Week 12: Kumar 11 & 12 and Brown 26

This week's readings help me realize that as a future teacher, I have the opportunity to model mutual respect across cultural, political, and religious boundaries while tapping into controversial issues, so I can create a more unified and safe classroom environment for every diverse student. It is necessary to avoid any biases, as a teacher, when taping into world issues to create a more egalitarian classroom environment. This reminds me of the role of the teacher as a transformative intellectual. We need to reflect and connect pedagogy with wider social issues. We need to challenge our student's minds and guide them to treat other races, cultures, and languages equally. Political and economic issues affect everyone and if these issues are presented within the classroom, we can help our students challenge their own perspectives on these issues and develop a more unified concept of the world. We can help them become critical thinkers about current issues affecting the world. These chapters help me see beyond the classroom and understand how I can make a change in a child's life. Teachers should treat everyone equally, model fair treatment across cultures and be unbiased on any social issues that affect anyone in the classroom, so their students can follow the same path. Children learn by observing and modeling, so every teacher is a model and if the teacher discusses issues surrounding every student's life, then they can challenge and prepare them to face the sociopolitical and economic issues that affects their life in a more critical way. Also, ESL students come from different countries and bring their own unique beliefs and attitudes to the classroom. If teacher connect everyone's beliefs, every student will be able to understand the importance of accepting one another. We are more than just a language teacher or a content teacher, we represent someone that can make a change in a world that is in desperate need for change. Teachers should help their students embrace their own culture and language, as well as creating and maintaining a linguistic and cultural identity. By respecting the student's linguistic and cultural identity, we can connect with the student's family, community, and personal identity. We should appreciate their identity in the classroom because it defines who they are as a human being. A question that was mentioned in one of the chapters that I am still questioning is how can students preserve their own cultural identity if they have to survive in a culturally challenged world? I am sure that with the teacher's efforts, and school and family support, they can help a child surpass any obstacles that this world may bring to the student. As teacher, we can help our students challenge these obstacles and issues (economical, political, religious, educational, racial, social, etc.)  that are affecting their families and themselves. By following a critical pedagogy and being a more transformative intellectual, the classroom will be a more unified, acceptable, fair, and loving environment for each and every diverse student.