizens of the world, and which fosters social justice?
Most people don’t see public schools as an issue. Reading through these readings I see that unfortunately our schools are failing some of our students. When reading A Place Called School Goodlad states, “Jencks went so far as to conclude that school reform could do little to reduce the extent of cognitive inequality among students. And he saw differences in schools as irrelevant in explaining differences in attainment among individuals” (pg.5). Clearly it says in the reading how some schools are not prepared to teach students. All schools need to have “equal education for all” which means giving all students the same equal education they deserve no matter what race or color they are. Every single student should have the opportunity to know about all the resources there are available in a public school because there are a lot more than people may think. In relation to equal education having the proper and same attention from the teacher is also part of it not only how they are being treated. I hope to make a difference about this issue when I have my own classroom because I know that the slightest difference does make a
Many people don’t want to believe that we are living in a social injustice environment in this country. They choose to ignore the fact that rich are getting richer while the poor are just getting poorer. The rich public schools are giving their students the necessary opportunities to live a decent life while the poor students are left out and have to struggle for those opportunities. The social injustice is visible to every citizen in this country and it continuing to grown; however, there is a few solutions to minimize and possibly to solve the social injustice problem we have in American. One of them is give equal education in all public schools so everyone can have an equal opportunities in getting the jobs and careers they choose. Second
In this paper I am going to present an theoretical school district, school, and a classroom as examples of the ideal that our educational system should strive to achieve. The philosophy my schools will be based on is one of equality. Every single child will have an opportunity to receive the best possible education. However, we will never lower our standards for the sake of equality. Each child will be pushed to his or her personal best, not an average standard.
To me, equality of opportunity in public education is where every single person deserves and is entitled to an equal chance to obtain a good education, grow and make positive progress throughout their time in school, and be successful in reaching their full potential later in life. These people should be treated identically, not differently due to their gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.
The educational system is plagued by disparities in achievement, the absence of pedagogical reform, and inclusive curricula. When students are deprived of fair and equitable educational opportunities this hinders their ability to flourish and grow into healthy learners. Lundberg and Ornstein said it best, children develop best through a foundation of diverse education, essential elements of the Humanistic Learner Centered ideology, culturally responsive teaching, and culturally responsive curriculum development as well as, character