Tackling Diversity in the Classroom (Class Assignment no. 4)

The topic for this week's class was "Facing Difference." The article by (then) educator Rita Tenorio describes the ways in which she tackles the color, racial and ethnic differences in her classroom in order to instill a sense of understanding and mutual respect between these lines.

Herein, Tenorio describes six activities implemented in her classroom to get out dialogues, not only about the inherent differences in skin color, lifestyle and heritage, but also about the attitudes attached to them. The early elementary aged children reveal the truth about their conditioning regarding "the Other" (ie. pg. 257 "my mom says that you can't trust black people" etc.)

Additionally, the activities reveal the internal anxieties already beginning in some of the children, such as the dark-skinned girl who refused to put her arm out on the table to compare with her classmates.

After much debate about the effectiveness and potential harm of these activities with myself, I eventually found these activites wonderfully helpful at attacking alterity anxiety head on and untraining the beginnings of prejudices. The 'Skin color and Science' activity demonstrated how each child can associate their color with something in the world that was not lesser or greater than another. The 'Writing about skin color' demonstrated the training of a more balances sense of their own color the students had and seemed to speak to the reversal of some colorism in the classroom.

The chapter reinforced my view that much can be gained by tackling these issues head on and getting discussions out in the open. My initial criticisms were based on the youth of the classroom that she was working in, but on further reflection I found that this is perhaps one of the more important stages to do this in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w1sVsDrGDs

The video here previewed encourages similar kinds of dialogue at the high school level where these things have alreadt affected the students' experiences. the ultimate consequence of not tackling these issues can be best illustrated in the vignette from "Mean Girls" wherein the protagonist attempts to find a table that she feels most comfortable at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPvRtQIKG0

Naturally, my wonder is if every early elementary classroom adopted these activities, would it truly change the racialized sociality of most high schools as portrayed in "Mean Girls?" Thoughts?

--TAHS