Beyond Heroes and Holidays

I wanted to write about this article because to me it was the one that jumped out the most and had many different important points to bring up and look deeper at. When we go out and get our first teaching job, we will encounter several different ethnicities and cultures, and issues may arise from within our classroom setting. If we haven't had the experiences with many cultures and races before, we aren't going to receive any handouts when we graduate and have a room to ourselves. It is up to us to truly set the tone of our classroom and our teaching methods in order for the individuals making up the class to understand how they should respect and honor what others backgrounds may offer.

In the article it stressed the issues of prejudice, race/ethnicity problems, cultural background, changing individual attitudes, and how to implement new methods and ideas into teaching strategies to help make multiculturalism co-exist in the classroom. Where I grew up there wasn't much diversity within our classrooms, and to me I really wish I could've had the opportunity to grow up with greater opportunities to experience different cultural backgrounds. This could've really helped me within my teaching philosophies later on in life. I know that teachers all have a different way of teaching and their styles within the classroom constantly need adaptations as well. Within the article, it gave two different perspectives: Tolerance and Transformation Paradigms. To me, these are two completely different terms that have completely different connotations. When tolerating something in your teaching styles you aren't truly doing what you believe in. That's my opinion. It is up to you to transform what you believe is right in your classroom into your students' behaviors. Sometimes this won't work and you may have to tolerate some things, but know deep down that you feel you are doing what is right for your students. There is a fine line between forcing things onto students and delivering them with valuable information that could help shape their beliefs and overall mindset within racial issues and cultural backgrounds. Sometimes, it's the little things that stick with students more as they go down the road in life, and these valuable lesson goals can be just that.

In the article, Enid Lee is quoted saying "It's a point of view that cuts across all subject areas and addresses the histories and experiences of people who have been left out of the curriculum. It's also a perspective that allows us to get at explanations for why things are the way they are in terms of power relationships, in terms of equality issues" (Lee, 1995). What this is implying is that the curriculum be just in offering ways to promote equality and give ways for the students in the classroom to receive beneficial information that can help shape their idealism and opinions about multiculturalism and