SED 445

In Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility, Diangelo discusses the good/bad binary of racism that continues to exist in the 21st century, which is essentially how well-intended, educated people avoid the discussion of race because they believe they are not racist (Diangelo 72). The good/bad binary dates back to the civil rights movement, where white northerners would see images and read headlines of white southerners inflicting violence on black people. To the white northerners, these acts of violence, prejudice, and racism committed by white southerners caused them to be on the “bad” side of the binary. This gave the white northerners the idea that racists were from the south and were “mean, ignorant, old, [and] uneducated” (Diangelo 71). By identifying the southern whites on the “bad” side as racists, this gave northern whites the idea that they themselves were on the “good” side and were not racist. This conclusion for them made them feel that they were not to blame for the racism happeni...

It seems that every school in America will claim in their mission statement something along the lines of embracing diversity. But how true is this? The same schools that hang banners from a variety of countries in their foyers are also guilty of silencing students who are linguistically diverse, stripping students of their identity. Christensen reflects on her students' observations that teachers often "whitewash" students of different cultures, reinforcing the English Only laws that plague classrooms around the nation (Christensen 209). In reflecting on her teaching, she created a unit that analyzed not only the roots of linguistic genocide but the act of schools perpetuating inferiority of languages that are not English. I witnessed this in a school that has stuck with me throughout my undergraduate studies and has helped shape my teacher identity. As a special education major, I began my first practicum in my second year of college. This was initially daunting, be...

In Linda Christensen's  second chapter of Teaching for Joy and Justice , she discusses the importance of narrative writing and provides numerous strategies in implementing this type of writing into a secondary level classroom. The beginning of this chapter, “Teaching Narrative Writing: Why It Matters,” spoke to me, because narrative writing was something I was deprived of in high school. Christensen narrates the opinions many high school English teachers have towards narrative writing, almost viewing it as “self-indulgent, like recess” (Christensen 60) in the curriculum where analytical and essay writing are more valued. As an elementary school student years ago, narrative writing was my favorite part of learning. I looked forward to the hour I had every afternoon to write in my journal and share what I had produced with my teacher and peers. My love for writing was often reinforced in the classroom when my teacher would use my work as an example, which made me confident in my...