Blog #9 - What stands out (Reflection)

"The value in diversity and multilingualism"

There are a number of ideas and arguments that were impactful during this class, which unleashed a position, desires, hopes and inspiration as an educator of mostly multilingual learners.  

Aria, by Rodriguez was an article that portraits the sacrifices that ELL students make when giving up their home language in order to become successful in English speaking classrooms. I feel that, luckily, today people can find more support in order to maintain their home language, therefore, I believe that this reading is a juxtaposition to the reality of my service school "International Charter School" in which one of the priorities is to empower students with their bilingualism while the reading portrayed how just some decades ago, the education system pushed to eliminate the native language as an attempt to provide more opportunities in an English speaking educational system.  On the other hand, this reading gives a glimpse of the complexity of being multilingual and bicultural and how the diversity of backgrounds comes with many challenges, but when channeled in the right direction, it enriches people, communities and society.

Finn’s reading was another interesting perspective to reflect on about the different types of education that is provided to students depending on their social class. She called them Working Class schools, Middle Class schools, Affluent Professional schools, and Executive Elite schools. 

Working class education vs.middle class education. Even though my service school’s goal and efforts are directed to providing a middle class education, the population is a low income class, therefore it is hard to balance the reality of the students with high quality instruction efforts and social justice practices that contradict the population’s backgrounds.

Finally, I think that another interesting material was Grinner’s S.C.W.A.A.M.P who argues that there are some identities that are dominant or most valued in our society which comes with privilege or are given more opportunities. Some of these categories are straightness, christianity, whiteness, American-ness, able-bodiedness, maleness and property ownership. This perspective along with the wheel of intersectionality, is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and privilege and therefore their own share of marginalization or power. Reflecting on this perspective it intensifies the importance and the need to break down stereotypes, to change the way we see people and make a shift from valuing ideologies to valuing individuals who are diverse, unique but most important, human.   As a result, our perception of privilege is up to us and could change if we see through a human lens, rather than from a stereotype lens.