In the chapters titled "Teachers' Voices" and "Cross-Cultural Confusions", Lisa Delpit talks about the gap between amounts of non-white students and non-white teachers. She argues that students who are taught by a teacher of a different ethnicity have trouble succeeding in the classroom. She gives several examples of discrimination towards Native American, black, and Alaskan students in teacher preparation programs, and argues that the challenges they faced turned them away from a career in teaching. She believes that most white teachers and professors have a certain "white way" of teaching that is not agreeable with the way diverse students are used to being taught. If there were more cultural understanding in teacher preparation programs, she believes that there would be more cultural diversity in today's American teaching force.
In my experience, this does happen, though not in the way that she says it does. It is possible that there is a lot of racial discrimination in the way classes are taught at some colleges, but I believe that the discrimination doesn't stop there. Colleges can discriminate in several aspects of the way they teach education. For example, here at Trinity, there is a lot of emphasis on a Christian Reformed worldview. While I agree that this may be a valid way to look at the world, it has not been any sort of foundation for me in my life before coming here. I grew up in a Christian home, but it is a struggle for me to think from a Reformed perspective, because that is not my home denomination. The process of structuring classes and assignments around creation, fall, redemption, and new creation is a totally new and strange concept to me. For me, this "Reformed" way of teaching has been a struggle while completing assignments, just like the "white way" of teaching is a struggle for students from other cultures. I know that the struggles I encounter may not be as over-arching as cultural struggles, but I feel that I will have some idea of how my students from different cultures feel when encountering my teaching style. I plan to take the cultural differences between me and my students and use them as a reason to know the students on an even deeper level.
In my experience, this does happen, though not in the way that she says it does. It is possible that there is a lot of racial discrimination in the way classes are taught at some colleges, but I believe that the discrimination doesn't stop there. Colleges can discriminate in several aspects of the way they teach education. For example, here at Trinity, there is a lot of emphasis on a Christian Reformed worldview. While I agree that this may be a valid way to look at the world, it has not been any sort of foundation for me in my life before coming here. I grew up in a Christian home, but it is a struggle for me to think from a Reformed perspective, because that is not my home denomination. The process of structuring classes and assignments around creation, fall, redemption, and new creation is a totally new and strange concept to me. For me, this "Reformed" way of teaching has been a struggle while completing assignments, just like the "white way" of teaching is a struggle for students from other cultures. I know that the struggles I encounter may not be as over-arching as cultural struggles, but I feel that I will have some idea of how my students from different cultures feel when encountering my teaching style. I plan to take the cultural differences between me and my students and use them as a reason to know the students on an even deeper level.
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